[gov3009-l] Killingsworth on "Mind Wandering and Happiness"

Hello, We hope you will join us this Wednesday, February 24th at the Applied Statistics workshop when we will be happy to have Matt Killingsworth (Department of Psychology). Details and an abstract are below. A light lunch will be served. Thanks! "Mind Wandering and Happiness Matt Killingsworth Department of Psychology February 24th, 2010, 12 noon K354 CGIS Knafel (1737 Cambridge St) ABSTRACT: Although humans spend much of their time mind-wandering, i.e., thinking about something other than what one is actually doing, little is known about mind wandering's relation to human happiness. Using novel technology to achieve the world's largest experience sampling study of people's everyday lives, we found that participants spent nearly half of their waking hours mind-wandering and that it had large effects on happiness. Mind wandering was never observed to increase happiness and often reduced happiness considerably. Although some activities and situations modestly decreased the probability of mind wandering, they generally did not buffer against negative thoughts when a person's mind did stray from the present.