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Study: People Would Rather Be Shocked Than Be Alone With Their Thoughts
sciencehabit writes "How much do we hate being alone with our own thoughts? Enough to give ourselves an electric shock. In a new study, researchers recruited hundreds of people and made them sit in an empty room and just think for about 15 minutes. About half of the volunteers hated the experience. In a separate experiment, 67% of men and 25% of women chose to push a button and shock themselves rather than just sit there quietly and think. One of the study authors suggests that the results may be due to boredom and the trouble that we have controlling our thoughts. "I think [our] mind is built to engage in the world," he says. "So when we don't give it anything to focus on, it's kind of hard to know what to do."
"The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom"
Arthur Schopenhauer
At first I assumed that the people were stuck n a room for hours upon hours with nothing to do. Then I read...
"The period of time that Wilson and his colleagues asked participants to be alone with their thoughts ranged from six to 15 minutes. Many of the first studies involved college student participants, most of whom reported that this "thinking period" wasn't very enjoyable and that it was hard to concentrate. So Wilson conducted another study with participants from a broad selection of backgrounds, ranging in age from 18 to 77, and found essentially the same results.
Is it just me or is it a very poor reflection on today's society if people can not just sit and think for 15 minutes?
For the record I would have ZERO problem doing this at all... in fact I could think for hours... although having a pencil and paper to keep track of ideas and plans would be helpful.
I just read this study as an example of how people are completely disconnected from their own inner life and addicted to constant stimulation. Seriously, an electric shock instead of enjoying a little bit of peace and quiet and a chance to gather yourself? What kind of total lack of self-control is that?
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Sensory deprivation experiments, partial or full, have been going on for decades. How is this 'news' to the scientific community?
Maybe because this isn't really about classic "sensory deprivation." In one phase of the experiment, they even let people sit in their own homes and just asked them to just think quietly for 6 to 15 minutes. I'd hardly call that "sensory deprivation." Most people apparently HATED the experience (even more than they hated sitting quietly in a lab setting).
I'm familiar with sensory deprivation studies, but personally I find it shocking (pardon the pun) that people are willing to self-administer painful shocks just to avoid being alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. Don't you? Clearly the researchers did, given what they said in TFA. They even questioned why they should bother with the shock test, because they thought NO ONE would shock themselves. And yet nearly half did.
I'd be interested to know the correlation between each candidate experience and whether they are introvert or extrovert on the Myers-Briggs scale.
Carl Jung tells in one of his books of a conversation he had with a Native American chief who pointed out to him that in his perception most white people have tense faces, staring eyes, and a cruel demeanor. He said: "They are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We don't know what they want. We think they are mad." ...
The Buddha taught that the root of suffering is to be found in our constant wanting and craving.
The Power of Now, p. 62 - 63.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
In related news,scientists have discovered a correlation between "thinks that signing up for experiments is fun" and "extrovert".
"This is just fascinating: Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics, and explain why social science studies of Westerners — and Americans in particular — don't really tell us about the human condition: 'Given the data, they concluded that social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations. Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.'"
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
So I can say that without any stimulation I can sit for about a day and a half without any real problem. I get along with me just fine.
I know this rather well due to hunting deer in Wisconsin. Yes, you sit there for a little over a week with very limited interaction. You can't make noise, you can't move too much. It's you and nature. Yes it is a type of meditation when you are not seeing any deer. For me this is what happens:
First half a day: I have tons of things to think about. Little niggling problems that I haven't had the time to sit and think about. Typically things like how can I best fix this at the house, what would the optimal method of doing this in this program be.
Second half of the day: Things quiet down a bit start thinking about the Wife, kids, finances... Figuring out what to do when this one or that one does something, how to best react...etc.
Day 2 first half: Hey look... nature... that tree is kinda neat... I wonder why it grew that way...
Day2 second half: Ok, ummmm what now.... kinda bored... what time is it... oh, two minutes since I last checked.
Day 3+: Find things to be interested in... a single squirrel or bird can be hours of entertainment and the highlight of your day.
6-15 minutes!?!? Man, I haven't even finished thinking about that hot girl I saw on the way in! lol
I was told once by someone doing their Masters in Psychology that the vast majority of research starts on university students, exactly as you initially described, and then moves onto a broader pool of people to eliminate that as a variable.
But undergraduate university students are probably the most studied group on the planet from a psychology perspective, precisely because for a little extra credit, or a small amount of cash, they're a readily available pool of subjects.
Which is odd, because you'd think by now someone would understand them. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, can't speak for the original poster, but where there's woods, there's wood. Knives can do interesting things with wood.
INTJ and 15 minutes of just thinking are no problem. Even less so since I began doing some meditation a bit over a year ago.
Erotic is using a feather. Perverted is using the whole chicken.