At some point today you will disengage from the rest of the world and just think. It could happen any number of ways: if your mind wanders from work, while you’re sitting in traffic, or if you just take a quiet moment to reflect. But as frequently as we drift into our own thoughts, a new study suggests that many of us don’t like it. In fact, some people even prefer an electric shock to being left alone with their minds.
“I’m really excited to see this paper,” says Matthew Killingsworth, a psychologist at the University of California (UC), San Francisco, who says his own work has turned up a similar result. “When people are spending time inside their heads, they’re markedly less happy.”
The researchers then decided to take the experiment a step further. For 15 minutes, the team left participants alone in a lab room in which they could push a button and shock themselves if they wanted to. The results were startling: Even though all participants had previously stated that they would pay money to avoid being shocked with electricity, 67% of men and 25% of women chose to inflict it on themselves rather than just sit there quietly and think, the team reports online today in Science.
Stupid. It’s called “curiosity”. End study.
I would press the button because I’d be super curious at how strong the shock would be. My guess would be that it would be quite a mild shock, because it wouldn’t have gotten past the ethics committee if it was going to cause harm to the average person. That curiosity would lead me to press it at least once.
But also a big aspect that I feel they’re not considering in their conclusion is that agency plays a huge role. When I was a kid, my brother was curious about what it was like to use my uncle’s diabetes blood glucose monitor, and my uncle offered him the chance to try it.
After my brother and my mom tried it, they asked if I wanted to try and I was not keen, because I don’t like needles. My brother then tried to force me to have my finger pricked, and I became increasingly upset at the coercion (and the threat of physical force). My mom thought that my reaction was disproportionate, and asked why I was making such a big fuss when it barely hurt at all. Being forced to do something is so much worse than having the freedom to choose to do it to yourself.
It’s like forcing a cat into a box. If you just leave the box out, there’s a decent likelihood the cat will sit in the box of its own accord. If you try to force the cat into the box, then you will likely not escape unscathed. Choice matters.
Reminds me of the meme where a girl noted she no longer allows men to hold her stun gun because 100% of the time they shock themselves to see if they can take it.
What a ridiculous conclusion. You leave people alone wondering how it feels to be electrocuted and then conclude that they can’t stand their own thoughts when they decide to try it.
Yeah, this was a baseless finding. I’m an introvert. I LOVE being left alone with my thoughts. My daughter is the same way. Shes not lonely, she’s quite happy being by herself.
I’m not locked in with my thoughts. My thoughts are locked in with ME!
Right? All this proves is people will try anything once.
I mean, if I was left alone in a room with a button, I would press it too (maybe more than once https://xkcd.com/242/ )
I’m in this image, and whether I like it is irrelevant because I have fully committed to the bit.
“Today we figure out why slaves choose to disassociate”
It’s like the old joke : don’t think about a blue elephant. If you leave someone with a buzzer thery’re going to think about it.
I wonder how age factors in. Being alone with your thoughts is something that probably becomes more comfortable the more you practice it. In the modern age, though, nobody actually has to practice it when they can just pull out their phone. Anyone who grew up in pre-smartphone times has encountered countless times where they had no choice, though, usually you’re waiting for something or another, so you just sit there and wait. And think. Gets you rather used to it.
wonder how age factors in.
+1
I never felt like electrocuting myself out of boredom. Like, wtf? Shouldn’t that be considered a symptom of some mental disorder?
I also have zero issue being with left alone my thoughts, and never had even younger. Quite the contrary it is something I’m looking forward to.
But I’m also well into my 50s and even though I’ve been using a computer of some sort since the early 80s it was just a tool, next to many others, in my personal toolbox next to many other tools.
The most used tool in my toolbox is the humble notebook + pen, not the computer and certainly not the smartphone as I’m one of those abnormalities that doesn’t need to check my phone’s notifications every odd second. Heck, I don’t even Notifications turned on, and have not installed any social apps either… I even uninstalled the email app.
I wonder if this allergy to being left alone by themselves could (partially at least) explain the fact younger people don’t read anymore, or read a lot less than we used to at their age, and younger?
Boredom? no.
Curiosity? Fuck yes.Should be a simple enough thing to determine, in multiple different ways. How many people only shocked themselves once, vs how many did it more than once, would be one. Would need to look at the details of the experiment and what data was gathered, which sadly seems to be behind a paywall.
“I wonder if…”
bzzzzzt
You’ve failed
“but…”
I really think I would be an outlier unless it was like tens.
Yeah I love both of those things. Often at the same time!
I really do get shocking once even though Im unlikely to do it. It would be a bigger deal if over a long term they found people would shock themselves on a regular basis due to boredom. One time is just curiosity.
Without the pain how can we know we are alive? I wonder if the results would be lower had they given them a hug before leaving them alone with the button.
Fuck that!
stanley milgram liked this.
