Andrew Badham 2024-10-30 11:53:39
Does your mind wander? Well, mine does too, and apparently, that’s not that weird. A study of undergraduates found that on average between 30-50% of our waking hours are spent thinking about something other than the task we were on.
While there can be a multitude of factors that might affect how much your mind wanders, a new study wanted to look at how something like Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) might affect mind wandering.
They found that people with MDD experienced mind wandering at a higher rate than a control group. They also found that positive or negative feelings played a significant role in predicting mind wandering. People experiencing negative emotions were more likely to begin mind wandering than when they were feeling something positive. On a similar note, people whose minds had wandered were more likely to experience negative feelings later, which might hint at a cyclical relationship there.
So, what is there to take from this study? This might suggest that by addressing mind-wandering, we might be able to improve some of the effects of MDD with interventions such as cognitive behavioural therapy or mindfulness training. If that improves some of the negative emotions associated with MDD, that might improve future mind wandering, so replacing a negative cycle with a positive one.