The inherent difficulty in accurately appreciating the engaging aspect of thinking activity could explain why people prefer keeping themselves busy, rather than taking a moment for reflection & imagination

Hatano, Aya, Cansu Ogulmus, Hiroaki Shigemasu, and Kou Murayama. 2020. “Thinking About Thinking: People Underestimate Intrinsically Motivating Experiences of Waiting.” PsyArXiv. July 29. doi:10.31234/osf.io/n2ctk

Abstract: The ability to engage in internal thoughts without external stimulation is one of the hallmarks of unique characteristics in humans. The current research tested the hypothesis that people metacognitively underestimate their capability to positively engage in just thinking. Participants were asked to sit and wait in a quiet room without doing anything for a certain amount of time (e.g., 20 min). Before the waiting task, they made a prediction about how intrinsically motivating the task would be at the end of the task; they also rated their experienced intrinsic motivation after the task. Across six experiments we consistently found that participants’ predicted intrinsic motivation for the waiting task was significantly less than experienced intrinsic motivation. This underestimation effect was robustly observed regardless of the independence of predictive rating, the amount of sensory input, duration of the waiting task, timing of assessment, and cultural contexts of participants. This underappreciation of just thinking also led participants to proactively avoid the waiting task when there was an alternative task (i.e. internet news checking), despite that their experienced intrinsic motivation was actually not statistically different. These results suggest the inherent difficulty in accurately appreciating the engaging aspect of thinking activity, and could explain why people prefer keeping themselves busy, rather than taking a moment for reflection and imagination, in our daily life.