--- title: You'd Rather Endure Electric Shocks Than Sit Alone With Your Thoughts description: If you're crazy busy like most of us and crave some time — just a few minutes, please! — to stop and just think, be... canonical: https://time.com/2950919/alone-with-thoughts/ author: Michael Lemonick article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-03T18:00:43.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:55:35.682Z article:section: Health og:title: You Would Rather Endure Small Electric Shocks Than Sit Alone With Your Thoughts, Study Finds og:description: If you're crazy busy like most of us and crave some time — just a few minutes, please! — to stop and just think, be... og:url: https://time.com/2950919/alone-with-thoughts/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: You Would Rather Endure Small Electric Shocks Than Sit Alone With Your Thoughts, Study Finds twitter:description: If you're crazy busy like most of us and crave some time — just a few minutes, please! — to stop and just think, be... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # You Would Rather Endure Electric Shocks Than Sit Alone With Your Thoughts, Study Finds > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. by [Michael Lemonick](https://time.com/author/michael-d-lemonick/) ## Michael Lemonick Jul 3, 2014 6:00 PM UTC by [Michael Lemonick](https://time.com/author/michael-d-lemonick/) ## Michael Lemonick Jul 3, 2014 6:00 PM UTC If you’re crazy busy like most of us and crave some time — just a few minutes, please! — to stop and just think, be careful what you wish for. That’s the upshot of a [new study](http://www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1250830) just published in the journal _Science._ The summary is written in such plain English (very unusual!) that you might as well read it for yourself: --- > “” --- Yes, people would rather stick their finger in an electric socket than sit quietly and think. Or rather, men would: 67% of male participants in one study “gave themselves at least one shock during the thinking period,” write University of Virginia psychologist Timothy Wilson and his co-authors. On average, the study participants who elected to self-zap gave themselves 1.47 shocks in a 15-minute interval — “not including one outlier,” the paper says, in an impressively straightforward way, “who administered 190 shocks to himself.” (O.K., they didn’t involve actual electric sockets, but it’s still kind of surprising.) Women were far less likely to shock themselves, with only a 25% participation rate. Why is just sitting and thinking so difficult and unpleasant, you probably wonder. So do the authors, in just those words. Perhaps, they say, “when left alone with their thoughts, participants focused on their own shortcomings and got caught in ruminative thought cycles.” Another possibility, the authors suggest, is that thinking is just too complicated. In order to do it, you have to choose a topic to think about — a trip to the beach, for example — then mentally experience the trip. Exhausting! But no. Questioning participants after the experiments revealed that neither explanation held much water. The reason we hate sitting and thinking, despite our fond hopes to the contrary, remains a mystery. And yet, write the authors, stating the painfully obvious: “There is no doubt that people are sometimes absorbed by interesting ideas, exciting fantasies and pleasant daydreams,” and they do have an answer of sorts. --- > “” --- Which may not be good news — but it’s at least good to know. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2950919/alone-with-thoughts/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2950919/alone-with-thoughts/"},"headline":"You Would Rather Endure Electric Shocks Than Sit Alone With Your Thoughts, Study Finds","datePublished":"2014-07-03T18:00:43.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:55:35.682Z","description":"If you're crazy busy like most of us and crave some time — just a few minutes, please! — to stop and just think, be...","url":"https://time.com/2950919/alone-with-thoughts/","keywords":["Mental Health/Psychology","Living","behavior","Meditation","health","mindfulness"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Michael Lemonick","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/michael-d-lemonick/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/mental-healthpsychology/","name":"Mental Health/Psychology"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/2950919/alone-with-thoughts/","name":"You Would Rather Endure Electric Shocks Than Sit Alone With Your Thoughts, Study Finds"}}]}] ```