Students left alone to think, well, found it boring

NEW YORK – Wouldn’t you love to escape this busy world and just spend some time alone with your thoughts? Maybe not, says a study of volunteers who actually tried it.

Some even started giving themselves electric shocks as the minutes ticked by.

“I think many of them were trying to shock themselves out of boredom,” said psychologist Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia. “It’s just a sign of how difficult (being alone with one’s thoughts) can be for people. … This isn’t something that most people find really enjoyable.”

At least, that’s the case for people not trained in techniques like meditation, Wilson and co-authors say in a paper released Thursday by the journal Science.

In a series of experiments, college students left their cellphones and other distractions behind and spent six to 15 minutes alone in a sparsely furnished room on campus.

The experience was not exactly heaven. On a 9-point scale of enjoyment, their average rating was about in the middle.

The most startling experiment involved the electric shock. Students first shocked themselves in the ankle and rated how unpleasant that was. Then they were told that if they wanted to, they could shock themselves again during their time alone, which ran 15 minutes.

Of the 55 participants, 42 said they would pay to avoid feeling the shock again. But once they were left alone, even some of the volunteers chose to shock themselves anyway; 12 of 18 men and six of 24 women.

Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who didn’t participate in the work, said he found the results “surprising and in some ways a disappointing statement about human nature.”

Most people have interesting things to think about, “so I don’t understand why they find themselves such bad company,” Schooler said.