“New research has found that curious individuals tend to be more prone to both intentional and unintentional mind wandering. On the other hand, anxious individuals tend to have poorer executive control. Individuals with poorer executive control, in turn, tend to be less able to suppress tendencies of the mind to wander, leading to higher unintentional mind wandering tendencies. The study was published in Personality and Individual Differences.
Mind wandering, also known as daydreaming, refers to the phenomenon in which a person’s attention shifts away from their immediate task or external environment and becomes focused on unrelated thoughts, memories, or fantasies. It often occurs involuntarily and can include a wide range of mental experiences, from planning for the future to reminiscing about the past.
Mind wandering is a common and normal aspect of human cognition, but excessive or uncontrolled mind wandering can sometimes be distracting and affect productivity. It has attracted a lot of research attention in the past decades and researchers proposed various psychological mechanisms in an attempt to explain it. The tendency to daydream has been linked to anxiety and depression, but also to creative thinking. Studies have shown that executive control capacities of an individual also play a role in this phenomenon.”
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