How Self-Generated Thought Shapes Mood—The Relation between Mind-Wandering and Mood Depends on the Socio-Temporal Content of Thoughts

Florence J M Ruby, Jonathan Smallwood, Haakon Engen and Tania Singer

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 10, 1-7

Abstract: Recent work has highlighted that the generation of thoughts unrelated to the current environment may be both a cause and a consequence of unhappiness. The current study used lag analysis to examine whether the relationship between self-generated thought and negative affect depends on the content of the thoughts themselves. We found that the emotional content could strongly predict subsequent mood (e.g. negative thoughts were associated with subsequent negative mood). However, this direct relationship was modulated by the socio-temporal content of the thoughts: thoughts that were past- and other-related were associated with subsequent negative mood, even if current thought content was positive. By contrast, future- and self-related thoughts preceded improvements of mood, even when current thought content was negative. These results highlight the important link between self-generated thought and mood and suggest that the socio-temporal content plays an important role in determining whether an individual's future affective state will be happy or sad.

Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077554 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 77554&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0077554

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0077554

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().