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Increasing participant motivation reduces rates of intentional and unintentional mind wandering

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Abstract

We explored the possibility that increasing participants’ motivation to perform well on a focal task can reduce mind wandering. Participants completed a sustained-attention task either with standard instructions (normal motivation), or with instructions informing them that they could be excused from the experiment early if they achieved a certain level of performance (higher motivation). Throughout the task, we assessed rates of mind wandering (both intentional and unintentional types) via thought probes. Results showed that the motivation manipulation led to significant reductions in both intentional and unintentional mind wandering as well as improvements in task performance. Most critically, we found that our simple motivation manipulation led to a dramatic reduction in probe-caught mind-wandering rates (49%) compared to a control condition (67%), which suggests the utility of motivation-based methods to reduce people’s propensity to mind-wander.

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Notes

  1. In the motivation condition, the performance criterion for leaving the experiment early was exceptionally lax (although participants were unaware of this): to meet this criterion, participants merely had to respond (via a spacebar press) to at least one of the 900 MRT tones. As anticipated, all participants met and surpassed this criterion and they were all therefore excused from the experiment after approximately 30 min. On the other hand, all of the participants in the control condition were informed, after approximately 30 min (i.e., after completing 900 MRT trials) that they could leave the experiment early (irrespective of their performance on the MRT; although all of these participants likewise met and surpassed the criterion that we had set for the motivation condition).

  2. In the motivation condition, to avoid possible contamination due to demand characteristics, the responses to the motivation question were obtained after participants learned that they could leave the study early (to maintain consistency across conditions, in the control condition, we also obtained motivation responses after participants learned that they could leave the study early).

  3. For more information surrounding the rationale behind computing the variance measure in this manner, see Seli, Carriere, Levene, & Smilek (2013a).

  4. Upon examining the psychometric properties of the primary variables of interest, we found that the distribution of omissions was non-normal (skewness >2, kurtosis >4; Kline, 1998; all other variables had normally distributed data). In an attempt to normalize the omission data, we conducted a log 10 transformation, which was effective (after the transformation, skewness <2, kurtosis <4; Kline, 1998). However, irrespective of whether our succeeding analyses were conducted on the transformed or non-transformed omission data, the same patterns of results emerged. Thus, to retain meaningful mean values for the omission rates, all analyses involving omission data were conducted while using the non-transformed values.

  5. This may be particularly true in the present experiment, given that participants were not provided a clear performance criterion, and given that MRT response variability (one of the primary measures of interest) is not likely to be easily monitored by participants. This suggests the possibility that, if participants were to complete a task whose performance measure(s) were more transparent, and one in which they could better monitor their performance, high motivation may lead to greater reductions in intentional mind wandering compared with the reductions observed here (we thank Dr. Michael Kane for suggesting this possibility).

  6. Critically, the motivation-based account and the executive-failures account (McVay & Kane, 2010) are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Indeed, mind wandering could result from a lack of motivation to attend to a focal task, and/or as a result of poor executive control.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Paul Seli & Daniel L. Schacter

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Evan F. Risko & Daniel Smilek

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  1. Paul Seli
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  2. Daniel L. Schacter
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  3. Evan F. Risko
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  4. Daniel Smilek
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Contributions

This work was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Grant to D. Smilek, and by an NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowship to P. Seli. We would like to extend our thanks to Brandon Ralph for his help with data collection.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul Seli.

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Funding

This work was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Grant (Grant number 06459) to Daniel Smilek.

Conflict of interest

Paul Seli declares that he has no conflict of interest. Daniel L. Schacter declares that he has no conflict of interest. Evan F. Risko declares that he has no conflict of interest. Daniel Smilek declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Seli, P., Schacter, D.L., Risko, E.F. et al. Increasing participant motivation reduces rates of intentional and unintentional mind wandering. Psychological Research 83, 1057–1069 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0914-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0914-2

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