Mind wandering in relation to creativity and depression

Abstract

Promoting creativity is considered useful for society. Although some people believe that creative people generally have poor mental health, recent published studies have suggested that some highly creative people are mentally very healthy. Therefore, the present study focused on a phenomenon called "mind wandering, " a concept that is associated with both creativity and mental health, and examined whether characteristics of mind wandering differed, depending on an individual's level of creativity and mental health. After the participants (N=62: 40 men, 22 women; average age 19.67 years) had completed questionnaires measuring their creativity, level of depression, and working memory capacity, they watched a video. While they were watching it, the thought content of their mind wandering, their level of awareness, and the number of topics included when mind wandering were measured, using the thought probe method. The results suggested that the participants who had scored high on creativity and low on depression, that is, whose scores indicated high mental health, did not think excessively about past events during episodes of mind wandering. These results suggest that mind wandering may be a fundamental way to improve creativity while maintaining mental health.