Concentration and Happiness Linked

Study suggests lack of concentration may make people unhappy.
The Boston Globe (11/12) reports, "Research by Harvard researchers, which used the iPhone to periodically interrupt 2,250 people's lives, found that about half the time, people's minds are wandering. Most strikingly, they found that overall, people whose minds are wandering are less happy than those focused on the task at hand."
The study, reported in this weeks' issue of the journal Science, analyzed the data in the US "to find out how happy" the volunteers were, "what they were doing and whether they were thinking about their current activity or something else, and whether that something else was pleasant, neutral or unpleasant," the Washington Post (11/12, Stein) "The Checkup" blog reports. "On average, the volunteers," aged 18 to 88, "reported that their minds wandered 46.9 percent of the time and no less than 30 percent of the time during every activity except sex, the researchers reported. People reported being happiest when they were engaging in sex, exercise and conversation," the Post notes.
"People were more unhappy when their mind wandered to neutral or unpleasant thoughts," Bloomberg News (11/12, Lopatto) reports. Study author Matthew Killingsworth, "a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts," said that "by analyzing the data over time, the researchers discovered that people didn't merely fantasize when they were unhappy; instead, wandering minds led to unhappiness."
The CNN (11/11, Landau) "The Chart" blog, the Los Angeles Times (11/11, Roan) "Booster Shots" blog reports, and the Time (11/11, Szalavitz ) "Healthland" blog also covered the story.