Mind wandering about the beloved: self-reported distraction, task performance, and enjoyment.

Abstract

Romantic love is associated with mind wandering about the beloved. We tested associations between mind wandering about the beloved and infatuation, attachment, self-reported distraction, task performance, and enjoyment. Participants who were in love completed self-report measures and a sustained attention response task with thought probes. Participants reported thinking about their beloved for 67% of the time in general and up to 42% of the time during task performance. Thinking about the beloved in general was positively associated with infatuation (passionate love) but not with attachment (companionate love). The more time participants reported thinking about their beloved in general, the more distracting they found it and the less they could withhold a response to no go stimuli. The more participants thought about their beloved during the task, the slower their responses to go stimuli were. In contrast to the negative terminology typically used to describe frequent thoughts about the beloved, such as intrusive or obsessive thinking, participants overwhelmingly enjoyed thinking about their beloved. The findings suggest that romantic love impairs cognitive task performance because people are thinking about their beloved instead, which may negatively impact performance at school and work. Nevertheless, people seem to greatly enjoy thinking about their beloved.