Thus, drawing on the Big-5 model of personality, we argue that the traits of neuroticism and openness to experience suffice to explain self-perception of mind-wandering via processes of meta-awareness about our own cognitive process. This dearth of knowledge is an important omission, because personality dispositions substantially influence self-regulation of our attention and the content of our thoughts, together with how we process the information gathered from the tasks we perform. In general, personality traits have been barely examined as predictors of mind-wandering processes ( Robison et al., 2020 Rummel et al., 2020), in favor of other antecedents such as working memory, cognitive capacity, and mindfulness processes ( Rummel and Boywitt, 2014 Smallwood and Schooler, 2015). In this study, we aim to examine the predictive relationship between personality and mind-wandering self-perception. Thus, a relevant question is what psychological factors lead to mind-wandering self-perception. For example, if the individual is conscious of his/her wandering moments, s/he might use the awareness of mind-wandering to improve performance or mitigate its possible downsides, for instance, increasing concentration on constructing the meaning of the text in the reading example. This mind-wandering self-perception is scientifically interesting and should also have practical implications. For example, think about when, while reading an entire page of a book, suddenly, you discover you were lost in your thoughts and not paying attention to the printed words you have been scanning. However, other psychological processes associated with spontaneous thinking have been less examined, such as the case of mind-wandering self-perception, namely, the extent to which individuals are aware of their mind-wandering episodes ( Schooler, 2002 Chin and Schooler, 2009 Seli et al., 2017). For example, getting lost in our thoughts could worsen performance in tasks requiring concentration, whereas the same process can increase creativity ( Smallwood and Schooler, 2015). In the last two decades, this cognitive process has been extensively studied, such that the existing research shows that mind-wandering is highly prevalent in our daily life ( Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010 Kane et al., 2017), having influences on different psychological outcomes.
Mind-wandering refers to the shift from events in the external environment to internal, self-generated thoughts, implying that attention is focused on the inner thoughts and feelings ( Smallwood and Schooler, 2006). Thus, this study contributes to the literature on spontaneous thinking by showing that mind-wandering processes may be a function of individual differences expressed in personality traits. In a three-wave survey study with 273 college students, we gathered data which supported a positive association of both neuroticism and openness to experience with mind-wandering self-perception, mediated by the individual’s meta-awareness. In this study, we argue that personality traits, expressed in neuroticism and openness to experience, may lead to the individual’s self-perception of their mind-wandering activity, due to meta-awareness processes. Research has shown that mind-wandering influences diverse psychological outcomes however, less is known about possible individual differences that may drive mind-wandering.
Mind-wandering is a psychological process involving the emergence of spontaneous thoughts in daily life. 2School of Business, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile.1Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom.
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