work - 40%, money - 30%, family - 20%, religion - 10%, or
myself - 90%; other people - 10%
Ideally, I'd like to compile some sort of anonymous set of data to see if any conclusions could be drawn from it. Does anyone know if this has ever been done? I've heard anecdotally about the average time people think about sex in a day, but I've never seen any evidence.
I imagine this would be a difficult feat to accomplish because I'm not sure if people are willing to share intimate details about what's going on in their heads, or if they would be truthful about it.
When I think about why I wouldn't want to tell people what I think, I guess it would be due to fear for embarrassment or my thoughts not being accepted. Are there any other reasons? Do you think the majority of people think the same kinds of thoughts everyday?
I tried to find a research article that may help answer your question, but it was harder than I thought it would be. I personally think different types of people think about different things at different ratios. That seems logical. For instance - I would wager that women think about other people more often then men. I could probably find research to back that up. There are many other examples that come to mind. I like this question though. I'm going to see if anyone has ever surveyed people to find out.
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you what I think about next time I see you.
I don't know how you could go about measuring thoughts. I think that as soon as you stop to think about what you are thinking about, then you are no longer purely thinking about what you think you are thinking about. So it's not just that you are uncomfortable sharing your thoughts, but that as soon as you have to become conscious of reporting or even observing these thoughts, then you are affecting the thinking process itself. How could you measure how often you think about say money, if every time you think about money, you stop to record it and interrupt both the evolution and the length of the thought process?
ReplyDeleteI know. I'm not saying exactly quantify but people have a general idea of what they think about everyday and what drives their decision making, etc. But, yeah, this study is probably impossible.
ReplyDeleteI have an idea for a study to measure people's thoughts. Let's assume they would be honest. I know Jon has some serious doubts about human nature, and he'll probably argue that they would just lie, but here's my idea: Subjects could wear a timer that would go off at random intervals. (Not specific intervals that they could predict.) Then once it went off, they would have to either a) record what they were thinking about in a narrative, or b) choose from a list of like 10 general topics. Maybe the topics could even have subtopics. I think this would help take care of what Ali is saying, though that is very valid point. It becomes very difficult and confusing to think about what you're thinking about. The beauty of the human brain.
ReplyDeleteJon, make it happen.
I've gotten some responses. Not enough to do anything with yet.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about this - maybe I could use facebook/twitter status updates as a proxy for what people are thinking about? I know there are flaws with that but it might at least help a little bit.
ReplyDelete