Alone With Our Thoughts: Investigation of Autonomy Supportive Framing as a Driver of Enjoyment During Quiet Time in Solitude

Sitting alone with one’s thoughts could foster a sense of rest and relaxation, yet many find this activity difficult. In two preregistered experiments (Study 1: n = 266, Study 2: 369), we focused on autonomy-supportive controlling framings solitude as drivers motivation for solitude, positive experiences such enjoyment negative frustration boredom, like worries rumination. 1, found support one hypothesis that instructions to sit led greater autonomous compared pressured participants alone. However, the effect was trivial, smaller observed in 2. More importantly, did not evidence our meaningfully influenced self-reported measures participants’ sitting thoughts, nor both behavioral intention be again. Examination null effects suggested most differences between controlling-instruction conditions were likely too small practically meaningful. some findings relation excitement, or during equivocal required larger sample sizes determine whether there indeed an absence effect. Consistent reported by Nguyen et al. (2018), displayed drops high-arousal types affect increases low-arousal affect. Future research is needed explore other factors influence lead people benefit from regulatory time spent