Depression and Loneliness Attenuate the Benefits of Aha-Experiences

Abstract

Aha-experiences include fluent processing, positive affect and certainty that a solution is true. The current study (N = 1357; Chinese online sample) examined effects of loneliness and depression scores in a healthy sample on reporting an Aha-experience and on the phenomenology of Aha-experiences for those who had reported a specific experience (n = 283). The results of a mediation analysis for Aha-experiences was the same for Chinese respondents as it was in an earlier study with Norwegian and North American participants. Respondents who reported an Aha-experience were less lonely than participants who did not remember an Aha-experience but depression and loneliness were unrelated to self-reported frequencies of Aha-experiences. Among those respondents who reported an Aha-experience, both depression and loneliness correlated negatively with intensity of the experience, the strength of metacognitive feelings, and motivation and coping during and after but not before the Aha-experience. We conclude that lonely and depressive people may reap fewer experiential benefits from Aha-experiences.