Spontaneous Thought and Goal Pursuit: From Functions such as Planning to Dysfunctions such as Rumination

Abstract

Spontaneous thoughts occur by default in the interstices between directed, generally taskoriented thoughts or moments of perceptual scrutiny. Their contents are overwhelmingly related to thinkers' current goals, either directly or indirectly via associative networks, including to past and tentative future goals. They are triggered by ambient goal-related stimuli or segments of own thought. Most spontaneous thought segments are very brief, a matter of seconds, but may be much longer. Their typical brevity generally permits wide variation in content, reflecting the individual's current agenda of goals. Their evocation is accompanied by emotional responses that vary widely in type, valence, and intensity. These properties of the emotional accompaniments probably determine which content area receives priority for thought. Given these properties of thought flow, spontaneous thoughts are highly adaptive as (1) reminders of the individual's larger agenda of goals while occupied with pursuing any one of them, (2) promotion of planning for future goal pursuits, (3) review and deeper understanding of past goalrelated experiences, and (4) development of creative solutions to problems in goal pursuit. In the face of threats to successful pursuit of important goals or the prospect of failure, the same 2 mechanisms may occasion repetitive but unproductive thoughts about the pursuit, the consequences of the failure, or the self, and strong negative emotions steering the train of thought may lead to narrowing of its focus, thus producing rumination. The disposition to ruminate is in part a function of states of negative affect and individual differences such as strength of focus on particular thought themes, momentum of particular emotional states, and neuroticism. Rumination is a common occurrence during low mood or outright depression that accompanies the process of disengaging from goal pursuits that have become unrealistic or overly expensive. The typically reduced interest in alternative goals during this phase further limits the range of thought content and the individual's resources for re-engagement with gratifying goal pursuits. For assessment and clinical purposes, spontaneous thought content can potentially provide information not captured by other procedures. When an individual's spontaneous thoughts are themselves problematic, empirically validated methods for improving the individual's motivational structure provide a likely best treatment strategy.[354 words]

Spontaneous future cognition: the past, present and future of an emerging topic

“…To provide a conceptual definition that encapsulates research on spontaneous future cognition so far, we use the most parsimonious and consensual account of spontaneous thought, defining the spontaneous component of future thought as unintended thought that comes to mind with little effort and little control over its content (see Fox & Christoff, 2018b;Klinger, 2009). At this early stage, we see it appropriate to leave open the relevance of other aspects such as task-relatedness (i.e., task-related versus task-unrelated thought), stimulus-relatedness (stimulus-independent versus stimulus-dependent), and cuing (i.e., internal versus external, see Klinger et al, 2018), as we believe that these factors may offer independent insights into the phenomenon (e.g., the extent to which external stimuli cues internal trains of thought that appear spontaneous), but are not yet central to our current working conceptualisation (in fact, they could be orthogonal to the spontaneous nature of future thought, in that whether a thought is cued internally or externally is independent of whether it is experienced as spontaneous) (see also Berntsen, 2019, for further discussion). Ultimately, we associate spontaneous mental processes with what has been termed System 1 processes, which stand in contrast to deliberate mental processes (termed System 2 processes, associated with high effort, and slow, analytic processes, such as planning one's weekly groceries or calculating 25 × 12.…”

“…In addition to neuroscientific research, the idea that ongoing internal thought was the 'mental baseline' (Klinger, Marchetti, & Koster, 2018) led to an expansion in cognitive research on spontaneous thought or mind-wandering, as it is now commonly termed (see Smallwood & Schooler, 2006, Smallwood & Schooler, 2015 for informative reviews). With the finding of a large prevalence of unconstrained thought in everyday life (see Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2011, Klinger & Cox, 1978, estimated at 1300-2000 spontaneous thoughts per day (Klinger, 1990), much of this research aimed to first characterise the content of spontaneous thought, in addition to examining when, where and why these thoughts occur [e.g., Baird, Smallwood, & Schooler, 2011;Kane et al, 2007; see also a recent edited book by Fox and Christoff (2018a)].…”

Spontaneous future cognitions: an integrative review

“…However, although mind wandering may be detrimental to the ongoing task in the current moment, it may help the individual to pursuit more long-term goals. According to Klinger and colleagues (e.g., Klinger, 2013;Klinger, Marchetti, & Koster, 2018), mind wandering and other types of spontaneous thoughts reflect current concerns that extend far beyond the present situation. Because relatively little is known about the specific content of mind wandering episodes, it is unclear to what extent mind wandering generally serves such higher-level goals (Stawarczyk, Majarus, & D'Argembeau, 2013).…”

“…The recognition that daydreaming is not a unitary construct and the identification of these orthogonal dimensions enabled research on both functional and dysfunctional aspects of daydreaming and foreshadowed later research on rumination and related forms of repetitive thoughts (e.g., Watkins, 2008). It also helped to stimulate research on how current concerns of the individual may shape the content of daydreaming (Klinger, 1975;Klinger, 2013;Klinger et al, 2018) and how types of daydreaming may be related to creativity and future planning (McMillan et al, 2013).…”

“…They found that future events overall were perceived to be associated with more functional relevance than the other two categories of events, and that future events were especially strongly associated with the reflective function (i.e., self-and directive functions). These studies suggest that imagined future events to a greater extent than past events may guide behavior (see Boyer, 2008;Conway, Loveday & Cole, 2016;Klinger et al, 2018;Schacter et al, 2017;Schacter, 2012, for further discussions of adaptive functions of future thoughts)…”