Abstract
We propose defining daydreaming as “imagining events.” In support, we give a brief account of past daydreaming research and the various definitions of daydreaming, whether stated or implied, in those works. We argue that this variation in definition, and in particular the equating of daydreaming with mind-wandering, is problematic. Our definition represents the core of the concept, resists conflation with mind-wandering and, of scientific benefit, does not entail a strong theoretical position.
People’s minds often go off task (see Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010), whether while watching television or when hard at work. A graduate student writing her dissertation might be distracted by her old grungy keyboard, leading her to think of obsolete electronics at garage sales, leading her to think of playing basketball on a driveway. Alternatively, noticing the keyboard could cause the graduate student to imagine an event: a newly minted professor, she sits in her office proofreading her in-press article on a state-of-the-art computer.
The student’s chain of thought is different than her imagined event in significant ways, including mental agency, purposiveness, and narrative structure (Dorsch, 2015). Yet, the two kinds of cognition often are labelled interchangeably as daydreaming and mind-wandering. We argue that this conflation, and a marked heterogeneity in past definitions and conceptions of daydreaming, is problematic. Instead, we propose defining daydreaming as “imagining events,” and we delineate the merits of this definition.
From Freud to now
The psychoanalytic school
Sigmund Freud and day-dreams
Although Freud did not give a formal definition of daydreaming we surmise that it would be in accord with the one proffered here. In The Interpretation of Dreams (1967), Freud gives a first-hand account of daydreaming: he imagined needing an operation for glaucoma and traveling to Wilhelm Fliess’s house to be operated on by a surgeon whom Fliess would recommend. Freud imagined that he would be in disguise and enjoy hearing the surgeon’s praise of cocaine. 1
J. Varendonck and an array of inner experiences
Varendonck engaged in extensive analysis of his written records of his own thoughts (i.e., his “day-dreams”). Although working in the psychoanalytic tradition, Varendonck differed with Freud and conflated daydreaming with all fore-conscious thought, including loose associations, analyzing, and musing (Varendonck, 1921).
Ethel S. Person and fantasy
Person argued that fantasies are of great significance. Over decades, she performed an in-depth study of fantasies and their role in all aspects of her analysands’ lives, from planning to sexuality. In apparent accord with Freud, thus at variance with Varendonck, Person equated fantasies with daydreams (Person, 1995).
Beyond the psychoanalytic school
Jerome Singer and colleagues’ study of task-unrelated thought
Singer and colleagues’ definition of daydreaming sometimes is in accord with ours. Yet, at other points Singer et al. appear to equate daydreaming with all task-unrelated thought. In the instructions for the Imaginal Processes Inventory, a widely used measure (e.g., Blouin-Hudon & Zelenski, 2016; Giambra, 1979) developed by Singer and Antrobus (1970), 2 respondents were instructed to “Make a distinction between thinking about an immediate task you’re performing … and daydreaming which involves thoughts unrelated to a task you are working on” (p. 2).
Eric Klinger and current concerns
Klinger claims that daydreams are reflective of current concerns (Klinger, 2009). From the examples of daydreaming that Klinger gives, his definition could be in accord with the one offered here (e.g., imagining oneself acting heroically, p. 225). Yet, his definition of daydreaming as “nonworking thought that is either spontaneous or fanciful” (p. 226) appears to include all off-task mentation.
James M. Honeycutt and “imagined interactions”
Like Klinger, and Person before him, Honeycutt ascribes great significance to daydreams, particularly daydreams that involve communicating with others (Honeycutt, 2003), which he terms “imagined interactions” (IIs). He characterizes IIs as mindful social cognition focused on past or future interactions with individuals we already know or anticipate meeting. This characterization, along with the clear distinction he makes between daydreaming and self-talk, suggests his definition largely is in accord with the one we offer here.
Meta Regis and “moody fictions”
Regis (2013) reviewed prior work on daydreaming and, like we do, argued for a definition that sets it apart from task-unrelated thought per se. Informed by her theory about the nature and function of daydreaming, Regis offered yet another definition of daydreaming: “moody fictions”.
Mind-wandering research
Recent years have seen a steady increase in mind-wandering research (Smallwood & Schooler, 2015), and daydreaming is often equated with mind-wandering in that literature. For example, Casner and Schooler (2015) used the word daydreaming in the title of an article which concerned pilots’ abilities to stay on task in a flight simulator. Yet, they used a thought probe technique (Antrobus, Coleman, & Singer, 1967) that does not solicit reports of mental content. Other examples include giving daydreaming and mind-wandering the same definition (Stawarczyk, Majerus, Van der Linden, & D’Argembeau, 2012), taking up Klinger’s definition (Marchetti, Van de Putte, & Koster, 2014), and considering a daydream as, “a kind of mind wandering that involves off task thought” (Delaney, Sahakyan, Kelley, & Zimmerman, 2010, p. 1037) without offering further clarification (see also Poerio, Totterdell, Emerson, & Miles, 2016).
The need to distinguish daydreaming from mind-wandering
Our account of past research makes it clear that daydreaming has been defined variously and, of importance, in ways that often conflate distinct mental events. Beyond our shared intuition that one’s mind-wandering from idea to idea is phenomenologically distinct from imagining an event, Dorsch’s (2015) analysis points to a number of dimensions on which mind-wandering and daydreaming (or “focused daydreaming” 3 as he terms it) differ, including purposiveness, agency, and narrative structure. Although both daydreaming and mind-wandering concern mental events, the conflation of the two is far from benign.
Making a distinction between daydreaming and mind-wandering seeks to address ambiguity in the empirical literature. For example, Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) maintain that, “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind.” Their experience sampling technique—which determined if people’s thoughts were on or off task with pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant thoughts—showed relative unhappiness during mind-wandering. Yet, research by Poerio, Totterdell, Emerson, and Miles (2015) suggests that daydreams (roughly as we define them here) are associated with increased happiness, at least when daydreams are of a social nature. Of course, there are several ways to resolve this apparent contradiction, including Killingsworth and Gilbert’s measure not capturing social daydreaming because participants considered themselves to be “doing” daydreaming (see Dorsch, 2015), the measure capturing daydreaming but it being irrecoverably subsumed by “pleasant mind-wandering” (which at least showed equivalent happiness levels to non-mind-wandering states), or one study or the other arriving at an incorrect conclusion. To the extent, though, that both efforts are considered investigations of the same mental phenomenon, as some have done (e.g., Somer, Lehrfeld, Bigelsen, & Jopp, 2016), unnecessary ambiguity results. If the definition of daydreaming as “imagining events” were to be adopted widely, the empirical situation could be radically different.
It could be argued that the current state of conceptual confusion would be remedied by equating the terms “daydreaming” and “mind-wandering.” That way there could be a rapprochement of the many sub-fields and investigators who research the nature of the function of conscious thought. In doing so, though, it would still be necessary to create terms that distinguish the kinds of task-unrelated thought that are associated with phenomena termed mind-wandering and those phenomena that are often, though by no means exclusively, understood to be instances of daydreaming. Although we are by no means suggesting that the distinction between daydreaming and mind-wandering carves nature at its joints—arguably an impossible task (Danziger, 1997)—it does seem to remain that there are distinct phenomena under investigation and, therefore, that different terms should be used. Although Dorsch’s analysis is compelling in this regard, he did not provide a definition of daydreaming. Using a consensus definition of the concept would be of great use to psychological researchers from a variety of theoretical perspectives and, at least as important, to research participants.
To daydream is to imagine events: A consideration of the definition itself
We propose that daydreaming is best defined as “imagining events” (i.e., to daydream is to imagine events). We consider each word separately, though it is important to keep in mind that it is their combined use which comprises the definition.
(To) imagine
According to the online Oxford English Dictionary (OED) the verb imagine has various uses, including “To conceive in the mind as a thing to be performed” and “to form a mental image of, picture to oneself something not real or not present in the senses” (Imagine, n.d.). Both senses of the word align well with the idea that daydreaming, and mind-wandering for that matter, are instances of mentation. Note also that the definition does not exclude other kinds of mentation. That is, someone who is imagining could have a simple or complex thought that could range between mundane and fantastical in nature. The primary consideration is that imagining is not concerned with input from one’s external senses, but rather with the “inner” world of the mind and that is why this word forms part of our definition. Also, although imagining could be considered primarily visual, we by no means wish to exclude other internally generated sensations (Guillot & Collet, 2005; Szpunar, Spreng, & Schacter, 2014).
Events
According to the OED, an event can be defined as “Anything that happens, or is contemplated as happening; an incident, occurrence” (Event, n.d.). By using the word “events,” a great variety of mentation is included. The incidents or occurrences, as the OED specifies, being imagined need not have occurred or could be highly unlikely to occur (i.e., “contemplated as happening”) but they can have occurred (i.e., “anything that happens”). In addition, there is no requirement that the events be of a particular number or complexity.
Resistance to conflation with mind-wandering
By defining daydreaming as “imagining events,” we distinguish it as a particular kind of thought, thereby resisting its conflation with mind-wandering. Mind-wandering has been defined in various ways by researchers in the field and the term “daydreaming” is often used as a synonym (e.g., Mooneyham & Schooler, 2013; Stawarczyk et al., 2012). Yet, a consideration of the methods that mind-wandering researchers use (e.g., vigilance tasks; event sampling with minimal questions about thought content) makes it clear that they are concerned with thoughts that are “off task,” without much regard to the nature of those thoughts. Such thoughts need not take the form of imagined events. A person whose mind is wandering could be passing from one thought to another without imagining an event, but a person who is imagining an event is not “merely” passing from thought to thought.
Absence of a strong theoretical position and its benefits
Our definition of daydreaming as imagining events does not entail a strong theoretical position. For example, although Freud seemed to conceive of daydreaming as imagining events, there is nothing about our definition that entails the claim that daydreaming is wish fulfillment. Indeed, whether or not a daydream is a fulfillment of a wish can remain an open empirical question because it is a question of the content of a daydream. The case of Freud is an interesting one because some of his work showcases how theoretically embedded a concept can be. Take, for example, the triad “Id,” “Ego,” and “Superego” (Freud, 1962). Those concepts are strongly associated with psychodynamic theory and so, as goes the theory so go the concepts (see also Machado, Lourenço, & Silva, 2000). In contrast, defining daydreaming as “imagining events” avoids such difficulties. Indeed, different researchers with different theories about the nature and function of daydreaming can share the term. For example, Honeycutt’s work is grounded in symbolic interactionism (Honeycutt, 2003), whereas Person worked in the psychoanalytic tradition. We also note that our definition avoids a problem entailed by Regis. When Regis (2013) defines daydreams as “moody fictions,” she necessarily stakes a claim with respect to the function of daydreams. Indeed, she writes, “Whether manifestly realistic, improbable or defensive, all [emphasis added] daydreams function to link affective response to an imagined process wherein object [sic], persons or situations attain a desirability, value or importance” (p. 230).
The attractiveness of a definition of daydreaming that does not have strong entailment for a particular theoretical position is clear: researchers who have different theories about the nature and function of daydreams can have a continuous dialogue within the scientific community. It should also mean that there can be good attempts at the measurement of daydreams and daydreaming, and that these measures can be shared.
Conclusion
In the cause of advancement of scientific knowledge about daydreaming, we argue for defining daydreaming as imagining events. This definition captures what is largely understood to be daydreaming and, at the same time, it guards against conflation of daydreaming with mind-wandering. In response to, and building on, Dorsch’s (2015) critique, the proposed definition places appropriate emphasis on the purposive and episode-like nature of daydreams (versus mind-wandering), and has the benefit of consistency, with a great deal of prior research. From Freud, through Person, through (some of) Singer’s and others’ work (e.g., Honeycutt, Klinger, and Regis), the focus has been on imagined events that are frequently of great personal significance to the person who is imagining them. Although those researchers are somewhat allied in regarding daydreams as possessing some psychological significance, they are by no means homogenous in their views (e.g., Freud versus Person) and there is no necessity for a consensus. Indeed, as researchers who do not share the theoretical orientation of any of the authors mentioned so far, this definition is serving us well in our work on the social psychology of daydreams, including one’s attitudes toward daydreaming, daydreaming content and frequency, and others’ attitudes toward daydreamers and daydreaming. By systematically distinguishing between the times that the struggling graduate student is moving from association to association, versus imagining an event, the field can only benefit.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Jeffrey Yen and members of the Daydream Lab for their helpful comments and suggestions.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.