Imagination: is daydreaming a waste of time?

You are on the bus, looking out of the window. Suddenly you are somewhere else entirely: planning a trip that may never happen, replaying a conversation, or inventing a story about the woman in the seat in front of you.

Then you miss your stop.

As a child, you may have been told to stop daydreaming and pay attention. But is drifting off into your own thoughts really just a waste of time?

In the Big Five model, the tendency to live a rich inner life is called imagination. It is one of six facets of openness to experience, and it describes how much a person enjoys fantasy, daydreams and getting lost in thought.

What does imagination mean?

In everyday speech, "imaginative" often means creative or good at coming up with ideas. In personality psychology the facet is narrower. It is about how much space the inner world takes up, and how much you enjoy being there.

People who score high often recognise themselves in this:

• You have a vivid inner life and easily picture scenes, people and places.
• You enjoy letting your thoughts run free, even without a goal.
• You daydream often, and you like it.
• You can sink so deep into your own thoughts that you lose track of what is happening around you.
• Reality can sometimes feel a little plain compared with what you can imagine.

High imagination does not mean that you are out of touch with reality, nor that you are necessarily artistic. It describes a preference, not a talent.

The key is not how creative you are, but how much you enjoy spending time in your own thoughts.

Most of us drift off a lot more than we think

Daydreaming is not something only dreamers do.

Researchers at Harvard developed a smartphone app that contacted people at random times during the day and asked what they were doing, what they were thinking about and how they felt. They found that people were thinking about something other than what was happening almost as often as they were thinking about what they were actually doing.

The study also found that mind wandering typically went along with lower mood at that moment. The researchers summed it up in the title of their paper: a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

That sounds like bad news for daydreamers. But the study measured mind wandering in the moment, not imagination as a personality trait. And as the next studies show, the content of the daydream matters a great deal.

Daydreams can give you better ideas

Many people have had their best idea in the shower or on a walk. A study from 2012 tested this in the lab.

Participants first worked on a creativity task: finding as many unusual uses as possible for everyday objects. They then took a break. Some did a demanding task, some did an easy task that left room for the mind to wander, some rested, and some got no break at all.

When they returned to the same problems, those who had done the easy task improved clearly more than the others. That group also reported more mind wandering, but not more deliberate thinking about the task itself.

The researchers concluded that simple activities that let your thoughts drift may help creative problem solving. The idea is not that you are thinking about the problem, but that your mind is free to make connections on its own.

Not all daydreams are the same

The psychologist Jerome L. Singer spent decades studying daydreams and distinguished between different styles. A study from 1997 compared these styles with the Big Five in 103 young adults.

The results were telling:

• Positive, constructive daydreaming, playful, vivid and often forward-looking, was linked to openness to experience.
• Guilty and gloomy daydreaming, where thoughts circle around worries and mistakes, was linked to neuroticism.
• Poor attentional control, being unable to keep your thoughts where you want them, was negatively linked to conscientiousness.

In other words, the imagination facet is mainly about the first kind: enjoying your inner world. Brooding and rumination belong elsewhere in the personality model.

Imagination is not the same as maladaptive daydreaming

There is a phenomenon that researchers call maladaptive daydreaming. It describes people who spend hours each day in detailed fantasy worlds, to the point where they neglect relationships, work and other responsibilities, and who feel unable to stop.

A diary study from 2018 followed 77 people who identified themselves as maladaptive daydreamers for 14 days. On days when daydreaming increased, symptoms such as low mood, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms also increased, along with more negative emotions.

Maladaptive daydreaming is not an official diagnosis, but a concept researchers are still mapping. The important point is the difference: a high score on imagination means you enjoy your inner world. Maladaptive daydreaming is about losing control over it, and about it costing more than it gives.

If daydreaming takes over so much that it causes you distress or affects work, school or relationships, it can help to talk to your doctor or a psychologist. A Big Five score cannot tell you whether this applies to you.

What does a high or low score mean?

High imagination

You have a rich inner life and often use fantasy to make the world more interesting. You may be good at picturing possibilities, playing with ideas and seeing how things could be different.

The downside can be that you drift off at the wrong moments, in meetings, in conversations or on the bus when you should have got off.

Low imagination

You are more grounded in the here and now. You prefer facts to fantasy and tend to focus on what is real and concrete rather than on what might be.

That is not a lack of creativity. Many low scorers are practical problem solvers who notice what is actually in front of them, and who are good at finishing what they start.

Both descriptions are about typical tendencies, not rules that hold in every situation.

In everyday life

• At work: High imagination can be an asset in jobs that call for new ideas, stories or planning ahead. Routine tasks may give your thoughts room to wander, for better or worse.
• In conversations: You may occasionally lose the thread because a thought led you somewhere else. Many people with high imagination appreciate partners who can follow them on mental detours.
• When learning: Picturing what you read can make it easier to remember. At the same time, long lectures can easily become a starting point for daydreams.
• In leisure time: Books, films, games and role-playing are natural places for a strong imagination.

Can imagination change?

Personality is fairly stable, but not fixed. What you can often influence is when your thoughts drift.

In a randomised study from 2013, participants took a two-week mindfulness course. Afterwards they had fewer distracting thoughts during tests, and they did better on both a reading comprehension test and a working memory test.

That does not mean you should stop daydreaming. A more useful approach for many is to choose when to let the mind wander:

• Use walks, showers or simple chores as deliberate "thinking time".
• When you need to concentrate, notice when your thoughts drift, and gently bring them back.
• Write down ideas that come up, so you don't have to hold on to them.
• Notice whether the daydreams are playful or gloomy. Brooding is something other than imagination, and may need a different approach.

Frequently asked questions

Is daydreaming a sign of low intelligence or laziness?

No. Daydreaming is common in everyone, and research suggests it can help creative problem solving. It becomes a problem mainly when it happens at the wrong time, or when the content is mostly worry and brooding.

Am I creative if I score high on imagination?

Not necessarily. The facet measures how much you enjoy your inner world, not how good you are at creating something. Imagination can be a source of creativity, but it takes practice and effort to turn ideas into something concrete.

What is the difference between imagination and intellect?

Imagination is about fantasy and inner images, while intellect is about enjoying abstract ideas, theories and reasoning. You can enjoy daydreaming without liking philosophical discussions, and the other way around.

How is imagination measured in the Big Five test?

Our test is based on the IPIP-NEO-120, where each facet is measured with four statements. For imagination, they are about having a vivid imagination, enjoying letting your fantasy run wild, loving to daydream and liking to get lost in your own thoughts. Read the score as a sign of a pattern, not as a complete description of you.

Find out where you score

Imagination is only one of the six facets of openness to experience. You can score high on imagination and still be low on artistic interests or adventurousness.

Take the Big Five test and see your whole profile, with all 30 facets.

Sources

• Killingsworth, M. A. & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932.
• Baird, B., Smallwood, J., Mrazek, M. D., Kam, J. W. Y., Franklin, M. S. & Schooler, J. W. (2012). Inspired by distraction: Mind wandering facilitates creative incubation. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1117–1122.
• Zhiyan, T. & Singer, J. L. (1997). Daydreaming styles, emotionality and the Big Five personality dimensions. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 16(4), 399–414.
• Soffer-Dudek, N. & Somer, E. (2018). Trapped in a daydream: Daily elevations in maladaptive daydreaming are associated with daily psychopathological symptoms. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 9, 194.
• Mrazek, M. D., Franklin, M. S., Phillips, D. T., Baird, B. & Schooler, J. W. (2013). Mindfulness training improves working memory capacity and GRE performance while reducing mind wandering. Psychological Science, 24(5), 776–781.
• Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78–89.