Well, now I know how I am different from most other men.
People, and especially men, hate being alone with their thoughts so much that they’d rather be in pain. In a study published in Science Thursday on the ability of people to let their minds “wander” — that is, for them to sit and do nothing but think — researchers found that about a quarter of women and two-thirds of men chose electric shocks over their own company.
Granted that I read and write a lot, sometimes for as much as 18 hours a day. I guess reading isn’t really being alone in your head. Nonetheless, the only time I want to shock myself is when people won’t stop interrupting me while I’m trying to think.
I’d do really well in solitary confinement, especially if I knew exactly when someone would intrude and interrupt my thoughts by bringing me food or letting me shower or exercise. Most people would apparently go mad in short order.
Reading is not like being in your head. I’m assuming that the study condition is doing nothing at all which is probably best compared to solitary confinement.
That’s what I said.
Then I agree that you’re different. Put me down as one of those guys who will crawl over broken shards of glass to avoid being with myself, distraction free. I’m not sure it’s painful to be there; just really boring. My wife, a psychologist, says it’s related to ADHD — the brain not having enough stimulation to keep itself entertained. She says this is common among men. Whatever it is, I don’t want any.
It would suck on at least two levels. Lack of affectionate touch. After a while this absence takes a toll.
And I’d go through withdrawal from not being able to read and not be able to get feedback on what I write.
But I could write (in my head) and that’s what’d I do. I’d just write a massive epic tale and keep making it more complex. When someone interrupted me to feed me, I’d be very annoyed.
That probably has something to do with extroversion vs. introversion – I believe the majority of men are extroverts and the majority of women are introverts. I’m similar (ISTJ) to where you’re coming from – alone with my thoughts is my comfort zone.
Scratch that – the gender difference is on Thinking vs. Feeling.
I’m sure solitary would become a problem eventually, but I’d enjoy the hell out of the first month.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting BooMan and can state that he is not like other men. 😉
I think this contributes to what I call the ex-girlfriend syndrome. How many men immediately look up old girlfriends the moment they get divorced or lose a spouse? Dating scares the heck out of people in this culture, and men seem more prone to needing to dip back into the old pool of candidates rather than explore new options. Being willing to be alone is an advantage for women once they become divorcees or widows.
As a divorce attorney, I can second your observation. Women are more likely to remain alone for a healthy period of time and to embrace that alone time. Some men do too, but they’re more the exception.
Me too, also. What Boo said.
Among 25% isn’t so bad. We lefties, both literally and figuratively, have only half as much company and the combination of the two may be half again as much.
I really get aggravated seeing articles like this which make such broad generalizations when it comes to gender related personality characteristics. But maybe this is because so much about my personality seems to fly in the face of the kind of categorization I see so often.
I have had to take part in a few of these “personality studies” over the years. The last one just in the past month. And I consistently come back as an INFJ Personality Type. As a result, my primary mode is internal. So I really have no trouble being alone with my thoughts or letting my mind wander in order to figure things out. In fact, I find this to be of tremendous benefit to me. And from what I observe, most of the people who cannot do this end up having a difficult time dealing with things which have any sort of nuance. The fact that I am, at my core, a very contemplative and methodical person; with a very high degree of empathy and intuition about other people’s feelings and thoughts, means that most of what drives my actions and activities is all derived from my internal thought processes. But my work and my political involvement makes it necessary for me to regularly externalize my feelings and thoughts. This is not a natural thing for me, but I am able to do this pretty readily when it is necessary.
It might well be true that men, in general, would rather suffer pain than spend a minute alone inside their own heads. But for those of us who seem to fall outside this purported general mainstream, it can be frustrating being lumped into this general category of the shallow, easily distracted, male doofus that is implied in articles like that in the WP.
I don’t see it as an observation that most men are doofuses or otherwise defective. It’s just a gender dimorphic trait in which the bulk of women sit on one camp and the bulk of men in the other. Of course there are many exceptions and one camp is not better than the other. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and the two tend to be interrelated.
Really dislike the Meyers-Briggs bastardization of Jungian typology. Ends of being a disconnected and not so useful basket of personality descriptors.
Jung described three axes:
Locus of control (exterior or interior)
Rational function (how we judge our world: thinking or feeling)
Irrational function (how we perceive our world: intuition or sensation)
Of the functions everybody has all of them but at different preference or strength levels. Locus of control colors all of that to whatever degree one favors either exterior or interior
There’s persuasive evidence that solitary confinement is a form of torture.
This isn’t a matter of personality, although obviously some people would break sooner. Even the most introverted person needs some human contact. Saying you’d do “really well” in solitary confinement is sort of like saying you’d do really well with water-boarding. Obviously the two things have different time scales.
Right. Booman, try solitary confinement for more than a day and then talk to me. You wouldn’t even have your site to amuse you. I find the statement arrogant and disrespectful to the people who are at this very moment languishing in cubicles without any sensory stimulation.
I would say that it would depend on whether or not the male was around people all the time. I use to work service type jobs with long hours 12 hour shifts. During that time was high amount of people interaction. Then go home to family after getting my 3 hours of sleep up and relating with family tasks.
I in my youth was alone almost all the time. I enjoy meditation. Thus, lock me up in a room and I can go anywhere and anytime with my mind. I can keep busy mentally just by reliving old experiences.
Miss my family some yes, when I came back to the here and now that is.
Surprising to read that.
I guess I’m not like other men either.
.
Meh.
One study doesn’t prove much of anything by itself, and it seems like the “time alone” was between 6-15 minutes. Every single human spends 6-15 minutes in contemplation of things at some point and don’t go mad or freak out.
I think the problem here is that this “study” basically gave men and women a tool for shocking themselves, and while I thoroughly enjoy just thinking about whatever for hours a day, I’d have shocked myself just for the hell of it, because…uh…6-15 minutes of “alone time” is boring. It’s something I do anyway, so I’ll amuse myself with a shocking device built around a “9 volt battery”. (Full Disclosure: perhaps I’m just a typical male idiot, but I’ve stuck my tongue on 9 volt batteries multiple times during my life knowing what would happen.)
Here is how they reached their conclusion. Note well the total number of participants from this one study.
If I were in charge of this study, at the end I’d have concluded that men might just be slightly more interested in screwing with a gadget than the women. But that wouldn’t make for a very good headline, would it?
Hell, I’d go for the shocks. How often do you get a chance to do that with no risk– and appall a bunch of pencil-necks in lab coats at the same time?
Psych research, fuck yeah!
I wouldn’t, but then I’d never call someone a pencil neck either.
I only say it with love.
Great podcast on the subject:
The Philosophy of Solitude
Duration: 43 minutes
First broadcast: Thursday 19 June 2014
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophy of solitude. The state of being alone can arise for many different reasons: imprisonment, exile or personal choice. It can be prompted by religious belief, personal necessity or a philosophical need for solitary contemplation. Many thinkers have dealt with the subject, from Plato and Aristotle to Hannah Arendt. It’s a philosophical tradition that takes in medieval religious mystics, the work of Montaigne and Adam Smith, and the great American poets of solitude Thoreau and Emerson.
With:
Melissa Lane
Professor of Politics at Princeton University
Simon Blackburn
Professor of Philosophy at the New College of the Humanities and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
John Haldane
Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b046ntnz