Killingsworth and Gilbert, two psychologists at Harvard, did a by now very influential clinical

trial called a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. And the reason this trial is so influential is because it was

novel and because of the surprising nature of the results.

So the novelty of it was they actually had smart app developers develop smartphone applications

so that this trial wouldn't have to involve any person to person

injuries.

All of the research or data collection

was done by somebody, people interacting

with their phone on an app.

And that's actually very important because so many trials are skewed by people giving answers

that they think that the researcher wants them to give with rather than honest answers. So the other two were

the size and the nature of the findings.

I'm gonna read you a little bit

from the actual paper.

It's online and it's actually easy to read.

It's only a few pages long. So Gilbert and

Killingsworth created a smartphone app that in quote, contacts participants

through their phones at random moments during walking hours

presents them with questions and records their answers to a database which

contains a quarter of a million samples. They have a quarter of a million responses.

They had 5,000 people from 83 different countries ranging in ages from 18 to 88, so that's

a massive study and a wide array of difference people were involved.

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