The (perceived) meaning of spontaneous thoughts

Spontaneous thoughts, the output of a broad category of uncontrolled and inaccessible higher order mental processes, arise frequently in everyday life. The seeming randomness by which spontaneous thoughts arise might give people good reason to dismiss them as meaningless. We suggest that it is precisely the lack of control over and access to the processes by which they arise that leads people to perceive spontaneous thoughts as revealing meaningful self-insight. Consequently, spontaneous thoughts potently influence judgment. A series of experiments provides evidence supporting two hypotheses. First, we hypothesize that the more a thought is perceived to be spontaneous, the more it is perceived to provide meaningful self-insight. Participants perceived more spontaneous kinds of thought (e.g., intuition) to reveal greater self-insight than did more controlled kinds of thought in Study 1 (e.g., deliberation). In Studies 2 and 3, participants perceived thoughts with the same content and target to reveal greater self-insight when spontaneously rather than deliberately generated (i.e., childhood memories and impressions formed). Second, we hypothesize that the greater self-insight attributed to thoughts that are (perceived to be) spontaneous leads those thoughts to more potently influence judgment. Participants felt more sexually attracted to an attractive person whom they thought of spontaneously than deliberately in Study 4, and reported their commitment to a current romantic relationship would be more affected by the spontaneous rather than deliberate recollection of a good or bad experience with their romantic partner in Study 5.