Jonathan W Schooler
Biographic Data
| ID | 4890170 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jonathan W Schooler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jonathan W |
| FAMILY NAME | Schooler |
| SIGNATURE | SCHOOLER J W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4929-3372 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 61 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 170 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 60 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Precision streamlining of a school-based attention training program: A strategy for balancing feasibility and potency
Introduction Balancing potency and feasibility is essential for implementing digital technologies in school settings, where time and attention are limited. We introduce precision streamlining —a novel intervention design strategy that reduces overall duration while preserving effectiveness through targeted personalization. Instead of delivering all content to all students, this approach uses personalization to reduce the total material delivered—…
Expanding minds: Artistic film promotes conceptual expansion and verbal creativity
Now I feel like I’m going to get to it soon: A brief, scalable intervention for state procrastination
Procrastination is a pervasive habit that undermines well-being, productivity, and mental health. Developing brief and scalable interventions to address this issue is crucial. Here, we tested the efficacy of an intervention grounded in the Temporal Decision Model of procrastination. Our intervention targeted state-level procrastination by simultaneously reducing task aversion and enhancing outcome utility. A total of 1,035 participants were rando…
Opening the black box: Think Aloud as a method to study the spontaneous stream of consciousness
Asking participants to Think Aloud is a common method for studying conscious experience, but it remains unclear whether this approach alters thought qualities-such as meta-awareness, rate of topic shifts, or the content of thoughts in task-absent conditions. To investigate this, we conducted two studies comparing thinking aloud to thinking silently. In Study 1, 111 participants alternated between 15-minute intervals of verbalizing and silently re…
The phenomenology of encoding: Experience sampling reveals thoughts associated with the retention of visual and verbal materials
Three dimensions of time: An approach for reconciling the discrepancies between experienced time and modern physics
This essay reviews the discrepancies between the phenomenal experience of time and the characterization of time as it is currently conceptualized by modern physics. Three aspects of the subjective quality of time are identified: (1) the present is privileged and distinct from the past and future in that it is the exclusive time at which observers experience events as happening; (2) time flows from one moment to the next; and (3) the future is ope…
When is a wandering mind unhappy? The role of thought valence
The current research represents one of the first attempts to investigate how various thought qualities that naturally fluctuate across attention states (i.e., mind wandering vs. present-focused attention) impact mood. Of specific interest was whether thought valence may account for previously reported effects of attention state on mood. To examine this, an experience sampling methodology was used to capture participants' ( N = 337) attention stat…
Back to the basics: Abstract painting as an index of creativity
Researchers have invested a great deal in creating reliable, “gold-standard” creativity assessments that can be administered in controlled laboratory settings, though these efforts have come at the cost of not using ecologically and face-valid tasks. To help fill this critical gap, we developed and implemented a novel, face-valid paradigm that required participants to paint abstract pieces of art, which were later rated for creative quality. We f…
Can Viewing Films Promote Creative Thinking Styles? Examining The Complex Roles of Personality and Meaning-Making
Can watching avant-garde film temporarily shift individuals’ thinking styles? What factors influence how individuals respond to avant-garde films? The perception of meaning is a critical element in the positive reception of visual artworks and may be an important mediating step in influencing creative thought. This highlights a unique problem for art forms in which meaning is more open to interpretation, such as avant-garde art. Past research ind…
Reducing Explicit Blatant Dehumanization by Correcting Exaggerated Meta-Perceptions
If explicitly, blatantly dehumanizing a group of people—overtly characterizing them as less than human—facilitates harming them, then reversing this process is paramount. Addressing dehumanization among American political partisans appears especially crucial, given that it has been linked to their anti-democratic hostility. Perhaps because of its overt nature, partisans recognize—and greatly exaggerate—the extent to which out-partisans explicitly…
Retracted Article: High replicability of newly discovered social-behavioural findings is achievable
Failures to replicate evidence of new discoveries have forced scientists to ask whether this unreliability is due to suboptimal implementation of methods or whether presumptively optimal methods are not, in fact, optimal. This paper reports an investigation by four coordinated laboratories of the prospective replicability of 16 novel experimental findings using rigour-enhancing practices: confirmatory tests, large sample sizes, preregistration an…
Where’s My Consciousness-Ometer? How to Test for the Presence and Complexity of Consciousness
Tools and tests for measuring the presence and complexity of consciousness are becoming available, but there is no established theoretical approach for what these tools are measuring. This article examines several categories of tests for making reasonable inferences about the presence and complexity of consciousness (defined as the capacity for phenomenal/subjective experience) and also suggests ways in which different theories of consciousness m…
Inquisitive but not discerning: Deprivation curiosity is associated with excessive openness to inaccurate information
Epistemic curiosity—the desire for knowledge—is typically thought to benefit learning. In four preregistered studies, we show that interest curiosity, a facet of epistemic curiosity characterized by joyful exploration, is indeed associated with traits and abilities that benefit learning. These include general knowledge, intellectual humility, and discernment of the quality of information. In contrast, deprivation curiosity, a facet motivated by u…
Teenagers’ Smartphone Use during Homework: An Analysis of Beliefs and Behaviors around Digital Multitasking
Although research suggests that phone usage during academic activities is problematic for learning and performance, little is known about high school students’ digital multitasking during homework. This exploratory descriptive study surveyed 135 students from four public U.S. high schools to investigate teenagers’ attitudes towards digital distraction, smartphone use during homework, cell phone dependence, and motivations for digital multitasking…
What types of daydreaming predict creativity? Laboratory and experience sampling evidence
Metadehumanization erodes democratic norms during the 2020 presidential election
The present research directly replicates past work suggesting that metadehumanization , the perception that another group dehumanizes your own group, erodes Americans’ support for democratic norms. In the days surrounding the 2020 US Presidential Election, American political partisans perceived that their political opponents dehumanized them more than was actually the case. Partisans’ exaggerated metadehumanization inspired reciprocal dehumanizat…
Getting a grip on insight: Real-time and embodied Aha experiences predict correct solutions
process and feeling in real-time, (2) highlights the value of measuring Aha moments on a continuum of intensity, and (3) firmly establishes that the impulsive feeling of Aha can carry information about the veracity of an idea. We discuss the findings in light of a recent theoretical account of how feelings of insight may act as a heuristic to select ideas from the stream of consciousness
Lay Theories of the Wandering Mind: Control-Related Beliefs Predict Mind Wandering Rates in- and outside the Lab
People often fail to keep their mind from wandering. Here, we examine how the tendency to mind wander is affected by people’s beliefs, or lay theories. Building on research on lay theories and self-regulation, we test whether differences in people’s beliefs about the extent to which mind wandering is controllable affect thought control strategies and mind-wandering rates in daily life and the laboratory. We develop a new scale to assess control-r…
Attention need not always apply: Mind wandering impedes explicit but not implicit sequence learning
Hated but still human: Metadehumanization leads to greater hostility than metaprejudice
Metadehumanization, the perception that members of an outgroup dehumanize your group, has been found to exacerbate intergroup conflict by inspiring reciprocal dehumanization of the offending outgroup. Moreover, metadehumanization is distinct from metaprejudice (i.e., the perception that an outgroup hates your group). Given the mutual animosity reported in public opinion polls toward the other side, we believed US–Russia relations would be a worth…
Essentially subhuman: Psychological essentialism facilitates dehumanization
Investigates the relationship between psychological essentialism and the tendency to dehumanize members of other social groups
Taking charge: Characterizing the rapid development of self-regulation through intensive training
Self-regulation is widely considered as a relatively stable trait, and the extent to which it can be improved through training is unknown. This randomized controlled investigation found dramatic and enduring increases in self-regulation among college students, as measured by experience sampling, nightly journaling, and questionnaires. Participants encountered stable levels of temptations throughout the intervention but became better at resisting …
The Feasibility of Attention Training for Reducing Mind-Wandering and Digital Multitasking in High Schools
During academic activities, adolescents must manage both the internal distraction of mind-wandering and the external distraction of digital media. Attention training has emerged as a promising strategy for minimizing these distractions, but scalable interventions that can deliver effective attention training in high schools are still needed. The present investigation used a one-group pre-post design to examine the feasibility and outcomes of a di…
What’s in a Task? Complications in the Study of the Task-Unrelated-Thought Variety of Mind Wandering
In recent years, the number of studies examining mind wandering has increased considerably, and research on the topic has spread widely across various domains of psychological research. Athough the term mind wandering has been used to refer to various cognitive states, researchers typically operationalize mind wandering in terms of task-unrelated thought (TUT). Research on TUT has shed light on the various task features that require people’s atte…
The dark side of Eureka: Artificially induced Aha moments make facts feel true
Thinking too much: Introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions
In Study 1, college students' preferences for different brands of strawberry jams were compared with experts' ratings of the jams. Students who analyzed why they felt the way they did agreed less with the experts than students who did not. In Study 2, college students' preferences for college courses were compared with expert opinion. Some students were asked to analyze reasons; others were asked to evaluate all attributes of all courses. Both ki…
The restless mind
This article reviews the hypothesis that mind wandering can be integrated into executive models of attention. Evidence suggests that mind wandering shares many similarities with traditional notions of executive control. When mind wandering occurs, the executive components of attention appear to shift away from the primary task, leading to failures in task performance and superficial representations of the external environment. One challenge for i…
Threatened to distraction: Mind-wandering as a consequence of stereotype threat
Coping With Stereotype Threat: Denial as an Impression Management Strategy
Four experiments tested the hypothesis that people who are concerned with impression management cope with stereotype threat through denial. Consistent with this hypothesis, temporary employees threatened by a stereotype of incompetence (Study 1) and hostel-dwelling older adults (Study 2) were more likely to deny incompetence if they were high in impression management. African Americans (Study 3) showed a similar pattern of denying cognitive incom…
Expanding minds: Growth mindsets of self-regulation and the influences on effort and perseverance
Hated but still human: Metadehumanization leads to greater hostility than metaprejudice
Metadehumanization, the perception that members of an outgroup dehumanize your group, has been found to exacerbate intergroup conflict by inspiring reciprocal dehumanization of the offending outgroup. Moreover, metadehumanization is distinct from metaprejudice (i.e., the perception that an outgroup hates your group). Given the mutual animosity reported in public opinion polls toward the other side, we believed US–Russia relations would be a worth…
Retracted Article: High replicability of newly discovered social-behavioural findings is achievable
Failures to replicate evidence of new discoveries have forced scientists to ask whether this unreliability is due to suboptimal implementation of methods or whether presumptively optimal methods are not, in fact, optimal. This paper reports an investigation by four coordinated laboratories of the prospective replicability of 16 novel experimental findings using rigour-enhancing practices: confirmatory tests, large sample sizes, preregistration an…
Stereotype distinctiveness: How counterstereotypic behavior shapes the self-concept
Essentially subhuman: Psychological essentialism facilitates dehumanization
Investigates the relationship between psychological essentialism and the tendency to dehumanize members of other social groups
Verbal overshadowing of visual memories: Some things are better left unsaid
Thinking too much: Introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions
In Study 1, college students' preferences for different brands of strawberry jams were compared with experts' ratings of the jams. Students who analyzed why they felt the way they did agreed less with the experts than students who did not. In Study 2, college students' preferences for college courses were compared with expert opinion. Some students were asked to analyze reasons; others were asked to evaluate all attributes of all courses. Both ki…
Introspecting about Reasons can Reduce Post-Choice Satisfaction
This study tested the prediction that introspecting about the reasons for one's preferences would reduce satisfaction with a consumer choice. Subjects evaluated two types of posters and then chose one to take home. Those instructed to think about their reasons chose a different type of poster than control subjects and, when contacted 3 weeks later, were less satisfied with their choice. When people think about reasons, they appear to focus on att…
Thoughts beyond words: When language overshadows insight.
Four experiments examined whether verbalization can interfere with insight problem solving. In Experiment 1, Ss were interrupted during problem solving and asked either to verbalize their strategies (retrospective verbalization) or engage in an unrelated activity (control). Ss in the retrospective verbalization condition were significantly less successful than control subjects at solving the problems. Experiment 2 replicated the finding of Experi…
Seeking the Core: The Issues and Evidence Surrounding Recovered Accounts of Sexual Trauma
Stereotype distinctiveness: How counterstereotypic behavior shapes the self-concept
Re-representing consciousness: Dissociations between experience and meta-consciousness
Quality of Death: Assessing the Importance Placed on End-of-Life Treatment in the Intensive-Care Unit
CONTEXT: The value of good end-of-life (EOL) care could be underestimated if its effects are assessed using the standard metric of quality-adjusted survival, especially if the time horizon is limited to the duration of the EOL care. This issue is particularly problematic in the intensive-care unit (ICU) where death is frequent, care is difficult, and costs are high. OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this study were to test whether people would trade …
Coping With Stereotype Threat: Denial as an Impression Management Strategy
Four experiments tested the hypothesis that people who are concerned with impression management cope with stereotype threat through denial. Consistent with this hypothesis, temporary employees threatened by a stereotype of incompetence (Study 1) and hostel-dwelling older adults (Study 2) were more likely to deny incompetence if they were high in impression management. African Americans (Study 3) showed a similar pattern of denying cognitive incom…
The restless mind
This article reviews the hypothesis that mind wandering can be integrated into executive models of attention. Evidence suggests that mind wandering shares many similarities with traditional notions of executive control. When mind wandering occurs, the executive components of attention appear to shift away from the primary task, leading to failures in task performance and superficial representations of the external environment. One challenge for i…
The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating
Does moral behavior draw on a belief in free will? Two experiments examined whether inducing participants to believe that human behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating. In Experiment 1, participants read either text that encouraged a belief in determinism (i.e., that portrayed behavior as the consequence of environmental and genetic factors) or neutral text. Exposure to the deterministic message increased cheating on a task in which pa…
When attention matters: The curious incident of the wandering mind
Experience sampling during fMRI reveals default network and executive system contributions to mind wandering
Although mind wandering occupies a large proportion of our waking life, its neural basis and relation to ongoing behavior remain controversial. We report an fMRI study that used experience sampling to provide an online measure of mind wandering during a concurrent task. Analyses focused on the interval of time immediately preceding experience sampling probes demonstrate activation of default network regions during mind wandering, a finding consis…
Eye Movements During Mindless Reading
Mindless reading occurs when the eyes continue moving across the page even though the mind is thinking about something unrelated to the text. Despite how commonly it occurs, very little is known about mindless reading. The present experiment examined eye movements during mindless reading. Comparisons of fixation-duration measures collected during intervals of normal reading and intervals of mindless reading indicate that fixations during the latt…
Back to the future: Autobiographical planning and the functionality of mind-wandering
Self-reflection and the temporal focus of the wandering mind
Introspecting in the spirit of William James: Comment on Fox, Ericsson, and Best (2011)
Fox, Ericsson, and Best's (2011) thoughtful justification of the use of think-aloud protocols for revealing the stream of consciousness comes on the centennial of the death of William James, history's greatest practitioner and advocate of introspection. This confluence naturally invites speculation about how James might have responded to the analysis of Fox et al. I suggest that although James would likely view the think-aloud procedure as a scie…
Splitting consciousness: Unconscious, conscious, and metaconscious processes in social cognition
This paper explores the interplay between unconscious, conscious, and metaconscious processes in social cognition. We distinguish among mental states that are (i) genuinely unaware, (ii) aware, but lack meta-awareness, and (iii) meta-aware—internally articulated as states of the perceiver. We review key studies from our own and related research programmes to highlight this theoretical framework, and to illustrate access, translational, and tempor…
Threatened to distraction: Mind-wandering as a consequence of stereotype threat
Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation
Although anecdotes that creative thoughts often arise when one is engaged in an unrelated train of thought date back thousands of years, empirical research has not yet investigated this potentially critical source of inspiration. We used an incubation paradigm to assess whether performance on validated creativity problems (the Unusual Uses Task, or UUT) can be facilitated by engaging in either a demanding task or an undemanding task that maximize…
Suppression of novel stimuli: Changes in accessibility of suppressed nonverbalizable shapes
Mindfulness and mind-wandering: Finding convergence through opposing constructs
Research into both mindfulness and mind-wandering has grown rapidly, yet clarification of the relationship between these two seemingly opposing constructs is still absent. A first study addresses the relationship between a dispositional measure of mindfulness (Mindful Attention and Awareness Scale, MAAS) and converging measures of both self-reported and indirect markers of mind-wandering. Negative correlations between dispositional mindfulness an…
Young and restless: Validation of the Mind-Wandering Questionnaire (MWQ) reveals disruptive impact of mind-wandering for youth
Mind-wandering is the focus of extensive investigation, yet until recently there has been no validated scale to directly measure trait levels of task-unrelated thought. Scales commonly used to assess mind-wandering lack face validity, measuring related constructs such as daydreaming or behavioral errors. Here we report four studies validating a Mind-Wandering Questionnaire (MWQ) across college, high school, and middle school samples. The 5-item s…
Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering
Given that the ability to attend to a task without distraction underlies performance in a wide variety of contexts, training one’s ability to stay on task should result in a similarly broad enhancement of performance. In a randomized controlled investigation, we examined whether a 2-week mindfulness-training course would decrease mind wandering and improve cognitive performance. Mindfulness training improved both GRE reading-comprehension scores …
The costs and benefits of mind-wandering: A review.
Substantial evidence suggests that mind-wandering typically occurs at a significant cost to performance. Mind-wandering-related deficits in performance have been observed in many contexts, most notably reading, tests of sustained attention, and tests of aptitude. Mind-wandering has been shown to negatively impact reading comprehension and model building, impair the ability to withhold automatized responses, and disrupt performance on tests of wor…
Psychology (54 works) · Cognitive psychology (41 works) · Cognition (34 works) · Mind wandering and attention (30 works) · Social Psychology (30 works) · Mind-wandering (26 works) · Neuroscience (18 works) · Cognitive science (17 works) · Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies (17 works) · Epistemology (16 works)