Distraction from task or activity makes people less happy, study says

New research shows that when people's minds drifted from the task or activity at hand, they reported being less happy than when they were fully engaged in whatever they were doing.

The human mind is uniquely capable of wandering -- that is, to ponder things that have happened, to anticipate things that will happen, and to plan for things that might happen, explained study author psychologists Matthew Killingsworth, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard University. The ability is one of the traits that makes human beings human, he noted, according to reports BusinessWeek.

The study was conducted using an iPhone web app to gather 250,000 data points on subjects' thoughts, feelings, and actions as they went about their lives.

"A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind," Killingsworth and Gilbert wrote, Times of India informs.