iPhone App Gauges Your Happiness

And finds that daydreaming is tied to bad moods
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 12, 2010 11:40 AM CST
iPhone App Gauges Your Happiness
Jill Small, of Los Angeles, holds her iPhone 4 during an interview with the Associated Press, Friday, July 16, 2010 in New York.   (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Turns out the all-powerful iPhone can also moonlight as your personal therapist, by way of the "Track Your Happiness" app. The app pings users at random times during the day, asking how they're feeling and what they're doing. Researchers looked at the responses of 2,250 adults and found a link between daydreaming and unhappiness: Responders said they were daydreaming almost 47% of the time, and the daydreamers were more likely to say they felt down in the dumps, Mashable reports.

But that doesn’t mean daydreaming equals unhappiness, an expert cautions in the Boston Globe. In fact, letting your mind wander helps solve problems, and may be important to creativity. “Even if there are times when mind-wandering causes one to be unhappy, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not the thing that one should be doing,” he notes. For those who want to play along, here's the website for the app.
(More iPhone stories.)

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