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Imagination is relevant in many aspects of our lives and has been associated with creativity and overall cognitive development, yet imagination may also have a dark side. In two studies we examined the link between imagination, anxiety, and loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic. US college students (N = 101, Study 1) and participants from an international community sample (N = 61, Study 2) were tested when that rates of COVID-19 cases were escalating. Across both samples, we found that spending more time in one's imagination was associated with elevated levels of anxiety. Furthermore, frequency of imagination interacted with loneliness in predicting changes in anxiety during, compared to before the pandemic. Specifically, lonely people who spent more time imagining experienced the largest increases in anxiety during, compared to before the pandemic. In Study 1 valence of imagination and changes in anxiety were also moderated by feelings of loneliness, although this effect was not replicated in Study 2. Results indicate that at least some features of imagination, particularly how much time people spend in imaginative states, may be associated with negative mood states, such as feelings of anxiety. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Despite an established body of research characterizing how creative individuals explore their external world, relatively little is known about how such individuals navigate their inner mental life, especially in unstructured contexts such as periods of awake rest. Across two studies, the present manuscript tested the hypothesis that creative individuals are more engaged with their idle thoughts and more associative in the dynamic transitions between them. Study 1 captured the real-time conscious experiences of 81 adults as they voiced aloud the content of their mind moment-by-moment across a 10-minute unconstrained baseline period. Higher originality scores on a divergent thinking task were associated with less perceived boredom, more words spoken overall, more freely moving thoughts, and more loosely-associative (as opposed to sharp) transitions during the baseline rest period. In Study 2, across 2,612 participants, those who reported higher self-rated creativity also reported less perceived boredom during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time during which many people experienced unusually extended periods of unstructured free time. Overall, these results suggest a tendency for creative individuals to be more engaged and explorative with their thoughts when task demands are relaxed, raising implications for resting state functional MRI and societal trends to devalue idle time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]