Maladaptive Daydreaming Test
Find out whether your inclination towards daydreaming is getting in the way of living your best life. Take the free maladaptive daydreaming test and get your report within minutes!
Maladaptive Daydreaming Test
Find out whether your inclination towards daydreaming is getting in the way of living your best life. Take the free maladaptive daydreaming test and get your report within minutes!
Are You a Daydreamer?
Take Our Free Test to Find Out Whether Your
Daydreaming Might Be Maladaptive!
Don’t We All Daydream?
We all tend to drift away into off-task thoughts sometimes.
But doing so is normal – daydreaming is not always a reason to worry!
If you tend to daydream regularly, even daily, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you exhibit maladaptive daydreaming.
Daydreaming might be more common than you think!
Even back in 1966, a study demonstrated that as much as 96% of Americans daydream every single day! And while mind-wandering may cause us to lose focus for a bit, research indicates it does have a number of benefits for our mental health and personal growth.
The Benefits of Daydreaming
Yes, daydreaming does have certain advantages – when kept in moderation.
The most obvious benefit that comes with mind-wandering is that it provides a form of relief from boredom. When we are faced with monotonous tasks, drifting away in a daydream can be a tempting and effective mental break.
Daydreaming could also stimulate creativity and future prospection – i.e., we often make plans for our futures when we allow our minds to wander. Furthermore, mind-wandering often involves a level of time-traveling. This means that when we daydream, we integrate our past, present, and potential future experiences into a life-narrative. This narrative provides us with a meaningful context, helps us see the purpose of our lives, and thus fosters positive feelings and mental well-being.
When Does Daydreaming Become Maladaptive?
Maladaptive daydreaming is defined as “extensive fantasy activity that replaces human interaction and/or interferes with academic, interpersonal or vocational functioning” (Somer, 2002, p. 199).
As you can see from this definition, we call daydreaming maladaptive when it starts to harm our well-being and personal lives.
For instance, daydreaming can become harmful when it serves as a replacement for real-life socializing. It could impact us negatively when it starts hindering us from achieving our personal, academic, or career goals.
Maladaptive daydreaming can feel like an addiction: the individual often feels unable to stop the behavior and frustrated when unable to engage in it.
If you would like to contribute to the science of psychology, Dr. Soffer-Dudek’s lab will be happy to include you as a research participant. Some studies look for maladaptive daydreamers, and some look for control participants, so you do not have to be high on maladaptive daydreaming to participate. All you need is a bit of free time and willingness to be truthful about your experiences.
Worried that your mind-wandering habits are interfering with your goals in life?
Complete the Maladaptive Daydreaming Test & Receive Your Report Within Minutes – Fast, Easy, Free!
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Singer, J. L. (1966). Daydreaming. New York: Random House.
Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2015). The science of mind wandering: Empirically navigating the stream of consciousness. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 487–518.
Somer, E. (2002). Maladaptive daydreaming: A qualitative inquiry. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 32(2), 197-212.
Somer, E., Lehrfeld, J., Bigelsen, J., & Jopp, D. S. (2016). Development and validation of the Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale (MDS). Consciousness and cognition, 39, 77-91.
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