Demographic and heredity correlates of day-dreaming propensity: Insights from the behavioral data of the human Connectome Project Young Adult dataset

Humans spend a significant portion of their waking hours day-dreaming, so gaining a deeper comprehension of the phenomenon is of substantial importance. To better characterize the day-dreaming phenomenon, in the present study we asked: (1) What is the relationship between day-dreaming and the age of young adults? (2) What is the relationship between day-dreaming and the education level of young adults? (3) Is there a difference in day-dreaming propensity between females and males? and (4) Is day-dreaming propensity genetically determined? To address these questions, we examined individual differences in day-dreaming propensity by using the large Human Connectome Project Young dataset of 1,200 young adult participants. We found that: (1) Day-dreaming propensity was negatively correlated with age of participants; (2) Day-dreaming propensity was positively correlated with education level of participants; (3) There was no difference in day-dreaming propensity between genders, but positive correlation between day-dreaming propensity and education level was much higher for females than males; and (4) Monozygotic compared to dizygotic twins were more similar to each other with regard to propensity to day-dream, suggesting that propensity to day-dream is at least to some extent genetically determined. Overall, the present novel findings help better characterize the day-dreaming phenomenon.