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Table of Contents

  • What researchers mean by daydreaming
  • What the studies show about daydreaming and IQ
  • Where "daydreaming means you're smart" came from
  • When daydreaming becomes a problem
  • Frequently asked questions
  • Do people with high IQs daydream more?
  • Is daydreaming a sign of a gifted child?
  • Did a study prove that daydreamers are smarter?
  • Can daydreaming lower my IQ score?
  • What is maladaptive daydreaming?
  • The takeaway
  • References
Oct 8, 2026·Advanced Topics & Research

Daydreaming and IQ: Is Daydreaming a Sign of Intelligence?

Daydreaming is not a reliable sign of high IQ. People whose minds wander more during demanding tests tend to score lower, by about r = -0.37 in one study.

Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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Daydreaming and IQ: Is Daydreaming a Sign of Intelligence?
Daydreaming is not a reliable sign of high intelligence, and when it happens during a demanding task, the evidence points slightly the other way. In a study of 131 university students, those whose minds wandered more while working on Raven's Progressive Matrices scored lower on the test, a correlation of about r = -0.37, which works out to roughly 5 to 6 IQ points for every standard deviation of extra mind wandering.

A 2017 brain-imaging study found that people who said they daydream often in daily life scored slightly higher on a reasoning test, and the press ran with it. This article explains how both findings can be true and when frequent daydreaming becomes a problem worth taking to a professional.

What researchers mean by daydreaming

In the research literature, daydreaming usually goes by the name "mind wandering": thoughts that drift away from what you are doing toward something unrelated, such as weekend plans or an old conversation. Researchers measure it with thought probes, which interrupt people during a task to ask where their attention was, or with questionnaires about how often people daydream in general.

Mind wandering can run in words, a silent cousin of talking to yourself, and it is extremely common. Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert used a smartphone app to sample the thoughts of 2,250 adults at random moments in daily life and found their minds wandering in 46.9% of samples. A habit that common cannot, on its own, mark anyone out as unusually intelligent.

Paul Seli, Evan Risko and Daniel Smilek have also shown that mind wandering comes in two kinds. mind wandering is a choice to let your thoughts drift, often because the task is easy. mind wandering happens when your attention slips away despite your efforts. In their experiment, people doing an easy version of a sustained-attention task reported more intentional mind wandering, while people doing a harder version reported more unintentional mind wandering. Total mind wandering did not differ between the two versions, so a study that lumped the two kinds together would have missed the effect entirely.

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Table of Contents

  • What researchers mean by daydreaming
  • What the studies show about daydreaming and IQ
  • Where "daydreaming means you're smart" came from
  • When daydreaming becomes a problem
  • Frequently asked questions
  • Do people with high IQs daydream more?
  • Is daydreaming a sign of a gifted child?
  • Did a study prove that daydreamers are smarter?
  • Can daydreaming lower my IQ score?
  • What is maladaptive daydreaming?
  • The takeaway
  • References
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What the studies show about daydreaming and IQ

The most direct evidence comes from studies that measure mind wandering while people take cognitive tests.

• Mind wandering during testing: Michael Mrazek and colleagues embedded thought probes into tests of working memory and fluid intelligence. Across four studies, more mind wandering went with worse performance. In the fourth study (131 students), mind wandering during Raven's matrices correlated -0.37 with the Raven's score, and a composite of mind wandering across the lab tests correlated -0.38 with the SAT scores the students had earned one to three years earlier. In a statistical model, a mind-wandering factor accounted for about half the variance that the aptitude measures had in common.

• Daily life: Michael Kane and colleagues gave 124 undergraduates handheld devices that signaled them eight times a day for a week. During challenging activities that required concentration, students with higher working memory capacity stayed on task better and mind-wandered less. The link depended on context, appearing mainly when the activity was demanding.

• Meta-analysis: Jason Randall, Frederick Oswald and Margaret Beier pooled 88 samples of adults. People with fewer cognitive resources tended to mind-wander more, and mind wandering was generally linked to worse task performance, especially on complex tasks.

Working memory, the capacity to hold information in mind while ignoring distractions, is the hub of this research (see our guide to what working memory is). Jennifer McVay and Michael Kane argue that mind wandering during tasks reflects a failure of executive control, so keeping your thoughts on task is part of what intelligence tests pick up.

These effects are moderate. A correlation of -0.37 is a group pattern, too weak to diagnose anyone.

Where "daydreaming means you're smart" came from

The headline traces to a 2017 Neuropsychologia study by Christine Godwin, Eric Schumacher and colleagues at Georgia Tech. Participants filled in the Mind Wandering Questionnaire, a short self-report scale about daydreaming in everyday life, and lay in an MRI scanner for five minutes at rest. They also took Raven's matrices and a creativity task called the Remote Associates Test. People who reported more frequent mind wandering showed stronger connectivity within the brain's default mode network at rest, and they scored somewhat higher on the Raven's and creativity measures.

In a Georgia Tech press release, Schumacher suggested that "people with efficient brains may have too much brain capacity to stop their minds from wandering." Headlines turned that into "daydreaming is good, it means you're smart."

The study has limits that the headlines dropped:

• Sample: The press release describes just over 100 participants, which is small for estimating a correlation precisely.

• Measurement: Daydreaming was self-reported as a general habit, while the studies above measured mind wandering during the test itself. People with high ability may simply notice and report their wandering thoughts more readily, or let their minds drift mainly when a task is easy for them.

• Design: The data are correlational and come from one sample. They cannot show that daydreaming causes better reasoning or that efficient brains cause daydreaming.

The two findings fit together once you add Seli's distinction. A capable person may let their mind drift deliberately during a boring commute and still keep it locked on task during a hard exam. Daydreaming by choice when little is at stake looks very different from attention slipping away when it matters. The separate question of whether daydreaming fuels creativity is weighed up in our piece on whether a high IQ makes a person more creative.

Motivation is a confound worth knowing about. In one of Mrazek's studies, students offered a financial reward for good performance scored better on a working memory test, and the improvement was explained by a drop in mind wandering. If daydreaming partly reflects how engaged someone is with a test, low scores can understate ability in people who are bored or tired.

When daydreaming becomes a problem

For most people, daydreaming is harmless and often pleasant, though Killingsworth and Gilbert found that people were generally less happy when their minds were wandering. A minority describe something more consuming. The Israeli clinical psychologist Eli Somer introduced the term "maladaptive daydreaming" in a 2002 qualitative study, to describe people who spend hours in vivid, story-like fantasies and feel unable to stop even when it costs them sleep or work.

In 2016, Somer and colleagues published the Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale, a 14-item questionnaire developed with 447 people from 45 countries. Its items cover the pull of the daydreams, the movement that often accompanies them, and the impairment they cause. Higher scores were associated with obsessive-compulsive symptoms, dissociative absorption and attention problems. Maladaptive daydreaming is not a formal diagnosis in the DSM-5, and nothing in this research suggests it signals high or low intelligence.

If daydreaming is taking up hours of your day and is hard to control, a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist can assess what is going on, including whether attention difficulties or anxiety are part of the picture.

Frequently asked questions

Do people with high IQs daydream more?

There is no good evidence that they do. Studies that measure mind wandering during demanding tests find that higher scorers tend to mind-wander less, with correlations of about -0.24 to -0.37 in one study of 131 students.

Is daydreaming a sign of a gifted child?

Daydreaming is common at every ability level, so it cannot identify a gifted child. A child who seems to drift off in class may be bored, tired, anxious or inattentive, and a teacher or school psychologist is the right person to ask.

Did a study prove that daydreamers are smarter?

No. A 2017 study of just over 100 adults found a small positive correlation between self-reported daydreaming and scores on reasoning and creativity tests, but it was correlational and conflicts with studies measuring mind wandering during the tests themselves.

Can daydreaming lower my IQ score?

Mind wandering during a test is linked to lower scores on it, so testing when you are rested and engaged gives a fairer picture.

What is maladaptive daydreaming?

It is a proposed condition in which immersive fantasy takes up hours of a person's day and is hard to control. A psychologist or psychiatrist can evaluate it.

The takeaway

Daydreaming is a near-universal habit, and it is not a reliable sign of high intelligence. The strongest studies show that people whose minds wander more during demanding tests tend to score lower, while one well-publicized imaging study found a small link in the other direction for self-reported daydreaming in everyday life. Choosing to let your thoughts drift during an easy task is very different from losing focus when a task is hard. If you want a measure of your reasoning ability taken under good conditions, try an online IQ test built by psychometricians when you are rested and can give it your full attention.

References

1. Mrazek, M. D., Smallwood, J., Franklin, M. S., Chin, J. M., Baird, B., & Schooler, J. W. (2012). The role of mind-wandering in measurements of general aptitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(4), 788-798. [doi.org/10.1037/a0027968](. doi.org

2. Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932. [doi.org/10.1126/science.1192439](. doi.org

3. Seli, P., Risko, E. F., & Smilek, D. (2016). On the necessity of distinguishing between unintentional and intentional mind wandering. Psychological Science, 27(5), 685-691. [doi.org/10.1177/0956797616634068](. doi.org

4. Kane, M. J., Brown, L. H., McVay, J. C., Silvia, P. J., Myin-Germeys, I., & Kwapil, T. R. (2007). For whom the mind wanders, and when. Psychological Science, 18(7), 614-621. [doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01948.x](. doi.org

5. Randall, J. G., Oswald, F. L., & Beier, M. E. (2014). Mind-wandering, cognition, and performance: A theory-driven meta-analysis of attention regulation. Psychological Bulletin, 140(6), 1411-1431. [doi.org/10.1037/a0037428](. doi.org

6. McVay, J. C., & Kane, M. J. (2010). Does mind wandering reflect executive function or executive failure? Comment on Smallwood and Schooler (2006) and Watkins (2008). Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 188-197. [doi.org/10.1037/a0018298](. doi.org

7. Godwin, C. A., Hunter, M. A., Bezdek, M. A., Lieberman, G., Elkin-Frankston, S., Romero, V. L., Witkiewitz, K., Clark, V. P., & Schumacher, E. H. (2017). Functional connectivity within and between intrinsic brain networks correlates with trait mind wandering. Neuropsychologia, 103, 140-153. [doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.07.006](. doi.org

8. Somer, E. (2002). Maladaptive daydreaming: A qualitative inquiry. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 32(2-3), 197-212. [doi.org/10.1023/A:1020597026919](. doi.org

9. 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. [doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2015.12.001](. doi.org

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