You’ve got an evening to yourself, with your family and friends all out doing something else. It feels strange to have this alone time, given how busy your life tends to be. As you putter around your home, what thoughts go through your mind?

Maybe you pause at an object that you created several years ago when you were in a particular hobby phase. It reminds you of how much you enjoyed that craft, but you also start reminiscing about the compliments you received after it was completed. As those memories come rushing back, you find that 15 minutes have gone by without you even realizing it.

Exploring the Joys of Solitude

According to a new study by Australian Catholic University’s Emma Bradshaw and colleagues (2025), the benefits of solitude (vs. loneliness) are just beginning to be appreciated in psychology. However, “despite the purported benefits of solitude, humans can find it repellent.” One prior set of investigators even found that most men “preferred mild electrocutions to sitting alone quietly for just fifteen minutes.” Ouch!

There are, however, ways that solitude could be regarded as being aversive, Bradshaw et al. note. If you approach these occasions of alone time from the right mindset, they could have the potential to enhance your well-being. This would involve, the Australian team proposes, delving around in your memory bank for times when your intrinsic needs were satisfied. As viewed from the authors’ perspective of self-determination theory (SDT), the “fundamental prerequisites” for optimal functioning are that you satisfy your needs for autonomy (free will), competence (effectiveness), and relatedness (closeness). Pulling memories that reflect times when you satisfied these needs should allow solitude to turn into a time not only for reflection but also fulfillment.

Using Solitude to Boost Well-Being

Across two studies with online adult samples (average age in the early 50s), Bradshaw et al. tested whether spontaneous memories reflecting SDT need fulfillment (Study 1) or experimentally induced SDT memories (SDT) could help solitude turn into a positive well-being experience.

Study 1 participants were asked simply to spend a few minutes describing a memory of a time they accomplished an important goal. Afterward, they were then instructed to sit alone for five minutes not doing anything other than thinking. The online experiment then progressed to a set of well-being ratings as well as a manipulation check. To determine whether the predicted effect of SDT would show up in the post-solitude ratings, the authors then went back and coded the memories generated by participants as intrinsic (SDT motives) or extrinsic (fame, recognition, financial gain). As it turned out, both sets of memories were related to higher ratings of need satisfaction, regardless of whether they were intrinsic or extrinsic in nature.

In the second study, the research team moved on to a manipulation in which participants received instructions directing them to reflect, during a period of solitude, memories reflecting intrinsic vs. extrinsic need fulfillment. Both conditions started with the same prompt:

Using the text box, please describe in detail a personal memory of a time during which you accomplished goals …

… such as a better understanding of yourself; acceptance of something about yourself; finding meaning in your life; learning something new or deepening your knowledge about something; helping someone, a group, or a community; developing or meaningfully maintaining a close or romantic relationship with someone (intrinsic prompt).

… such as receiving sought-out social recognition from one or more people or after receiving a prize or award; popularity; a financial gain (whether through working, winning a prize, or receiving money as a gift); impressing someone; or being recognized for your physical attractiveness (extrinsic prompt).

In the neutral condition, participants were prompted to think about a typical day at work.

Following the memory induction, the same solitude instructions were presented by the survey software, and then participants rated their feelings of affect and arousal as well as feelings of depletion and vitality. Again, the hypothesis was that intrinsic memory reflection during solitude would lead to greater well-being as rated on these dimensions.

In this second study, solitude again showed beneficial outcomes according to the well-being and motivational measures. However, this time the effect of extrinsic recall not only equaled but also exceeded intrinsic memory reflections.

As it turned out, upon further study, it became clear that it wasn’t quite so easy to distinguish intrinsic from extrinsic memories. How would you rate this example? “I was awarded an award from the news station for doing this act of kindness.” It also turned out that some of the intrinsic memories were bittersweet in nature: “When I stopped drinking and started to go to AA meetings.”

One view of extrinsic motivation is that it is depleting because it can never be completely fulfilled. Once you’ve had a taste of fame, in other words, you keep wanting more. The findings from this study showed, in contrast, that it was the intrinsic memories that fit the “double-edged sword” criterion.

Wrapping up these analyses, Bradshaw et al. concluded that maybe it’s not the content of the memory that counts, but the reasons for its importance. Furthermore, in reality, it’s not that easy to separate the intrinsic from the extrinsic in ways that fit the SDT model.

Using Your Solitude Wisely

These findings were not in line with what the authors hoped, which was to help develop a “solitude skill set” (i.e., teaching people to reflect on the intrinsic). Nevertheless, they supported the value of solitude not as a state to be avoided, but to be savored. Both studies supported solitude’s benefits regardless of the content of people’s memories during that brief interval.

Returning to the example of you looking at that object resulting from your own expression of creativity, maybe you would find it hard to distinguish between the joy you felt in producing it and the pride you felt in having others admire it. According to the Australian study, that’s probably impossible to do. It’s the active engagement you have in conjuring up those memories that can energize you and make that period of alone time benefit your sense of well-being.

To sum up, thinking of solitude not as punishment but as an opportunity for reflection on what’s important to you can help you make alone time not only pass quickly but also serve as a source of fulfillment.