Maladaptive Daydreaming

This project was created for the Research Fundamentals course of the Creative Intelligence and Technology programme at Leiden Univeristy.

The Research Fundamentals course was designed to introduce us to conducting proper academic research and formulating it in a concise, clear, and direct manner, specifically through writing a research paper. A key aspect of this course was to identify a particularly niche and narrow topic within academia (such that only about seven papers could be found on the subject) and then write a research paper that served as an overview of the topic, along with its potential future implications.

For my paper, I chose to investigate maladaptive daydreaming and its effect on creativity. I decided to explore this topic because I had heard the term “maladaptive daydreaming” in conversation and was curious about how something as casual and common as daydreaming could potentially have negative impacts on health. Since maladaptive daydreaming carries a negative connotation, especially given its association with excessive daydreaming, I wanted to investigate whether it might also have an impact on creativity and whether it would carry any ‘silver linings’.

See here to read the entire process.