To Sit Quietly in a Room Alone: The Psychology of Social, Material, and Sensation Seeking Input

External input is any kind of physical stimulation created by an individual’s surroundings that can be detected by the senses. The present research established a novel conceptualization of this construct by investigating it in relation to the needs for material, social, and sensation seeking input, and by testing the consequences of these needs for psychological functioning during long- and short-term input deprivation. It was established that the three needs constitute different dimensions of an overarching construct (i.e., need for external input), that the needs for social and sensation seeking input have negative consequences for people’s experiences of long-term input deprivation (i.e., COVID-19 restrictions), and that the need for material input negatively predicts the experiences of short-term input deprivation (i.e., sitting in a chair without doing anything else but thinking). Overall, this research established a novel construct that has fundamental implications for experiences and actions in a range of different contexts.