they wer spontaneous, rather than deliberate.
This study also showed that this effect was found across many types of thoughts, including thoughts about other people. This suggestst that the content of the spontaneous thought doesn't need to be about the self in order for people to feel like they've gained meaningful insight.
The last two studies investigated wether greater insight from spontaneous thought leads to a bigger impact on judgement.
The subjects of this experiment were told to think of a love interest other than their current significant other, spontaneously or deliberately, report the self-insight that it brought, and indicate their attraction towards that person.
The results show that the spontaneous thought of a love interest gave a greater self-insgiht and have a greater influence over the commitment to their current relationship than those who thought of a love interest deliberately.
For the last part of this study, researchers wanted to identify if this greater influence could be both positive and negative. Subjects were to share a positive or negative experience related to their current relationship. They then reported how spontaneous the thought was, the degree of its meaningful insight, and whether it would increase or decrease the likelihood to end the relationship.
These final results suggest that participants believed the recollection of that memore provided more meaningful insight and have more of an influence over their commitment to their relationship if the memory was recalled spontaneiously over deliberately.