Boredom can be both bad and good for you, say psychological studies. The
International Interdisciplinary Boredom Conference met in Warsaw in April 2017
for their fifth annual meeting, while London’s Boring Conference met in May
2017 for their seventh annual session. Boredom is becoming something worth
studying and writing about – pyschologically.
The June ‘The Atlantic’ magazine discusses boredom and its research. It
states that one widely
accepted psychological definition of boredom is “the aversive experience of
wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity.”
But how can
you quantify a person’s boredom level and compare it with someone else’s?
In 1986,
psychologists introduced the Boredom Proneness Scale designed to measure an
individual’s overall propensity to feeling bored (‘’trait boredom”). By
contrast, the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, developed in 2008, measures
a person’s feelings of boredom in a given situation (“state boredom”).
A
German-led team has since identified five types of state boredom: (1) indifferent,
(2) calibrating, (3) searching, (4) reactant, and (5) apathetic. Indifferent boredom was the mellowest, least
unpleasant kind; and reactant was the most aggressive and unpleasant kind of
boredom. Hence, boredom may be miserable, but it’s not simple.
Many people would rather experience
pain than boredom, as shown in one study. One team of psychologists discovered
that two-thirds of men and a quarter of women would rather self-administer
electric shocks than sit alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. In another study,
researchers asked volunteers to watch boring, sad, or neutral films, during
which they could self-administer electric shocks. The bored volunteers shocked
themselves more and harder than the sad or neutral ones did.
But boredom isn’t all bad. By
encouraging contemplation and daydreaming, it can spur creativity. An early study
gave participants abundant time to complete problem-solving and word-association
exercises. Once all the obvious answers were exhausted, participants gave more
and more inventive answers to fend off boredom.
A British study took these findings
one step further, asking subjects to complete a creative challenge (coming up
with a list of alternative uses for a household item). One group of subjects
did a boring activity first, while the others went straight to the creative
task. Those whose boredom pumps had been primed were more prolific.
Boredom can
have negative affects, but it can also provide fertile experiences. Watch paint
dry or water boil, or at least put away your smartphone for a while, and you
might have your next big creative idea.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different
in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament
(2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a
Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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