In search of boredom: beyond a functional account |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada;2. Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, 308 Bingham Humanities Building, Louisville, KY 40292, USA;1. Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Parma, Parma, Italy;1. State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;2. Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Imaging and Connectomics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;3. IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;4. Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing, China;1. Department of Psychology, Western University, London, ON N6A 5B7, Canada;2. Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, UK;1. Neuroscience Institute and Psychology Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA;2. Department of Ophthalmology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA;1. Department of Music, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA;2. Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA;1. Department of Experimental Psychology & All Souls College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK |
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| Abstract: | Boredom has been characterized as a crisis of meaning, a failure of attention, and a call to action. Yet as a self-regulatory signal writ-large, we are still left with the question of what makes any given boredom episode meaningless, disengaging, or a prompt to act. We propose that boredom is an affective signal that we have deviated from an optimal (‘Goldilocks’) zone of cognitive engagement. Such deviations may be due to a perceived lack of meaning, arise as a consequence of struggles we are experiencing in attending to a task, or be interpreted as a blunt call to find something different to engage with. Thus, the key to understanding boredom lies in its role in keeping us cognitively engaged. |
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