Cognitive and affective predictors of boredom proneness

ABSTRACT

Boredom proneness has been linked to various forms of cognitive and affective dysregulation including poor self-control and mind-wandering (MW), as well as depression and aggression. As such, understanding boredom and the associated cognitive and affective components of the experience, represents an important first step in combatting the consequences of boredom for psychological well-being. We surveyed 1928 undergraduate students on measures of boredom proneness, self-control, MW, depression and aggression to investigate how these constructs were related. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that self-control operated as a strong negative predictor of boredom proneness. Finally, when controlling for age and self-control, we observed large decreases in the magnitudes of the relationships between boredom proneness and our other measures of interest. Together, these results imply a strong relationship between boredom proneness and cognitive and affective dysregulation, and show that individual levels of self-control can account for the lion’s share of variance in the relationships between boredom, cognition, and affect.

KEYWORDS:

• Boredom
• mind-wandering
• self-control
• depression
• aggression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. To control for gender, the variable was dummy coded and an unweighted effects code was computed as a ratio between females and males, and then collapsed to assess the effect of age.