Rich environments, dull experiences: how environment can exacerbate the effect of constraint on the experience of boredom

ABSTRACT

We examined the hypothesis that boredom is likely to occur when opportunity costs are high; that is, when there is a high potential value of engaging in activities other than the researcher-assigned activity. To this end, participants were either placed in a room with many possible affordances (e.g. a laptop, puzzle, etc.; affordances condition; n = 121), or they were ushered into an empty room (control condition; n = 107). In both conditions participants were instructed to entertain themselves with only their thoughts (hence, participants in the affordances condition were to refrain from engaging with the available options). As predicted, participants in the affordances condition reported higher levels of boredom compared with those in the control condition. Results suggest that under some conditions, environments that afford alternative activities may be more boring than those that are void of such activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Boredom
• constraint
• engagement
• affordances

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We would like to note that evaluative judgements akin to those outlined by Kurzban and colleagues have been historically recognized to precede the desire or intention to pursue goals of high desirability (for review see Custers, 2009). Furthermore, although the boredom signal may motivate us to alter ongoing activities or pursue some other activity, it does not necessitate that an individual is able to respond to this signal effectively. Indeed, prior work demonstrates that trait boredom is characterized by a failure to launch into goal pursuit (Mugon et al., 2018). This work suggests that the failure to respond to the boredom signal may be a major factor that makes the boredom experience potent and apparent to an individual.

2 In pilot work, a condition effect was observed including all participants regardless of scores on the SBPS. However, analyses indicated that the effect was greater (d = 0.66) if highly boredom prone individuals (those whose SBPS scores were at least 34 or above 3rd quartile) were removed. Thus, we made an a priori decision to exclude these participants as a way to increase power.

3 In our pre-registration, we indicated that we would conduct a two-sample permutation (exact significance) t test if assumptions of normality were violated. However, we now realize that the Wilcox test is more appropriate. We report the results from both analyses here and note that results do not differ substantially and thus do not change any of our interpretations.

4 It is, however, important to note that access to alterative satisfying activities could help alleviate boredom in some contexts, such as those in which engagement is not necessary for task completion. The most common example of this would be waiting: waiting does not require sustained engagement and permits engagement in other satisfying alternatives, such as conversing with someone.

5 In our pre-registration, we indicated that a two-sample permutation (exact significance) t test would be conducted. Although we instead opted to use the Wilcoxon Ranked-Sum test, we report significance values from the originally planned analyses here: p = .010 (.011) for boredom; p = .014 (.085) for wanting; p = .121 (.101) for frustration. We also report results from a regular t-test: p = .009 (.008) for boredom; p = .109 (.096) for wanting; p = .106 (.010) for frustration.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [grant number 109618].