Can boredom help? Increased prosocial intentions in response to boredom

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Abstract

Boredom is typically regarded a nuisance. Past research on boredom depicts this common emotion as a correlate of many detrimental psychological and social factors, including addiction, depression, discrimination, and aggression. We present a more nuanced perspective on boredom. Specifically, we propose and test that state boredom serves an important self-regulatory function with the potential to foster positive interpersonal consequences: It signals a lack of purpose in activity and fosters a search for meaningful engagement. We examined whether boredom can subsequently cause prosocial intentions if the corresponding prosocial behavior is seen as purposeful. As predicted, boredom, which is characterized by a search for meaning (pilot study), promoted prosocial intentions (Experiment 1), in particular when the corresponding behavior was seen as highly meaningful (Experiment 2). Our novel findings suggest that boredom can have desirable consequences and recasts this emotion as not merely good or bad but rather as personally and socially functional.

Keywords:

• Boredom
• helping
• meaning
• self-regulation
• interpersonal behavior

Notes

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

1. Three participants were excluded. Two did not respond to the charity donation question and one was a multivariate outlier (e.g., Tabachnick & Fidell, 2000): Mahalanobis distance was calculated for each participant by regressing a standard normally distributed random variable on the dummy coded boredom condition and donation intentions. One case exceeded χ²(2) = 18.4 (p < .0001) and was therefore excluded.

2. We conducted another pilot study in which 82 students (16 men, 66 women, M_age = 20.29, SD = 4.05) were randomly assigned to the high vs. low boredom condition similar to Experiment 1, and reported the intensity of 10 emotions (listed in Dutch alphabetical order: Fear, envy, frustration, hope, shame, pride, boredom, sadness, disgust, anger; 1 = not at all, 7 = very much). Then, they also indicated how purposeless, meaningless, senseless, “valueless” (in Dutch: “Waardeloos”, meaning without value), and insignificant they felt (1 = not at all, 7 = very much; α = .92). The repetitive task increased boredom (M = 4.79, SD = 1.72 vs. M = 2.97, SD = 1.50), F(1, 80) = 25.94, p < .001, η² = .25) and meaninglessness (M = 2.94, SD = 1.34 vs. M = 2.18, SD = 1.02), F(1, 80) = 8.15, p < .01, η² = .09). None of the 9 other emotions significantly differed between conditions (all ps ≥ .21).

3. A t-test with corrections for the unequal standard deviations yielded similar results, t(20.51) = 2.83, p = .01, d = 1.25.

4. Four outliers were excluded (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2000). We calculated Mahalanobis distance for each participant by regressing a standard normally distributed random variable on the dummy coded boredom condition, experienced boredom, meaninglessness, dummy coded instrumentality, and donation intentions. Four individuals exceeded, χ²(5) = 25.7 (p < .0001), and were therefore excluded.

5. The original Dutch term was “waardeloos.”

6. Contrast analyses with corrections for the unequal standard deviations yielded similar results: A main effect of boredom, t(46.47) = 3.82, p < .001, d = 1.13, a non-significant main effect of instrumentality, t(46.47) = 1.37, p = .18, d = 0.40, and the critical significant interaction, t(46.47) = 2.04, p = .05, d = 0.60.

7. Participants in the high boredom condition felt slightly sadder (M = 2.20, SD = 1.27) than those to the low boredom condition (M = 1.72, SD = 1.09), F(1, 84) = 3.62, p = .061, η² = .04. The boredom induction yielded a significant effect after controlling for sadness in our analyses of experienced boredom and meaninglessness, F(1, 83) = 38.83, p < .001, η² = .32, and F(1, 83) = 45.39, p < .001, η² = .35, respectively. The difference in sadness across conditions seized to be significant after controlling for boredom or meaninglessness, F(1, 83) = 0.58, p = .45, η² = .01, and F(1, 83) = 0.00, p = .99, η² = .00, respectively. The boredom condition × instrumentality interaction on donation intentions remained significant after controlling for sadness, F(1, 83) = 4.30, p = .04, η² = .05.

8. The reason for this is that these studies were conducted in a period before intensified discussions around the need for larger sample sizes.