Abstract
Research indicates that being bored affectively marks an appraised lack of meaning in the present situation and in life. We propose that state boredom increases eating in an attempt to distract from this experience, especially among people high in objective self-awareness. Three studies were conducted to investigate boredom’s effects on eating, both naturally occurring in a diary study and manipulated in two experiments. In Study 1, a week-long diary study showed that state boredom positively predicted calorie, fat, carbohydrate, and protein consumption. In Study 2, a high (vs. low) boredom task increased the desire to snack as opposed to eating something healthy, especially amongst those participants high in objective self-awareness. In addition, Study 3 demonstrated that among people high in objective self-awareness, high (vs. low) boredom increased the consumption of less healthy foods and the consumption of more exciting, healthy foods. However, this did not extend to unexciting, healthy food. Collectively, these novel findings signify the role of boredom in predicting maladaptive and adaptive eating behaviors as a function of the need to distant from the experience of boredom. Further, our results suggest that more exciting, healthy food serves as alternative to maladaptive consumption following boredom.
Highlights
Recent studies have highlighted that general measures of negative affect may not be strongly associated with eating behaviors (Evers et al, 2010; Adriaanse et al, 2011; Haedt-Matt and Keel, 2011)
To examine the impact of state boredom on dietary choices, participants’ daily level of boredom was specified as predictor of the various food contents, with covariates added to more complex models
This result indicated that, on average, with every standard deviation increase in boredom, approximately ten additional grams of carbohydrates were consumed, equivalent to the carbohydrate content of a packet of sweets. This association remained after controlling for the other variables, λ = 11.10, Se = 5.20, t(180.28) = 2.13, p = 0.03 (Model 2). These findings demonstrate that state boredom relates to higher levels of consumption including fats and carbohydrates, energy-dense food groups most relevant to the obesity epidemic (World Health Organization-Europe, 2007)
Summary
Recent studies have highlighted that general measures of negative affect may not be strongly associated with eating behaviors (Evers et al, 2010; Adriaanse et al, 2011; Haedt-Matt and Keel, 2011). Less researched affective predictor of eating behavior is boredom (Koball et al, 2012). Boredom continues to be an important predictor of eating behaviors after controlling for other affective states (Koball et al, 2012). This suggests that boredom can help to explain some eating behavior (Cleobury and Tapper, 2014).
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