The benefit of distractions: the effect of social and non-social distractions on boredom and performance

Abstract

OF THE DISSETATION THE BENEFIT OF DISTRACTIONS: THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL AND NON-SOCIAL DISTRACTIONS ON BOREDOM AND PERFORMANCE By LYRA MICHELLE STEIN DISSERTATION DIRECTOR: DR. JOHN R. AIELLO The present study sought to test a cognitive capacity explanation of the distractionconflict theory of social facilitation (Baron, 1986). Introverts and extraverts performed a sustained attention to response task and a word-pair task in the presence of social and non-social distractions of varying salience. These tasks were performed in the presence of social distractions (coactor and evaluator) and non-social distractions (low and high complexity music) to determine if performance in the different conditions was moderated by extraversion. In addition, this study proposed that the mediators of the moderated relationship between condition and extraversion would be boredom, mind-wandering and task-unrelated thoughts. Results show the moderation of extraversion such that extraverts were facilitated with different forms of distractions while introverts were impaired. This indicates that extraverts need more outside stimulation to achieve performance facilitation while introverts tend to become over-stimulated with too much outside stimulation. When performance was facilitated in the SART task, the amount of ii task unrelated thoughts decreased, whereas when performance was impaired, task unrelated thoughts increased. For the word-pair task, when performance increased, levels of boredom decreased and when performance was impaired, the level of boredom increased. These results support a cognitive capacity explanation for the distractionconflict theory of social facilitation given that performance impairment was seen with under and over stimulation.