State Of Boredom Research Articles

Moving beyond an Addiction Framework for Phubbing: Unraveling the Influence of Intrinsic Motivation, Boredom, and Online Vigilance

Phubbing affects an individual’s social life and well-being. It has been found to affect romantic relationships, communication and social skills, and emotional and behavioral problems. Some relationships that phubbing has with, for example, smartphone addiction, Internet addiction, social media addiction, FoMO, and neuroticism are well known and established in the literature. However, phubbing is not exclusively reducible to addiction or personality-driven dynamics. For this reason, this study is aimed at exploring the motivations behind phubbing behavior. Firstly, the research is aimed at confirming the relationships between phubbing and technology-related addictions (e.g., social media addiction and mobile phone addiction) and personality traits (e.g., neuroticism and conscientiousness). In addition, the study is aimed at examining the relationship between phubbing and three potential individual-level factors for possible phubbing modeling: intrinsic motivation, boredom state, and online vigilance. A total of 551 participants took part in the study (mean age = 32 years; SD = 14.15 ). After confirming the relationships that phubbing has with the abovementioned variables, a hierarchical regression model was produced in order to model the phubbing phenomenon as comprehensively as possible. The final model explained approximately 72% of the variance in phubbing. The primary contributors to the explained variance were variables related to the dependent use of new technologies, dimensions of online vigilance, boredom, and intrinsic motivation for using new technologies. Sociodemographic factors and personality traits accounted for a smaller portion of the variance (3.4% and 9.1%, respectively). These findings suggest that the individual-level factors driving phubbing behavior are related to intrinsic motivation, online vigilance, and boredom, rather than sociodemographic factors or personality traits. The study encourages further research to explore and expand upon the range of motivations underlying phubbing behavior, while considering factors related to dysfunctional or addictive technology use.

Intervention of industry education integration on students’ burnout in Japanese learning

Background Learning burnout refers to the behavioural states of boredom, frustration and depression that occur when students are not interested in learning behaviours but are unable to avoid them. It is influenced by learning attitudes, motivation and methods, and personality traits. Differences in language learning habits and the difficulty of learning Japanese vocabulary make students show more negative emotions when learning Japanese online and offline. Therefore, the study proposes a new way of teaching based on the perspective of industry-teaching integration to help improve the situation of learning burnout.Subjects and MethodsThis study takes Japanese language students with burnout as the research object. The subjects were divided into a teaching improvement group (regular classroom + industry-teaching integration mode) and a teaching routine group (regular teaching mode). The improvement group is a combination of Japanese language learning and social field practice projects. Data were collected on students’ burnout and emotions in the two teaching modes with the help of the Scale for the Evaluation of Mental Health (SCL-90) and the Learning Burnout Scale for University Students (LBUS).ResultsAfter the experimental intervention, there was a statistically significant difference in the burnout scale scores of the two groups of students (P<0.05), and the improved teaching model (regular classroom + industry-teaching integration mode) effectively alleviated the students’ burnout in Japanese language learning.ConclusionsThe teaching mode under the perspective of industry-teaching integration can effectively combine classroom teaching with professional practice, improve students’ learning burnout, and realize the regulation of their mental health.

Don't stop me now: Psychological effects of interrupting a moving pedestrian crowd and a video game.

Interruptions are a part of our everyday lives. They are inevitable in complex societies, especially when many people move from one place to another as a part of their daily routines. The main aim of this research is to understand the effects of interruptions on individuals from a psychological and crowd dynamics perspective. Two studies were conducted to investigate this issue, with each focusing on different types of interruptions and examining their psychological (emotion, motivation, arousal) and physiological (heart rate) components. Study 1 examined interruptions in a video game setting and systematically varied goal proximity (N = 61). It was hypothesized that being interrupted in the later stages of goal pursuit would create a high aroused impatience state, while interruptions in the earlier stages would produce a low aroused boredom state. However, the results showed that the hypothesized groupwise differences were not observed. Instead, interruptions created annoyance in all conditions, both psychologically and physiologically. Study 2 investigated interruptions in pedestrian crowds (N = 301) and used a basic motivational dichotomy of high and low motivation. In the experiments, crowds (80-100 participants) were asked to imagine that they were entering a concert hall consisting of a narrow bottleneck. The low motivation group reported feeling bored during the interruption, while the high motivation group reported feeling impatient. Additionally, a motivational decrease was observed for the high motivation group due to the interruption. This drop in motivation after the interruption is also reflected in the measured density (person/m2) in front of the bottleneck. Overall, both studies showed that interruption can have significant effects on individuals, including psychological and physiological impacts. The observed motivational decrease through interruption is particularly relevant for crowd management, but further investigation is needed to understand the context-specific effects of interruptions.

Perceived Teacher Enthusiasm and Professional Commitment: The Mediating Role of Boredom and Learning Engagement.

Some students in current society do not pursue careers related to their majors after graduation, which may be the result of low professional commitment of college students, and the teaching enthusiasm of college teachers presented in the classroom may influence students' professional commitment. This study considered the effect of teacher enthusiasm on students' emotional state of boredom during class and its effect on students' engagement in learning. This correlational study aims to explore the relationship between perceived teacher enthusiasm and professional commitment as mediated by class-related boredom and learning engagement. This study is a correlational design and adopts regression analysis. The respondents were college students (n=358; 68% female, 22% male) of different grades and majors from universities in Wenzhou, China. Questionnaires about perceived teacher enthusiasm, professional commitment, class-related boredom and learning engagement were adopted to measure the study variables. The results reveal that although there is no significant direct influence between perceived teacher enthusiasm and professional commitment, perceived teacher enthusiasm affects students' professional commitment through students' class-related boredom and learning engagement, and there is an indirect and statistically significant correlation between them. This study provides insight into the facilitative effect of teachers' increased enthusiasm on students' professional commitment and how this facilitative effect is triggered through the mediating role of class related boredom and learning engagement. Future research should explore the theoretical and teaching significance and how to guide and enhance students' professional commitment.

Older and Wiser? Age-related Change in State and Trait Boredom During Adolescence and Associations with Neural Correlates of Self-regulation.

The purpose of the current study was to examine age-related change in state and trait boredom in 12- to 17-year-old adolescents and test whether neurophysiological correlates of self-regulation relate to boredom during adolescence in the same way that has been found in adults. Eighty-nine 12- to 17-year-old adolescents participated. Three types of trait boredom were measured: boredom proneness, leisure boredom, and boredom susceptibility. State boredom was also measured after completing a boredom induction task while EEG was recorded. Slopes in frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) were extracted from the EEG as a measure of approach (leftward shifts) or avoidance (rightward shifts). A curvilinear relationship between age and boredom proneness and age and boredom susceptibility was observed, indicating trait boredom rises and falls across adolescence. State boredom, by contrast, increased linearly with age. Slopes in FAA inversely related only to boredom proneness, indicating higher levels of this type of trait boredom related to an avoidant response as a state of boredom ensues. We suggest the rise and fall of trait boredom across adolescence may be due to changes in person-environment fit during middle adolescence, whereas state boredom may increase with age due to improvements in attentional processes that mundane lab tasks do not satisfactorily engage. The link between FAA and only one type of trait boredom indicates self-regulatory processes and boredom are not yet strongly coupled in adolescence. Implications for prevention of negative behavioral health outcomes associated with high levels of trait boredom are discussed.

The Translation and Validation of a Multidimensional Tool for Measuring the Boredom State among Cameroonian Workers

This research involved developing a tool for measuring boredom state with a sample of Cameroonian workers. Boredom refers to a state of under-arousal, caused by the experience of an aversive situation of idleness, perceived as useless and discouraging (Rengade, 2016). Recent scientific literature highlights the adverse effects of boredom on workers' health and organisational performance (Vodanovich & Watt (2016). The lack of an operational tool to diagnose boredom at work limits the possibilities of managerial intervention aimed at developing appropriate managerial strategies. However, similar studies revealed an increase in the number of Cameroonian civil servants with work contracts, regular salaries, identified work stations, missions and work objectives to achieve, who report a permanent feeling of emptiness, monotony and dejection (Simaleu, 2021; Doumbeneny, 2021). We applied the cross-cultural validation procedure proposed by Vallerand (1989), to adapt the multidimensional state boredom instrument (MSBS) by Fahlman et al. to the Cameroonian context. The study was carried out in three stages with a sample of 469 civil servants. Our results are in line with the measurement model of the original version, which is a five-factor structure (low arousal, disengagement, high arousal, inattention and time perception). Despite the existing socio-cultural differences between the validation context of the original version and the Cameroonian context, the structure which is similar to the original version of the MSBS obtains better fit indices with the data collected from Cameroonian workers (CFI = .99; GFI: 0.99; SRMR = 0.05; RMSEA=.004). Since the Cameroonian version of the MSBS has been able to demonstrate adequate psychometric properties, it can therefore be used as a measure of boredom at work.

Life is either a daring adventure, or it is boring: The impact of COVID‐19 on immoral and nonmoral risk taking behaviors

AbstractFindings from correlational research suggest that people more likely to take risk during COVID‐19. However, little is known about the causal role of the coronavirus threat in the emergence of risk taking behaviors. Here, we conducted three diverse studies involving questionnaire‐based responses and actual measures of risk‐taking behavior across nonmoral and immoral domains. In support of our theoretical perspective, Experiment 1 revealed that participants who were exposed to the COVID‐19 threat were more prone to take risks than those in the control condition. Experiment 2 aimed to replicate the findings of Experiment 1 using a behavioral measure to capture participants' interest in risk taking. The results showed that the salience of COVID‐19 can increase individuals' willingness to take risks in a nonmoral domain, namely, bungee jumping. Experiment 3 provided a behavioral confirmation of the relationship uncovered in an immoral domain (i.e., bribery). Across three experiments, we found that boredom state mediated the effect of the pandemic influence on risk taking. Together, our research rounds out the picture of contributors to risk taking and underscores the cumulative destructive effect of COVID‐19. We discuss implications for research on COVID‐19 and risk taking, as well as practical significance for society at large.

Observation of Boredom during Repetitive Listening of the Same Music in Various Time Spans

Streaming services repetitively provide similar kinds of music, and listeners might get tired of them quickly. This is one of the serious problems for streaming services today. Boredom is developed with repetition, and it depends on personal preference. Therefore, boredom development depends on the time spans of the repetition and personal preferences when people listen to the same music over days. This study conducts an experiment that the participants repetitively listen to one music piece 294 times for seven days in a row to observe boredom development. We measured the boredom level as the reactional factor of the failure to keep the concentration and motivation of listening. As a result, the concentration decreased in the short-term, whereas the motivation decreased in the long-term. Therefore, we could distinguish the state of boredom by the length of the time span. In addition, compared to repetitive listening with a day as the short-term, repetitive listening every day in a week as the long-term had an equal or slightly higher power to generate boredom, but there is a weak correlation between boredom and preference for a music piece. In conclusion, the results showed that the amount of repetition had a stronger effect than personal preference for music, and people may get bored even with their favorite music when they listen too many times. Moreover, the behavior of the low-frequency alpha wave in the brain had only a weak relationship to the amount of listening within a day, not in the week.

People Cheat on Task Performance When They Feel Bored: The Mediating Role of State Self-Efficacy.

It is unclear whether the state of boredom is related to morality. The present study investigated how state boredom influenced cheating behaviors on task performance. In Study 1 (N = 104), participants were induced to feel bored, and then reported whether they had finished an anagram task (two sentences in the task were unsolvable). The results found that people with higher boredom showed more cheating behaviors than those with lower boredom on task performance. In Study 2 (N = 139), participants completed the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, and then completed the same anagram task as in Study 1, as well as a state self-efficacy scale. The results revealed that state self-efficacy mediated the effect of state boredom on cheating behaviors on task performance. In other words, a higher level of state boredom leads to a lower level of state self-efficacy, and the lower state self-efficacy then results in more cheating behaviors. The present study provides empirical evidence that state boredom has its moral function through state self-efficacy.

The Effect of Boredom on College Students' Meaning in Life: A Longitudinal Mediation Model.

Boredom is a common emotional experience in daily life adversely affecting individual physical health, mental health, and social functioning. Therefore, it is an important issue to improve the quality of life by ameliorating individuals’ state of boredom. We used a longitudinal research approach. First, we tested 728 participants with the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale (MSBS). Then, after 3 months, the participants filled out the Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (CFI), Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS), and Meaning of Life Questionnaire (MILQ); 715 valid questionnaires were obtained. Results showed that cognitive flexibility played a mediating role between boredom and the presence of meaning in life, but social support did not. The total effect of boredom on the presence of meaning in life was significant. Cognitive flexibility and social support played a mediating role between boredom and the search for meaning in life, respectively, but the overall effect of boredom on the search for meaning in life was not significant. This study found that boredom has different effects on the presence of meaning in life and the search for meaning in life. It can improve individuals’ sense of meaning in life by reducing boredom and improving cognitive flexibility and social support.

Naturalistic viewing conditions can increase task engagement and aesthetic preference but have only minimal impact on EEG quality

Free gaze and moving images are typically avoided in EEG experiments due to the expected generation of artifacts and noise. Yet for a growing number of research questions, loosening these rigorous restrictions would be beneficial. Among these is research on visual aesthetic experiences, which often involve open-ended exploration of highly variable stimuli. Here we systematically compare the effect of conservative vs. more liberal experimental settings on various measures of behavior, brain activity and physiology in an aesthetic rating task. Our primary aim was to assess EEG signal quality. 43 participants either maintained fixation or were allowed to gaze freely, and viewed either static images or dynamic (video) stimuli consisting of dance performances or nature scenes. A passive auditory background task (auditory steady-state response; ASSR) was added as a proxy measure for overall EEG recording quality. We recorded EEG, ECG and eye tracking data, and participants rated their aesthetic preference and state of boredom on each trial. Whereas both behavioral ratings and gaze behavior were affected by task and stimulus manipulations, EEG SNR was barely affected and generally robust across all conditions, despite only minimal preprocessing and no trial rejection. In particular, we show that using video stimuli does not necessarily result in lower EEG quality and can, on the contrary, significantly reduce eye movements while increasing both the participants’ aesthetic response and general task engagement. We see these as encouraging results indicating that — at least in the lab — more liberal experimental conditions can be adopted without significant loss of signal quality.

EFL Teachers’ Immediacy and Professional Commitment on Students’ Boredom: A Review of Literature

Boredom is a psychological phenomenon that is defined as a state of hatred or incompatibility with any kind of repetitive experience in situations where liberation from instability is not possible and has several consequences. Boredom is one of the important causes of decreased motivation in EFL learners, and it is necessary to identify the factors affecting it. Therefore, this literature review addresses the state of boredom in relationship with teachers’ immediacy and professional commitment. Reviewing the literature has revealed that while teachers’ immediacy and professional commitments affect EFL learners’ boredom, other factors such as individual differences and environmental factors are in action. However, many studies confirmed that teachers play the most important role in decreasing or increasing learners’ state of boredom. The findings are significant for teacher educators to design more appropriate teacher education programs.

Boredom as a Possible Point of Departure for Meditation: Silence, Attention and Access to Being in Pablo D’Ors

Boredom is a characteristic of today’s society. At the individual level and at the social level, the Western countries suffer from boredom. There are extrinsic and intrinsic causes that can lead to boredom. In general, the state of boredom is reached when there are no problems to solve, when the profession does not demand our actions, or when we feel disappointed in realizing that the achievements of life do not give us sustained satisfaction over time. Boredom, especially if it becomes chronic, can be considered a negative thing. But it can also have something positive. The silence, stillness and inaction that define boredom are also characteristics that define the initial state of the person before meditation. This study aims to reflect the possibility of getting out of boredom through meditation. We can abandon boredom if we start a path of personal growth through increasing attention and perception; coming out of ourselves, leaving our own reflections and thoughts, reaching personal emptying and a voluntary impoverishment of our exteriority, which opens the door to us to encounter with being.

The Effectiveness of Using Muroja'ah Animation Media For Kids on the Ability to Memorize Al-Quran in Kindergarten

The use of this muroja'ah animation media is a way out to help students at ABA 1 Sukodono Kindergarten in memorizing the Qur'an. Against the background that to memorize the Qur'an, children still use the first method, namely reading the Qur'an and then memorizing it, but this method can usually be boring in memorizing the Qur'an, for the ability to memorize it will take a long time to increase if memorize it in a state of boredom and lack of enthusiasm. The problem formulation of this research is how easy it is to memorize the Qur'an so that when memorizing it does not get bored quickly and is more enthusiastic. The purpose of this study is to create an animation media to improve the ability to memorize the Qur'an. The research method used is an experimental quantitative method, namely research conducted to examine a problem from the phenomenon, as well as the relationship with the problem determined in the form of causality or functional . The data collection technique is to collect data in the form of student learning outcomes before and after using animation media. Data analysis is in the form of normality test, and homogeneity test. The results of this study indicate that the use of muroja'ah animation media is effective on memorization skills in Asyiyatul Bustanul Athfal 1 Sukodono Kindergarten. This is evidenced by an increase in the results of the pretest and posttest.

Exploring Wrist Pulse Signals using Empirical Mode Decomposition: Emotions

Emotion recognition is attracting considerable interest among the research community. In this work, Empirical Mode Decomposition has been implemented to derive both statistical and nonlinear features from Wrist Pulse Signal to classifying emotions namely anxiety and boredom. Wrist Pulse signals were extracted from 24 subjects using TETRIS game as a stimulus using Fission and Fusion approach. The acquired signals were pre-processed to remove unwanted noise and artefacts present within the signal. In addition, various classifiers namely Naiive Byes, Support Vector Machine, K-Nearest Neighbour, Logistic Regression, Linear Discriminant Analysis, Quadratic Discriminant Analysis were considered. Results from these classifiers indicate that both Logistic Regression and Quadratic Discriminant Analysis gave an indistinguishable accuracy of 99.71% (fission) and 77.08% (fusion) for anxiety state. Moreover, for boredom state, the highest classification accuracy was 66.67 % for Naiive Bayes using fission and 64.58% for fusion. Results highlight the impact of empirical mode decomposition with hilbert transform for the recognition of emotion from wrist pulse signals.

State boredom results in optimistic perception of risk and increased risk-taking

ABSTRACT While models considering the relationship between emotion and risk differ, many agree that emotions should affect risk in accordance with the adaptive function of the emotion. The function of boredom has been proposed to motivate the pursuit of an alternative experience. Based on this, we predicted that a state of boredom would result in an optimistic perception of risk and increased risk-taking. In Study 1 (n = 164) and Study 2 (n = 200) participants who were made bored (relative to neutral, anger, and fear conditions) reported less worry and concern and estimated fewer deaths for causes of death. Study 3 (n = 149) showed that participants who were made bored (compared to neutral and fear conditions) perceived risk more optimistically, reported being more likely to take risks, and perceived more potential benefits from taking risks. In Study 4 (n = 84) participants who were made bored (relative to neutral) took more risks on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task, a behavioural measure of risk. These findings show that state boredom results in an optimistic perception of risk, increased self-reported risk taking, and increased risk taking. Our results support boredom as an emotion that impacts risk in line with its function.

Boredom Proneness and Self-Control as Unique Risk Factors in Achievement Settings.

The state of boredom arises when we have the desire to be engaged in goal pursuit, but for whatever reason we cannot fulfil that desire. Boredom proneness is characterized by both frequent and intense feelings of boredom and is an enduring individual difference trait associated with a raft of negative outcomes. There has been some work in educational settings, but relatively little is known about the consequences of boredom proneness for learning. Here we explored the unique contributions of boredom proneness, self-control and self-esteem to undergraduate self-reported higher grade point average (GPA). Within educational settings, prior research has shown self-control and self-esteem to be associated with better academic performance. In contrast, boredom proneness is associated with lower levels of self-control and self-esteem. Our analyses replicate those previous findings showing that self-control acts as a positive predictor of GPA. Importantly, we further demonstrated, for the first time, that boredom proneness has a unique contribution to GPA over and above the contribution of self-control, such that as boredom proneness increases, GPA decreases. We discuss potential mechanisms through which boredom proneness may influence academic performance.

Boredom in the COVID-19 pandemic: Trait boredom proneness, the desire to act, and rule-breaking

The state of boredom presents a conundrum: When bored, we want to engage with an activity, but we don't want to engage with whatever is currently available. This conflict is exacerbated when external factors impose restrictions on the range of behaviors we can engage in, which is precisely the scenario we are currently facing, at a global level, during this period of social isolation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected data from 924 North American participants (530 Male, Mean age = 37.7 years) using the internet-based Mturk platform to examine the relation between self-reports of boredom proneness (using the Short Boredom-Proneness Scale) and individual responses to questions about compliance with social-distancing requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our sample replicated recent findings in boredom research, including a negative correlation between boredom proneness and self-control. We also provide novel evidence that highly boredom prone people have been more likely to break the rules of social isolation in a variety of ways (e.g., fewer hours spent in social isolation, poor adherence to social distancing as evidenced by increased likelihood of holding a social gathering and coming into proximity with more people than recommended). We further demonstrated that boredom proneness substantially mediates the association between self-control and rule-breaking. These results indicate that boredom proneness is a critical factor to consider when encouraging adherence to social isolation.

Emotion regulation in the marketplace: the role of pleasant brand personalities

People prefer to experience pleasant (vs. unpleasant) emotions and thus will take actions to repair unpleasant emotions. In addition, consumers perceive brands as possessing personality characteristics. This research demonstrates that consumers experiencing unpleasant emotions are attracted to brands with opposing, pleasant personalities as a means to repair their emotions. Studies 1a and 1b find that consumers respond more favorably to an exciting brand when they are motivated to repair the unpleasant emotional state of boredom (1a) and that a reduction in boredom in response to the exciting brand drives this effect (1b). Study 2 extends this finding by showing that anxious consumers are motivated to respond more favorably to a calm brand to repair their anxiety. In both cases, the effects only hold when participants are not first given the opportunity to alleviate their unpleasant emotion, thus providing evidence that motivation is the process driving consumers to respond more favorably to brands with pleasant personalities.

Central nucleus of the amygdala is involved in induction of yawning response in rats

Yawning behavior is characterized by mouth opening accompanied by deep inspiration, as well as arousal response, and is often observed not only in states of boredom or drowsiness, but also in stressful emotional situations in humans and animals. These phenomena suggest that yawning response may be an emotional behavior, possibly through activation of the central nucleus of amygdala (CeA), which is a critical region for emotional responses. However, the involvement of the CeA in triggering yawning remains unknown. Here, we investigated whether neuronal activation of the CeA by microinjection of L-glutamate into the CeA is able to induce stereotyped yawning responses in anesthetized, spontaneously breathing rats. In addition, we assessed the effects of the CeA stimulation on the activation of oxytocin (OT) and CRF (corticotropin-releasing factor) neurons in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN), which is responsible for induction of yawning, using c-Fos immunohistochemistry. Microinjection of L-glutamate into the CeA causes an initial depressor response in the blood pressure and an arousal shift on the electrocorticogram followed by a single inspiration, which is the same as the typical pattern of the stereotyped yawning response induced by the PVN stimulation. In addition, the CeA stimulation activated the neuronal activities of both OT and CRF neurons in the PVN, as well as yawning responses. These results indicate that activation of the CeA is involved in the induction of yawning response, suggesting that yawning is an emotional behavior.