A Boring Overview

Abstract

Boredom is a common experience for everyone across the world—no matter how old you are or where you live, you can get bored. Boredom occurs when we are feeling negative and we want to be doing something other than what we are currently doing. Scientists think we may experience boredom as a way to tell ourselves that it is time to move on to something different. What we choose to do next may depend on what we are currently doing; we may choose to do something different based on whether we experience boredom during class vs. at home. Boredom is associated with some negative behaviors, but it may also lead to positive things like more creativity. This article provides an overview of the definition of boredom, who experiences boredom, when they experience it, and what behaviors and brain areas are associated with boredom.

Full text

NEUROSCIENCE
Published: 16 December 2020
doi: 10.3389/frym.2020.558229
A BORING OVERVIEW
Caitlin Mills *and Catherine McGrath *
Department of Psychology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States
YOUNG REVIEWERS:
ORGANIZATION
FOR
HUMAN
BRAIN
MAPPING
AGES: 8–15
TIAN
AGE: 14
Boredom is a common experience for everyone across the world—no
matter how old you are or where you live, you can get bored.
Boredom occurs when we are feeling negative and we want to be
doing something other than what we are currently doing. Scientists
think we may experience boredom as a way to tell ourselves that it
is time to move on to something dierent. What we choose to do
next may depend on what we are currently doing; we may choose to
do something dierent based on whether we experience boredom
during class vs. at home. Boredom is associated with some negative
behaviors, but it may also lead to positive things like more creativity.
This article provides an overview of the definition of boredom, who
experiences boredom, when they experience it, and what behaviors
and brain areas are associated with boredom.
WHAT IS BOREDOM?
Almost everyone gets bored. The majority of people in the U.S.
experiences boredom at least once a day [2]. But what does it mean
BOREDOM
A negative experience
of wanting to do
something satisfying,
but being unable to
find a satisfying activity
at that time [1]. to be bored? Scientists commonly define boredom as the “experience
kids.frontiersin.org December 2020 | Volume 08 |Article 558229 |1

Mills and McGrath Boredom
of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity” [1]. This
definition means that boredom: (1) is a negative feeling, and (2) is
experienced when we cannot find something better to do. Boredom
occurs so frequently that scientists want to understand why we get
bored and what happens when people experience boredom.
This article provides an overview of what scientists think about
boredom, including who gets bored, why we experience boredom,
and what happens in the brain during boredom.
WHO GETS BORED AND WHEN?
Everyone across the world gets bored, no matter how old they are,
where they live, or what gender they are. People feel bored in all
kinds of places: at school, home, or work. One study asked over 3,000
people to rate their levels of state boredom throughout their days
STATE BOREDOM
The experience of
boredom in a
given moment.
during their everyday lives [2]. These scientists found that some groups
of people report being bored more often than others. For example,
men report more boredom than women, and people who are younger
report more boredom than older people. They also found that people
feel more bored in certain places and at certain times. People are more
bored at school, work, and when they are studying, or spending time
with coworkers or strangers. People are less bored when they are with
their friends or family, or at a restaurant. People also feel more bored
in the afternoon compared to the morning or night. When people get
bored, it might be because what they are doing is either too easy or
too dicult for them. When what we are doing is too easy or too hard,
we may lose interest and have a hard time paying attention. Boredom
can also happen when something that used to feel exciting starts to
become less exciting.
When our feelings of boredom inspire us to explore new things,
those new things can be good or bad. Scientists have found that
people who are bored more often may also feel lonely, angry, sad,
or worried [2]. Boredom can be more extreme in some cases, like
for people with depression or traumatic brain injuries [3]. There is
no cure or medicine people can take to be less bored but there are
many ways people attempt cope with boredom—some ways may be
healthier than others! Boredom may also make it harder to do well on
schoolwork. However, it is important to point out that boredom has
positives aspects too. Boredom may inspire us to come up with more
ideas, be creative, and use our imaginations.
WHY DO SCIENTISTS THINK WE GET BORED?
When people get bored, they experience a lot of dierent things.
People who are bored feel unhappy. They have a hard time paying
attention, and they often think about other things. They can feel tired,
kids.frontiersin.org December 2020 | Volume 08 |Article 558229 |2

Mills and McGrath Boredom
stuck, and like time is moving slowly. Some scientists think we feel
these negative things as a way to send a message to ourselves [4, 5].
The message from boredom is that we do not like what we are doing
and that it is time to move on to something dierent so we can
stop feeling bored. Feeling boredom may help us realize that what
we are doing is not interesting to us. Boredom may also motivate
people to explore new things. When we are doing something that
is not entertaining, boredom can motivate us to do something else.
You might think of boredom like an alarm. It goes o when we are
doing an activity that we do not want to do. Boredom could guide us
toward something that we want to do more. It may also help keep us
on track with our goals or prevent us from staying stuck on one thing
for too long.
Sometimes, when we are bored, we can stop doing what we are doing,
and start doing something else. But sometimes we cannot simply do
something dierent. This might happen in the classroom when we are
listening to something boring or have to practice writing words over
and over. Even though we may be bored, we cannot just get up and
leave the classroom without getting into trouble! It is not surprising
that people respond to boredom dierently depending on what they
are doing (in class vs. playing at home). Someone who is bored while
watching a movie has more choices than someone who is bored while
doing homework.
Some people may also let their minds wander o to dierent things
and rely on their imaginations to entertain them when they cannot
escape their boring situations [6]. They may also be able to find more
exciting ways to think about what they are doing. A person doing
homework has to finish it, so that person may escape boredom by
making the homework more exciting, possibly by singing the math
problems or creating a mental game involving the homework.
HOW DO SCIENTISTS STUDY BOREDOM?
There are a few dierent ways scientists typically study boredom. The
first one is focused on what is called trait boredom, which is a person’s
TRAIT BOREDOM
A person’s general
likelihood of
being bored.
general likelihood to be bored. You can think about trait boredom
kind of like a personality type—do you tend to be bored much of the
time? Trait boredom is often measured by asking people to fill out a set
of questions called the Boredom Proneness Scale [7]. This scale asks
people to rate dierent statements on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to
7 (strongly agree). Statements include things like, “time always seems
to be passing slowly” or “I often find myself with nothing to do, time
on my hands.” We are not aware of any studies that have followed the
same people throughout their whole lives to see how their boredom
changes. However, scientists have found that older people generally
tend to report boredom less often [2]. It is possible that a person’s level
kids.frontiersin.org December 2020 | Volume 08 |Article 558229 |3

Mills and McGrath Boredom
of trait boredom may change throughout their life, but other factors
probably play a role too.
The second type of research on boredom focuses on state boredom,
which is boredom in a particular situation or moment. State boredom
is dierent from trait boredom because everyone can experience
boredom at some points in the day, even if they do not tend to be
bored all the time. Researchers often study state boredom in a few
dierent ways. One of them is to simply get people to do a boring
task. This method is called boredom induction. For example, imagine
BOREDOM
INDUCTION
An activity that
researchers ask people
do to make them feel
bored. For example,
this could be watching
a boring video, reading
a boring story, or
counting for a long
period of time.
having to sit and watch a video of people folding clothes over and
over—would this make you bored? If you answered yes, that is what
most people say. Another method is to ask people to rate their levels
of boredom randomly while they complete some task like reading or
watching a movie. This method allows researchers to see when and
how often people get bored.
WHAT ABOUT THE BORED BRAIN?
Scientists have also started to look at what happens in the brain when
people experience boredom. Most of these studies have used an
imaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imagining
FUNCTIONAL
MAGNETIC
RESONANCE
IMAGINING (fMRI)
A technique commonly
used by scientists to
measure brain activity.
It looks at changes in
blood flow. It is safe
and painless.
(fMRI) to understand which brain regions are “active,” or being used
more in comparison to a non-boring situation. fMRI works using the
properties of the blood flowing throughout the brain. To get an fMRI,
a person lies down in a big tube while a large magnet circles around
their head. The fMRI machine can sometimes be loud, but it is painless!
Scientists who study boredom will often induce state boredom while
people are in the fMRI scanner, and then they compare their brain
activity to another condition, in which the same people are not bored.
For example, they can compare brain activity when people are bored
to when they are doing an engaging task that they like or a demanding
task that requires them to try hard and pay close attention. So far,
researchers have not been able to identify a specific set of brain areas
that make up boredom. However, some research points to a part of the
brain referred to as the default network [8]. The default network is a set
DEFAULT NETWORK
A large brain network
made up of multiple
regions that are
typically associated
with things like
internally-oriented
thoughts, mind
wandering, and
memories about your
own life (also called
autobiographical
memory).
of brain regions that are active when you are thinking about yourself
or others, or when you are thinking about the past or imagining the
future. Activation of the default network might explain why bored
people often let their minds wander and think about other things.
SUMMARY
Boredom is a negative feeling that most of us experiences daily, but
it may also be helpful in some cases. Studying boredom scientifically
can help us understand our own behavior and experiences. It is
exciting that many scientists are continuing to investigate boredom
in our everyday lives and how boredom is manifests in the brain.
kids.frontiersin.org December 2020 | Volume 08 |Article 558229 |4

Mills and McGrath Boredom
Hopefully we will continue to learn more about the good and bad
parts of the boring experience for years to come. For now, enjoy
your boredom!
REFERENCES
1. Eastwood, J. D., Frischen, A., Fenske, M. J., and Smilek, D. 2012. The unengaged
mind: defining boredom in terms of attention. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 7:482–95.
doi: 10.1177/1745691612456044
2. Chin, A., Markey, A., Bhargava, S., Kassam, K. S., and Loewenstein, G. 2017. Bored
in the USA: experience sampling and boredom in everyday life. Emotion
17:359. doi: 10.1037/emo0000232
3. Goldberg, Y., and Danckert, J. 2013. Traumatic brain injury, boredom and
depression. Behav. Sci. 3:434–44. doi: 10.3390/bs3030434
4. Bench, S. W., and Lench, H. C. 2013. On the function of boredom. Behav. Sci.
3:459–72. doi: 10.3390/bs3030459
5. Elpidorou, A. 2017. The good of boredom. Philos. Psychol.
31:323–51. doi: 10.1080/ 09515089.2017.1346240
6. Mills, C., and Christo, K. 2018. Finding consistency in boredom by appreciating
its instability. Trends Cogn. Sci. 22:744–7. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2018.07.001
7. Farmer, R., and Sundberg, N. D. 1986. Boredom proneness–the development
and correlates of a new scale. J. Pers. Assess. 50:4–17. doi: 10.1207/s153277
52jpa5001_2
8. Danckert, J., and Merrifield, C. 2018. Boredom, sustained attention and the
default mode network. Exp. Brain Res. 236:2507–18. doi: 10.1007/s00221-
016-4617-5
SUBMITTED: 01 May 2020; ACCEPTED: 30 November 2020;
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 16 December 2020.
EDITED BY: Athina Tzovara, University of California, Berkeley, United States
CITATION: Mills C and McGrath C (2020) A Boring Overview. Front. Young
Minds 8:558229. doi: 10.3389/frym.2020.558229
CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors declare that the research was conducted in
the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed
as a potential conflict of interest.
COPYRIGHT © 2020 Mills and McGrath. This is an open-access article distributed
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use,
distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original
author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication
in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use,
distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
kids.frontiersin.org December 2020 | Volume 08 |Article 558229 |5

Mills and McGrath Boredom
YOUNG REVIEWERS
ORGANIZATION FOR HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING, AGES: 8–15
As part of the Kids Live Review Event at OHBM 2020, Adrian, Louie, Pinaki, Reina,
and Tian, grilled the scientists on their work in front of an audience. This group of
elite reviewers provided pointed feedback that improved the quality of each of these
papers, ranging from boredom, irritability, and social learning, to brain surgeries and
Alzheimer’s disease.
TIAN, AGE: 14
I am very curious, and I love to learn about humans and our brains because they are
so complex and interesting. I also enjoy playing sports with my friends.
AUTHORS
CAITLIN MILLS
Caitlin Mills is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the
University of New Hampshire. Her research focuses on the correlates and
consequences of mind-wandering, boredom, and other states that occur during
complex learning. *caitlin.mills@unh.edu
CATHERINE MCGRATH
Catherine McGrath graduated from the University of New Hampshire Honor’s
Program in 2020. She is currently a post-baccalaureate research assistant in the
Aect, Computation, and Cognition Lab at the University of New Hampshire.
*cam1064@unh.edu
kids.frontiersin.org December 2020 | Volume 08 |Article 558229 |6