Introduction

It is Friday afternoon. You just completed your manuscript, you graded all homework assignments, you prepared your upcoming lectures, your research assistants are trained well enough to enter data without your advice, your friends have adapted to your academic career and are now able to enjoy themselves without your presence and—to make matters even worse—in the coming week there will be a public holiday with only trash on TV. Much to your surprise, you do not feel the long anticipated satisfaction of having nothing to do, instead you feel an emptiness, you don’t feel like standing up nor like sitting down; you are utterly bored. Fortunately, many people are able to understand your pain and may sympathize with you because boredom is a common emotion (Farmer and Sundberg 1986), with some research estimating that between 18 and 50% of the population often feels bored (Klapp 1986; see also Eastwood et al. 2007).

Given the prevalence of boredom, it is surprising that research on the experience of boredom has only started to gain attention within psychology during the last decades. Most boredom research has focused only on correlates of boredom proneness (e.g., Dahlen et al. 2004; Farmer and Sundberg 1986). Past research identified correlations between boredom proneness and phenomena such as job dissatisfaction (e.g., Kass et al. 2001), anxiety (Gordon et al. 1997), pathological gambling (e.g., Blaszczynski et al. 1990), aggression (e.g., Rupp and Vodanovich 1997), and eating disorders (e.g., Stickney and Miltenberger 1999). However, there is no clarity with respect to affective, cognitive, and motivational signature of state boredom, and in particular how this is distinct (i.e. different) from other affective states.

What do we know about the experience of boredom? First of all, we roughly know what bored people look like. Wallbott (1998) investigated the bodily expression of actors imposing several emotional states—including boredom—and found that actors who act bored typically hold a collapsed upper body, lean their heads backwards, and engage in few bodily movements. Second, we know how bored people interpret their environment. In a classical study on cognitive appraisals of emotions, Smith and Ellsworth (1985; see also Leary et al. 1986) found that boredom is a negative experience in which people make appraisals of low effort and little attention; bored people feel that they have little on their minds and they have a clear idea of what is going on.

Boredom can motivate an array of behaviors. Some of these behaviors are immediately aimed at reducing how boring an activity or situation is, for example by seeking challenge or stimulation (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi 2000 Dahlen et al. 2004; Farmer and Sundberg 1986; Harris and Segal 1985; Vodanovich and Kass 1990), interest or engagement (e.g., Fisher 1998; Kanevsky and Keighley 2003; Sansone et al. 1992; Silvia 2006), or fun (e.g., Smith et al. 2009). Intriguingly, however, some motivated behaviors following from boredom surpass the activity or situation at hand. People who are bored seem motivated to engage in acts that provide them with a sense of meaning or purpose (e.g., Barbalet 1999; Bargdill 2000; Fahlman et al. 2009). Building on this research, we argue that the experience of boredom makes one’s activities seem meaningless, motivating people to create or re-establish a sense of meaningfulness. That is, escaping or counteracting the influence of boredom is an escape from the very unpleasant impression that one’s activities are meaningless (e.g., Van Tilburg and Igou 2011, in press; see also Fromm 1973). In order to achieve this goal, boredom does not motivate people to engage in one particular behavior; it motivates people to engage in any activity that seems meaningful to them. This hypothesis is consistent with recent approaches people’s meaning-regulation strategies. For example, Heine et al. (2006) pose that people’s overarching goal is to strive for a sense of meaning via satisfying particular needs (e.g., symbolic immortality). If these needs are threatened (e.g., due to mortality salience), then people protect or re-establish a sense of meaningfulness. Psychological responses such as defending cultural worldviews (e.g., in-group favoritism and out-group derogation) or pursuing social connectedness (e.g., seeking relationships) can be used relatively interchangeably in order to maintain a sense of personal meaningfulness. In this regard, we understand boredom as a threat to the perception of meaninglessness, motivating bored people to eliminate or counteract this influence by re-establishing a sense of meaningfulness.

Crucially, we argue that boredom is an emotion ‘in its own right’; that is, boredom has a set of features that is not explainable by any other emotion. More specifically, ‘feeling unchallenged’ and perceiving one’s ‘activities as meaningless’ is central to boredom, whereas other boredom correlates such as ‘unpleasantness’, ‘lack of interest’, or ‘disengagement’ may be shared with many other emotions such as sadness. In essence, we argue that the concepts of challenge and meaning explain the difference of boredom to other emotional states particularly well, and they indicate why boredom is important with regards to meaning-regulation.

One important benefit of identifying boredom’s unique experiential is that this provides a basis for predicting actions that are distinct from other affective states (e.g., Eastwood et al. 2007), that is, because it helps to understand which consequences are directly stemming from boredom rather than from other co-occurring affective states that may arise while people are engaged in boring activities (e.g., frustration, sadness, or anger). Past research on state boredom has typically looked at boredom without specifying other affective states that may co-occur or overlap with boredom. In fact, in their pioneering boredom research, Farmer and Sundberg (1986) already highlighted the importance of examining what makes boredom different from other affective states, yet such crucial systematic empirical work has still not been conducted (see also Vodanovich 2003). Our research was therefore designed to examine the specific experience of boredom and how it is different from other emotional experiences; in order to fulfill this aim, we systematically analyzed several boredom experiences and investigated their relationship to chronic boredom proneness and temporary state boredom. Importantly, we focused in the current research especially on the lack of challenge and meaning associated with boredom because these two factors can promote responses that may hold implications for future behavior, even after a specific boring activity has finished (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi 2000). Moreover, research has documented a vast amount of consequences of meaning threats such as mortality salience, uncertainty, low self-esteem, or a lack of social affiliation (e.g., Heine et al. 2006). Conceptualizing boredom as another type of meaning threat offers great potential for a fuller understanding of boredom and for meaning-regulation processes in general.

Overview

As the crucial starting point of our approach, we analyzed in Study 1 how boredom relates to five common experiential content domains: feelings, thoughts, action tendencies, actions, and emotivational goalsFootnote 1 (see Roseman et al. 1994) in comparison to how other emotions related to this experiential content. This ‘experiential content’ would reflect the state of boredom, but more precisely it would reflect a particular state, one that makes boredom distinct from other affective states. The experiential content of boredom was then validated in Study 2 by correlating it to an often used boredom measure, the boredom proneness scale (Farmer and Sundberg 1986). To investigate the validity of boredom’s experiential content in relation to the momentary experience of boredom, we correlated the distinct experiential content (i.e. distinct from other affective states) to participants’ state experience of boredom in Study 3. Finally, in Study 4 we tested whether boredom involves the distinct experiential experiences by manipulating state boredom. In addition, we tested whether the interpretation of the current situation (causal appraisal) would explain the effects of the boredom induction on its distinct experiential content.

Study 1: exploring boredom’s distinct experiential content

What do people experience when they are bored? And how does this experience differ from other negative affective states? We followed the procedure proposed by Roseman et al. (1994; see also Frijda et al. 1989) to identify the experiential content of boredom as this approach has proven to be a successful way to assess the feelings, thoughts, action tendencies, actions, and emotivational goals that are typical for specific emotions. In addition, the method proposed by Roseman and colleagues seemed valuable as their method was particularly designed to investigate the distinct experiential content of affective states. This approach has proven to be valuable in examining the distinctive elements of emotions (see also Van de Ven et al. 2009) and the relatively broad focus is also consistent with the important early work on boredom by Leary et al. (1986), who stress that the experience of boredom involves an array of “situational antecedents, psychological correlates, phenomenological concomitants, and behavioral consequences” (p. 968).

We explored participants’ past experiences of boredom and compared them to the past experiences of sadness, anger, and frustration. Participants were asked to indicate to what extent particular feelings, thoughts, action tendencies, actions and emotivational goals would be descriptive of how they felt during their recalled experience. As critical comparative affective states, we included sadness, anger, and frustration. Sadness was selected because it resembles a more general and prototypical state of negative affect. Moreover, early boredom research emphasized the potential difference between boredom and sadness (Farmer and Sundberg 1986), yet these concepts have not yet been directly compared (see Vodanovich 2003), even though boredom proneness is correlated with negative affect (e.g., Vodanovich et al. 1991). We compared boredom to anger because both states have been found to correlate in the past (e.g., Rupp and Vodanovich 1997); and assuming that a number of ‘boring’ tasks hinder the achievement of particular goals (e.g., having fun rather than having to copy letters; Smith et al. 2009), we chose to also compare boredom with frustration. Importantly, we predicted that boredom differs from sadness, anger, and frustration. In addition, we examined which contexts participants typically recalled in order to gain more insights into the situational characteristics of their boredom experiences.

Method

Participants and design

One hundred and six undergraduate students participated in this study and were randomly assigned to either one of the four emotion conditions (Emotion: Boredom vs. Sadness vs. Anger vs. Frustration) of a between factorial design. Two participants were excluded based on the outlier criteria proposed by Tabachnick and Fidell (2007), resulting in an effective sample size of 104 participants (60 females, 44 males; Mage = 20.53, SD = 3.08).

Procedure and materials

Students were approached on campus and asked if they were willing to participate in a short paper-and-pencil study on emotions. Upon agreement, participants filled out the consent forms and then gave us demographic information (age, sex). Participants then recalled and wrote down an experience of feeling bored, sad, angry, or frustrated. Specifically, they were asked to “describe what you experienced at that moment in such a way that another person would be able to easily imagine how you felt at that moment” in order to facilitate the detailed recollection of the experience. Next, they rated the experiential content of the emotion: their feelings, thoughts, action tendencies, actions, and emotivational goals. Following Roseman et al. (1994), we included two items per experiential content domain for each emotion. The items had the following structure: “When you were feeling (emotion), how much did the feeling make you (experiential content)?” Items relating to sadness, anger, and frustration were taken from Roseman and colleaguesFootnote 2 and we generated items for boredom based on literature. Specifically, research suggests that boredom relates to a lack of challenge (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi 2000), a lack of purpose or meaning (e.g., Barbalet 1999; Fahlman et al. 2009), and a subsequent desire for changing aspects of the situation or to pursue challenge and meaning in subsequent behavior (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi 2000; Smith et al. 2009). We focused especially on these domains of the proposed boredom experience because they seemed to be central to the boredom experience and may have a particularly pronounced impact on subsequent behavior (e.g., Sansone et al. 1992; Rupp and Vodanovich 1997). Participants rated their agreement to all of the items on five-point interval scales ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much).

As reflected in Table 1, the boredom feeling items read “When you were feeling bored, how much did the feeling make you feel restless and unchallenged at the same time?” (Item 1) and “When you were feeling bored, how much did the feeling make you feel that you did not know what to do with your time?” (Item 2). The thought items read “When you were feeling bored, how much did the feeling make you unable to stop thinking about things you would rather do?” (Item 3) and “When you were feeling bored, how much did the feeling make you think that the situation served no important purpose?” (Item 4). The action tendency items read “When you were feeling bored, how much did the feeling make you feel like doing something completely different?” (Item 5) and “When you were feeling bored, how much did the feeling make you feel like doing something purposeful?” (Item 6). The action items read “When you were feeling bored, how much did the feeling make you change to more exiting behaviors?” (Item 7) and “When you were feeling bored, how much did the feeling make you turn to a more meaningful activity?” (Item 8). Finally, the emotivational goal items read “When you were feeling bored, how much did the feeling make you want to do something more meaningful?” (Item 9) and “When you were feeling bored, how much did the feeling make you want to be challenged?” (Item 10). In the other emotion conditions, the items did not refer to boredom but to the other emotion in question (e.g., “When you were feeling sad …”) and ended with the experiential contents (see Roseman et al. 1994). Higher ratings indicate that an emotion has the particular experiential quality.

Table 1 Experiential content items of boredom (study 1)

To summarize, participants rated all forty experiential content items (always two items relating to feelings, thoughts, action tendencies, actions, and emotivational goals) that seem typical for each of the four emotions, and this was done in all four emotion conditions. Afterwards, participants were shown a funny Calvin and Hobbes cartoon to enlighten their moods, and then they were thanked, debriefed, and rewarded for their participation.

ResultsFootnote 3,Footnote 4

Results on individual items

We predicted that typical boredom experiences would be rated higher when boredom was recalled then when another emotion was recalled for each of the ten boredom items. For that purpose, we examined participants’ scores on these items across the conditions. First, we tested whether there were significant differences across all conditions using one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) with Emotion as independent variable and each item relating to the experiential content of boredom as dependent variable. Next, we conducted planned comparisons testing the prediction that participants in the boredom condition would yield higher average ratings on each of the items relating to boredom’s experiential content compared to sadness, anger, and frustration. We only considered an item to measure the distinctive experience of boredom if it satisfied two important criteria: (1) the ANOVA revealed significant differences across the emotion conditions, and (2) the boredom item was rated significantly higher in the boredom condition compared to each of the other emotion conditions. We implemented this conservative test in order to very precisely identify the distinct emotional content of boredom experiences.Footnote 5 As reflected in Tables 1 and 2, the results of these analyses indicated that at least one item in all the five experiential content domains satisfied the criteria for being distinctive of boredom, totaling seven out of the ten items. Specifically, these analyses indicated that boredom involves feeling restless and unchallenged at the same time (Item 1) while thinking that the situation serves no purpose (Item 4). One wants to engage in behavior that is different and purposeful (Items 5 and 6) and one is motivated to be challenged and to engage in something meaningful (Items 8, 9, and 10).

Table 2 Results for the experiential content items of boredom (study 1)

Results on aggregate of all items

When the composite measure of all ten boredom items (α = .79) was entered into a one-way ANOVA with Emotion as independent variable, differences between the conditions were highly significant, F(3, 100) = 23.44, p < .001, η2 = .41. As reflected in Table 3, participants’ scores were higher in the boredom condition (M = 3.90, SD = 0.44) compared to the sadness condition (M = 2.88, SD = 0.74), t(100) = 6.30, p < .001, d = 1.26, compared to the anger condition (M = 2.82, SD = 0.63), t(100) = 6.65, p < .001, d = 1.33, and compared to the frustration condition (M = 2.77, SD = 0.70), t(100) = 7.22, p < .001, d = 1.44. The sadness, anger, and frustration conditions did not differ significantly from each other (all ps > .53). Overall, these results indicate that the ten items relating to boredom’s experiential content were useful to differentiate between the experience of boredom compared to experiences of sadness, anger, and frustration.

Table 3 Results for the aggregated experiential content of boredom (Study 1)

Results on aggregate of most distinct items

Of all the proposed ten distinctive items, seven satisfied the two conservative distinctiveness criteria specified above and these seven covered all five experiential content domains (see Table 1, items indicated with a). We performed a similar analysis on the basis of our conservative criterion for distinctiveness. That is, we used the items where participants in the boredom condition gave significantly higher ratings to the experiential content in question than in any other emotion condition. We averaged these seven items into a single score of boredom’s distinctive experiential content (α = .80). A one-way ANOVA with the aggregated experiential content as dependent variable, and Emotion as independent variable revealed significant differences, F(3, 100) = 27.85, p < .001, η2 = .46. As can be observed in Table 3, in the boredom condition participants scored higher (M = 4.14, SD = 0.45) compared to the sadness condition (M = 2.86, SD = 0.86), t(100) = 6.64, p < .001, d = 1.33, compared to the anger condition (M = 2.65, SD = 0.72), t(100) = 7.76, p < .001, d = 1.55, and compared to the frustration condition (M = 2.75, SD = 0.71), t(100) = 7.54, p < .001, d = 1.51. The sadness, anger, and frustration conditions, however, did not differ significantly from each other (all ps > .28). The findings regarding the seven aggregated boredom items thus reveal that boredom is clearly distinct from experiences such as sadness, anger, and frustration.

Boredom situations

In order to understand what kind of boredom experiences were recalled, we also examined the situational characteristics of the participants’ descriptions. A first coder went through the boredom descriptions (N = 28) and generated situational categories. A second and third coder then independently categorized each description. There was a high consensus across the two coders (89%) and full agreement for the remainder was reached after the coders exchanged their views on the reasons for their categorizations. The most frequently described boredom experience related to educational settings (N = 10; e.g., attending a boring lecture), followed by situations in which participants were alone (N = 5; e.g., friends were away for the weekend), boredom experienced during leisure activities (N = 3; e.g., nothing of interest on TV), and being bored at work (N = 2; e.g., working in a shop with few customers). The remaining participants (N = 8) focused on boredom’s affective character without providing details of the situational characteristics of their experiences.

Participants’ ratings of the distinct experiential content items were quite high across all of these different categories (all Ms ≥ 3.95), when compared to the sadness, anger, and frustration conditions (all Ms ≤ 2.86).Footnote 6 Moreover, the rated distinct experiential content did not differ much between the categories: Participants’ ratings of the aggregated distinct boredom items were highest for work boredom (M = 4.43, SD = 0.20, N = 2), followed by feeling bored while being alone, (M = 4.26, SD = 0.34, N = 5), boredom in educational settings (M = 4.10, SD = 0.56, N = 10), and leisure boredom (M = 3.95, SD = 0.08, N = 3). For participants who gave descriptions that did not offer information regarding the specific situation the scores fell more or less in the middle (M = 4.10, SD = 0.50, N = 8). Overall, boredom situation thus ranged from educational, work, and leisure settings, to being alone; each of these situation seemed to involve relatively similar scores on boredom’s distinct experiential content.

Discussion

The experiential content of boredom was investigated with respect to feelings, thoughts, action tendencies, actions, and emotivational goals that differentiate boredom from sadness, anger, and frustration. Using a conservative criterion regarding the distinctiveness of experienced content of one emotion to other emotions, we found that seven items clearly captured a distinct experiential content of boredom; boredom involves feeling restless and unchallenged at the same time while thinking that the situation serves no purpose. One wants to engage in behavior that is different and purposeful, and this is accompanied by turning to activities that are considered to be more meaningful. These findings lend support to our general hypothesis that bored people feel unchallenged, that they think the situation and their activities are meaningless, motivating them to engage in more meaningful activities. Importantly, this particular configuration of experiences distinguishes boredom from the other negative affective states such as sadness, anger, and frustration: It not merely confirms that these elements are part of the state boredom experience, but it suggests that they are not merely reflecting co-occurring experiences of other negative affective states.

Study 1 was a first step in the identification of the experiential content of boredom. Participants recalled boredom experiences and experiences of other emotions and then reported their characteristics. Boredom situations in the current study involved educational, work, leisure settings, and situations in which one was alone. In additional studies, we tested whether the identified distinct experiential content of boredom is consistent with individual differences in boredom proneness (Study 2) and with the actual state experiences when people are bored, by measuring (Study 3) and manipulating (Study 4) state boredom.

Study 2: experiential content and boredom proneness

Is vulnerability for being bored associated with the typical configuration of boredom experiences? That is, do people who are prone to being bored more frequently experience what we identified as the distinct set of boredom experiences? We designed Study 2 in order to examine the validity of boredom’s identified experiential content (Study 1) by relating it to the boredom proneness scale (Farmer and Sundberg 1986)—a measure of people’s disposition for being bored. The boredom proneness scale is regarded as a valid and reliable boredom proneness measure (Farmer and Sundberg 1986) and has been shown to predict a wide variety of phenomena (e.g., anger, aggression, impulsiveness, sensation seeking, lack of and search for meaning in life; see Dahlen, et al. 2004; Rupp and Vodanovich 1997; Van Tilburg and Igou 2011). On one level, a correlation between boredom proneness and boredom’s distinct experiential content would mean that people prone to be bored more often have the distinct experience of boredom than people who are less prone to be bored. On another level, a correlation would suggest that the identified experiential content partially represents the boredom construct. Importantly, the existence of a correlation would confirm that the previously identified distinct experiential content of boredom is not merely restricted to recalled boring situation but also relates to another boredom indicator, in this case individual differences in the vulnerability of experiencing boredom.

Method

Participants and design

Thirty-five undergraduate students participated in a correlational paper and pencil study (21 females, 14 males; Mage = 21.60, SD = 2.34) in exchange for a candy bar.

Procedure and materials

Students were asked to participate in a short study on emotions and attitudes. Upon agreement, we provided participants with the informed consent form before asking them for demographic information (age, sex). To make the level of measurement similar to that of the boredom proneness scale, the seven distinct experiential content items (Study 1) were revised so that they would measure frequent experiences. Specifically, the items read “I often feel restless and unchallenged at the same time.”, “I often think that the situation serves no important purpose.”, “I often feel like doing something completely different.”, “I often feel like doing something more purposeful.”, “I often turn to a more meaningful activity.”, “I often want to do something more meaningful.”, and “I often want to be challenged.” Participants rated to what extent each of the items were descriptive of them on a five-point interval scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (most of the time). None of the items included an explicit reference to boredom. Next, participants worked on the boredom proneness scale (Farmer and Sundberg 1986), which includes items such as “Most of the time I just sit around doing nothing”; “I am good at waiting patiently” (reversed), measured with five-point interval scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (most of the time). Afterwards, participants were thanked, rewarded, and debriefed.

Results and discussion

Participants’ scores on the experiential content items were averaged (α = .79) as were their scores on the boredom proneness scale after recoding reversed items (α = .82). Next, we calculated the correlation between the two measures. As predicted, we obtained a significant positive correlation between the experiential content and the boredom proneness scale (r = .48, p < .01), indicating that the distinct experiential content identified in Study 1 overlaps with boredom proneness. In other words, the correlation between the measured boredom proneness—a dispositional measure of boredom—and boredom’s distinct experiential content signals that people who become more easily bored more often have the distinct boredom experiences. Importantly, these results lend credibility to the assumption that this experiential content represents the boredom construct. This study used a dispositional indicator of boredom; in Study 3 we examined whether the distinct boredom experiences overlap with state boredom.

Study 3: experiential content and measured state boredom

The previous studies focused on recalled and dispositional boredom but did not directly show what bored people feel in the moment when they are bored. Do people who are momentarily bored have more of the distinct boredom experiences than people who are momentarily less bored? Based on the identified distinct experiential content of boredom in Study 1 we designed Study 3 to examine the validity of boredom’s identified experiential content by testing whether it relates to actual state experiences of boredom assessed at the end of a 2-h psychology tutorial. A correlation between the experiential content of boredom with the momentary experience of boredom would again validate the identified experiential content. In addition, the existence of a correlation would again confirm that the previously identified distinct experiential content of boredom is not merely restricted to recalled boring situations or dispositional boredom but also translates well to state experiences as a boredom indicator.

Method

Participants and design

Seventy-seven undergraduate students participated in a correlational paper and pencil study (54 females, 23 males; Mage = 19.31, SD = 3.86) in exchange for partial course credit.

Procedure and materials

Students engaged in this research as part of their course requirement and this study took place at the end of a first year 2-h psychology tutorial in which the topic of entering data and labeling variables was covered, which posed an ideal setting for examining state boredom. The data collection was situated in class rooms of between 20 and 30 students who all worked quietly and individually on the materials. After giving informed consent, participants were asked for demographic information. The seven items of our boredom experience measure (Study 1) were revised in such a way that they accounted for state experiences. Specifically, the items read “When you focus on your feelings at the moment, how much does the feeling make you feel restless and unchallenged at the same time?”, “When you focus on your feelings at the moment, how much does the feeling make you think that the situation served no important purpose?”, “When you focus on your feelings at the moment, how much does the feeling make you feel like doing something completely different?”, “When you focus on your feelings at the moment, how much does the feeling make you feel like doing something more purposeful?”, “When you focus on your feelings at the moment, how much does the feeling make you turn to a more meaningful activity?”, “When you focus on your feelings at the moment, how much does the feeling make you want to do something more meaningful?”, and “When you focus on your feelings at the moment, how much does the feeling make you want to be challenged?” Participants rated the extent to which they agreed to each of the items on five-point interval scales ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). In addition, participants indicated the extent to which they experienced state boredom by rating the item “When you focus on your feelings in this moment, how much do you feel bored?” on a five-point interval scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). Afterwards, participants were thanked, rewarded, and debriefed.

Results and discussion

Participants’ scores on the experiential content items were averaged (α = .78) and correlated with the state boredom ratings. A significant positive correlation was obtained (r = .58, p < .001), indicating that the more the participants felt bored at the time of the study, the more they agreed with the experiential content that was found to be most distinctive for boredom. Importantly, this study confirms that the more people experience boredom in a particular moment the more their experiences are in line with the distinct experiential content reported in Study 1. In Study 4, we tested whether the experiential content of boredom would also be observed when boredom was manipulated and whether the causal appraisal of the situation as ‘boring’ would explain the effects of our manipulation on the distinct boredom experiences.

Study 4: experiential content, manipulated state boredom, and the interpretation of the situation

Study 4 was designed to examine two questions. We first of all tested whether state boredom causes the distinct boredom experience. Extending the investigation of the distinct experiential content of boredom from yet another perspective would further confirm that the distinct experiential content represents typical boredom experiences. To understand an emotion requires an understanding of people’s interpretation of the self and the situation (e.g., Frijda 1988, 2007; Lazarus and Smith 1988; Schachter and Singer 1962; Scherer 1997). The experiential content of boredom reflects for the most part the self-related descriptive appraisal of this emotion. That is, how people experience the situation and how they plan to respond. However, appraisals are also important to understand how the interpretation of the situation causes the emotion, that is, the causal appraisals or appraisals as antecedents of emotions (e.g., Frijda 2007; Scherer 1997). For state boredom, the situation is of central importance. We therefore also tested whether the interpretation of the situation is accountable for the resulting feelings, thoughts, goals, and actions.

Method

We adopted the notion that the distinct boredom experiences (feelings, thoughts, emotivational goals, action tendencies, actions) may in part result from people’s interpretation of the situation as boring. Consequently, we tested whether the effects of the boredom manipulation on boredom experiences would be mediated by the extent to which the situation was perceived as boring. We also controlled for the states of frustration, anger, and sadness to test whether the boredom manipulation had a distinct effect on state boredom compared to these other emotional states.

Participants and design

Thirty-six undergraduate students participated in a short study and were assigned to either one of the conditions (Boredom: High vs. Low) of a between factorial design in exchange for a candy bar. One participant was excluded based on the outlier criteria proposed by Tabachnick and Fidell (2007), resulting in an effective sample size of thirty-five participants (22 females, 13 males; Mage = 21.66, SD = 3.58).Footnote 7

Procedure and materials

Students were asked to participants in exchange for a candy bar. Upon agreement, participants gave their informed consent and reported demographic information. Boredom was manipulated by having participants engage in the repetitive task of copying either only 2 (Low Boredom) versus 10 (High Boredom) references taken from an October 2009 Wikipedia entry on concrete (e.g., “Kosmatka, S.H.; Panarese, W.C. (1988). Design and control of concrete mixtures. Skokie, IL”). After copying either 2 or 10 references, participants were asked for their causal appraisal of the situation “To what extent did the task you just completed make you feel bored?” on a seven-point interval scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). Afterwards, they worked on the seven distinct boredom experience items (Study 1). Specifically, the items read “To what extent do you feel restless and unchallenged at the same time?”, “To what extent do you think that the situation served no important purpose?”, “To what extent do you feel like doing something completely different?”, “To what extent do you feel like doing something more purposeful?”, “To what extent do you wish to turn to a more meaningful activity?”, “To what extent do you want to do something more meaningful?”, and “To what extent do you want to be challenged?” Participants rated their agreement on five-point interval scales ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). Next, we had participants rate the extent to which they felt bored, sad, angry, and frustrated on four similar five-point interval scales in order to measure their emotional states using four items (“To what extent do you feel bored?”, “To what extent do you feel sad?”, “To what extent do you feel angry?”, “To what extent do you feel frustrated?”). Afterwards, participants were thanked, rewarded, and debriefed.

Results

Interpretation of the situation

The item measuring whether participants perceived the reference copying task as boring was subjected as a dependent variable to a one-way ANOVA with the boredom manipulation as independent variable. As reflected in Table 4, this analysis indicated that in the high boredom condition participants thought more strongly that the task made them feel bored (M = 4.83, SD = 1.95) than participants in the low boredom condition (M = 3.00, SD = 2.00), F(1, 33) = 7.55, p = .01, η2 = .19.

Table 4 The effects copying references on experiences (Study 4)

Distinctive emotional state

The items measuring state boredom, sadness, frustration, and anger were each entered as dependent variable into four one-way ANOVAs with the boredom manipulation as independent variable. As reflected in Table 4, these analyses revealed that participants felt significantly more bored after copying 10 references (M = 3.61, SD = 1.42) versus 2 references (M = 2.65, SD = 1.17), F(1, 33) = 4.78, p = .04, η2 = .13, indicating the effectiveness of our manipulation. No reliable differences, however, were found on feeling sad (M = 2.00, SD = 1.28 vs. M = 1.44, SD = 0.71), F(1, 33) = 2.59, p = .12, η2 = .07, feeling angry (F < 1), or feeling frustrated (F < 1).Footnote 8

Specific boredom experiences

The participants’ scores on the experiential content items were averaged (α = .87) and were subjected as dependent variable to a one-way ANOVA with the boredom manipulation as independent variable. As reflected in Table 4, this analysis indicated that in the high boredom condition participants agreed more to the experiential content items (M = 4.05, SD = 0.90) than in the low boredom condition (M = 3.30, SD = 0.87), F(1, 33) = 6.21, p = .02, η2 = .16.

Interpretation of situation as mediator

The interpretation of causality to the situation (i.e., the task) has implications for the specific boredom experiences, that is, how people feel, what they think, and what they plan to do. Therefore, the appraisal of the task as being boring was expected to mediate the effect of boredom (high vs. low) on the experiential content scores. An analysis of statistical mediation was performed following the procedure of Preacher and Hayes (2008). As reflected in Fig. 1, this analysis indicated that participants scored higher on boredom’s experiential content in the high than in the low boredom condition, B = 0.75, S e  = 0.30, β = 0.40, t(32) = 2.49, p = .02,Footnote 9 and the causal appraisal was more pronounced in the high versus the low boredom condition, B = 1.83, S e  = 0.67, β = 0.43, t(32) = 2.75, p = .01. Moreover, the non-mediated effect of the boredom manipulation on the experiential content was not significant (t < 1) while the appraisal was significantly associated with the experiential content, B = 0.26, β = 0.60, S e  = 0.06, t(32) = 4.14, p < .001. The mediated effect, estimated using 5,000 accelerated and bias-corrected bootstraps as recommended by Hayes (2009), confirmed the existence of a significantly mediated path, 0.11 < B 95 < 1.04, S e = 0.23, 0.26 < β < 0.56.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Mediation by causal appraisal on the experiential content (Study 4). The mediation model on manipulated boredom, task boringness, and the experiential content of boredom, as analyzed in Study 4. Estimates were obtained using the mediation procedure suggested by Preacher and Hayes (2008), employing an accelerated and bias-corrected bootstrap estimation method for the indirect effect, with 5,000 bootstraps. **p < .01, ***p < .001. Indirect effect of the boredom manipulation on experiential content: 0.11 < B95 < 1.04, Se = 0.23

The finding that our manipulation only significantly affected state boredom and not the other negative emotional states suggests that the effect of our manipulation on the experiential content of boredom was unlikely to be associated with sadness, anger, frustration, but it was likely to be associated with boredom. To provide further evidence for this conclusion, we re-estimated the second mediation model after including sadness, anger, and frustration as covariates consistent with the methodological recommendations of Preacher and Hayes (2008). As reflected in Fig. 2, this analysis indicated that participants scored higher on boredom’s experiential content in the high than in the low boredom condition, B = 0.76, S e  = 0.28, β = 0.30, t(29) = 1.97, p = .06, and the causal appraisal was more pronounced in the high versus the low boredom condition, B = 1.47, S e  = 0.67, β = 0.35, t(29) = 2.23, p = .03. Moreover, the non-mediated effect of the boredom manipulation on the experiential content was not significant (t < 1) while the appraisal was significantly associated with the experiential content, B = 0.18, S e  = 0.07, β = 0.40, t(29) = 2.49, p = .02. The mediated effect, estimated using 5,000 accelerated and bias-corrected bootstraps as recommended by Hayes (2009), confirmed the existence of a significantly mediated path, 0.00 < B 95 < 0.74, S e = 0.23, 0.00 < β < 0.41. These results further confirm our assumption that the experiential content of boredom experiences is distinct from other emotional states.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Mediation by causal appraisal on the experiential content, while controlling for sadness, frustration, and anger (Study 4). The mediation model on manipulated boredom, task boringness, and the, experiential content of boredom while controlling for sadness, anger, and frustration as analyzed in Study 4. Estimates were obtained using the mediation procedure suggested by Preacher and Hayes (2008), employing an accelerated and bias-corrected bootstrap estimation method for the indirect effect, with 5,000 bootstraps. *p < .05. Indirect effect of the boredom manipulation on experiential content: 0.00 < B95 < 0.74, Se = 0.19

Discussion

This study had multiple purposes. Most importantly, we demonstrated that state boredom, manipulated via a task, resulted in the distinct pattern of experiences for boredom. In addition, no other emotional state (i.e., sadness, anger, or frustration) was affected by our manipulation and these other emotional states did not have a distinct association with the experiential content, thus indicating—consistent with the results of Study 1—that boredom can be distinguished from other emotional states in terms of its experiential content. Finally, a mediation analysis further revealed that the increase in boredom’s experiential content could be fully explained by the causal attribution of the affective state. That is, the specific situation (task) was associated with a pattern of feelings, thoughts, action tendencies, actions, and emotivational goals that emerges when participants were bored and these experiences were distinct from other emotions.

The identified experiential content of boredom was again validated—this time by experimental induction, and it was distinct from sadness, anger, and frustration. This study adopted a broad perspective on the experience of boredom as it addressed an antecedent (here the interpretation of the situation), boredom’s experience, and the subsequent goals that boredom promotes. Effectively, this study further confirmed that boredom’s distinctiveness involves feeling restless and unchallenged at the same time, while thinking that the situation serves no purpose. One wants to engage in behavior that is different and purposeful, and this is accompanied by turning to activities that are considered to be meaningful.

General discussion

Our research was designed to investigate what makes the boredom experience distinct from other affective states. Based on the literature of consequences of boredom, we adopted a meaning-regulation framework to conceptualize the typical boredom experience and how it is distinct from other emotional experiences. We tested our framework of boredom in a series of four studies. In Study 1, participants were asked to recall and describe a past experience of boredom, sadness, anger, or frustration and subsequently rated items that potentially captured the experiential content. We followed the procedure by Roseman et al. (1994) to identify boredom’s unique emotional signature across a variety of experiential content domains. Importantly, by comparing participants’ ratings of the feelings, thoughts, action tendencies, actions, and emotivational goals across the emotion conditions, we were able to assess the experiential configuration that distinguished boredom from other negative emotions. The results indicate that boredom has a unique experiential content: Boredom—experienced in educational settings, work settings, leisure contexts, and while being alone—involves feeling restless and unchallenged at the same time, while thinking that the situation serves no purpose. One wants to engage in behavior that is different and purposeful, and this is accompanied by turning to activities that are considered to be meaningful.

The particular experiential content of boredom was validated in Study 2 by correlating it to one of the most often used boredom measures in research: the boredom proneness scale (Farmer and Sundberg 1986). That is, a positive correlation was found between boredom’s phenomenology and individual difference in boredom proneness, confirming that the identified distinct experiential content is indeed related to the construct of boredom. In Study 3, we correlated the identified experiential content to the state experiences of boredom assessed at the end of a psychology tutorial on date entry and giving labels to variables. These results indicate that the distinct experiential content of boredom is also related to actual state boredom experiences, thus further lending construct validity to the identified distinct boredom experience.

In Study 4, we manipulated state boredom directly by means of a repetitive task. As expected, greater boredom caused more of the typical, distinct experiences of boredom. Furthermore, the effect of the boredom induction on the distinct experiential content was mediated by the causal appraisal, in our case, the attribution of the affective state to the features of the situation. Note that the measured state boredom was associated with the typical experiential content whereas states of sadness, anger, and frustration could not explain this relationship, confirming once more that the boredom experience differs from that of other negative emotions. Adding to the research on what bored people look like (Wallbott 1998), and to research that indicates that boredom is negative experience in which people make appraisals of low effort and little attention with bored people feeling that they have little on their minds and that they have a clear idea of what is going (Smith and Ellsworth 1985), we thus provide evidence that boredom has a distinct experiential content, reflected in people’s feelings, thoughts, action tendencies, actions and emotivational goals.

Essentially, our results highlight that the affective experience of boredom informs a person about the situation and the self (e.g., for an affect-as-information model see Schwarz and Clore 2007; Clore and Bar-Anan 2007). Specifically, the experience informs a person that the present activity or situation lacks challenge and meaning, and that some effort needs to be taken in order to resolve this issue. In this sense, the affective state of boredom informs oneself about the situation that one is in. Importantly, this self-regulatory function of boredom is distinct in that it is not shared by affective experiences such as frustration, anger, or sadness, and the experience of boredom thus serves a relatively unique purpose.

One benefit arising from a better understanding what it means to feel bored and how this differs from other negative emotions is the opportunity to distinguish between the effects that stem from each of these emotions. Many factors have been suggested to be either correlates or components of boredom, but it remains largely unclear whether they are really part of the experienced boredom rather than co-occurring affective states. Our research provides a first step in identifying unique components of boredom and adds to the understanding of consequences of boredom. Boredom research suggests that people who are easily bored may behave anti-socially by being aggressive (e.g., Rupp and Vodanovich 1997). Dahlen et al. (2004), suggest that a significant part of the association of boredom proneness with aggression could not be explained by sensation seeking only. Our findings make it possible to develop tests of how boredom is experienced and how it affects behavior, with the potential of identifying factors that contribute to the boredom-aggression link.

The presented research provides a basis for a deeper understanding of the boredom experience and its potential consequences. Sure, it is not surprising that people don’t want to engage in uninteresting activities, but our research goes far beyond this notion. Our research shows that boredom is associated with a particular experience on multiple levels, and our studies indicated that these experiences are most typical for boredom compared to sadness, anger, and frustration. Most importantly, the boredom experience must not be understood as one particular experience (e.g., feeling restless, experiencing a lack of challenge), it is the configuration of experiences that makes it unique. Bored people feel restless and unchallenged, they think that the situation serves no purpose, they want to engage in behavior that is different and purposeful, and thus turn to activities that are considered to be meaningful. It is this affective signature that characterizes boredom and distinguishes it from other affective states, and understanding boredom helps in predicting its behavioral consequences. We wish to preclude the misunderstanding that challenge and meaning are the only two components that make boredom different from other affective states. Based on our reading of the literature on boredom experiences, we focus on ‘meaning’ and ‘challenge’ as the two concepts that are highly distinctive for boredom, and our hypothesis was confirmed across a series of four studies.

We started our investigation based on the procedure by Roseman et al. (1994; see also Frijda 1986; Frijda et al. 1989; Van de Ven et al. 2009). This research investigated central experiential contents of emotions, that is, experiential contents that are relevant across emotions in general. As in Roseman and colleagues’ research, some overlap between these elements of experiential content is inherent in this approach. For example, ‘action tendencies’ must—to some degree—be related to other elements such as ‘actions’. Essentially, our results indicate that the meaning-regulation process of boredom is not only reflected in the motivational components of boredom (e.g., action tendencies, emotivational goals), but also manifest in the thoughts and feelings associated with boredom.

Based on the configuration of experiences that are distinctive for boredom, we further conclude that boredom is strongly associated with self-regulatory processes and especially two self-regulation goals seem to be promoted according to our findings. Boredom seems to make people strive for challenge or stimulation (e.g., Dahlen et al. 2004), and boredom promotes the maintenance and restoration of the perception that one’s activities are meaningful (e.g., Heine et al. 2006; see also Sansone et al. 1992). This is important and of great interest, as past research indicates that the need to re-establishment a sense of meaning has inspired an impressive amount of empirical work that identified many consequences of meaning-threats on people’s attitudes and behaviors (for overviews, see Greenberg et al. 2004; Heine et al. 2006). This opens a wide array of directions in which the investigation of boredom can be pursued. On the broader level, our findings illuminate the prevalent motivational character of boredom. Consistent with classic boredom research by Leary et al. (1986), boredom is not merely a state of passivity, disinterest, or lack of arousal, but involves a strong self-regulatory component that is represented across the experiential domains of boredom.

Limitations and future directions

In order to preclude misunderstandings, we would like to add that the experience of boredom is likely to include more than a lack of challenge and meaning and subsequent responses to increase them again. Boredom may also promote other self-regulatory processes, for example to remain interested and increase fun (e.g., Nett et al. 2011; Sansone et al. 1992; Smith et al. 2009), and boredom may include physiological, cognitive, affective, and behavioral elements (e.g., Vodanovich 2003) that we did not investigate. Based on earlier research, we sought to identify whether the particular boredom elements of meaning and challenge are central to the boredom experience and differentiate boredom from other affective states.

Future research may identify additional experiential contents of boredom and responses that we did not investigate. However, our research contributes to the understanding of the distinct experiential content of boredom and its consequences. Specifically, our meaning-regulation approach was confirmed and may thus open up may pathways to explain and test the effects of boredom experiences on behavior. For example, to conceptualize boredom as an unpleasant emotion that suggests meaninglessness of one’s activities, a lack of challenge, and the goal to re-establish a sense of meaningfulness may help to explain seemingly contradictory consequences of boredom. More specifically, although the literature suggests an association of boredom with aggression (Rupp and Vodanovich 1997), we found in our own research that boredom promotes pro-social behavior (Van Tilburg and Igou 2011). Even though such findings may seem inconsistent at first sight, understanding what bored people experience can help to explain these findings. Specifically, needs for meaningfulness of one’s activities and challenge may be served differently in particular situations. Aggression in one situation and pro-social behavior in another situation may provide adequate and functional means to re-establish a sense of meaningfulness or challenge. Although some research findings seem contradictory, they are likely to be rooted in the same experiential content of boredom.

It would be interesting if future research examined the extent to which challenge and meaning are distinctive for boredom depending on contextual influences. For example, research by Acee et al. (2010) suggests that in some cases, also overly challenging activities can be associated with boredom. These authors further suggest that one of the reasons why not only a lack of challenge but also certain over-challenging activities may be associated with boredom is because “both kinds of boredom register an absence of meaning” (p. 25). Possibly, boredom may to some extent also be experienced when only one of the presently identified distinctive elements is present (e.g., lack of meaning), and whether this is the case may be dependent on the particular context of the boring situation or activity (see also Pekrun et al. 2010).

Conclusion

Boredom is a chore, an experience that relates to central human needs for meaningful and challenging activities. Understanding people’s behaviors in part as attempts to cope with or to overcome boredom may help to reduce the occurrence of boredom or at least to reduce its potentially negative consequences, and to increase its potentially positive consequences. Therefore, our research on boredom is likely to contribute to this overarching goal.