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Development of interest and enjoyment in adolescence. Part II. Boredom and psychopathology

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Abstract

Significant changes in both the capacity and the content of attention emerge during adolescence. Part II of this two-part article argues that a central task of adolescence is to utilize increased information-processing capacities in order to develop attentional habits which shape interests, provide enjoyment, and avoid boredom. Reports of chronic boredom or of extreme efforts to escape from boredom during adolescence may signify substantial difficulty in forming the attentional habits required for developing a separate identity. When adolescents are bored, they may resort to habits of attention and enjoyment which have deleterious personal, social, and ecological consequences. Further study of attention in adolescence may help to explore preventive educational approaches to the problem of boredom and of “pathological” solutions to boredom.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the National Institute of Mental Health, 20205, Bethesda, Maryland

    Jean A. Hamilton (Clinical research associate in the Neuropharmacology Branch)

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  1. Jean A. Hamilton
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This article was prepared while the author was a Postdoctoral Clinical Research Fellow in Adolescence, 1977–1978, in a program jointly sponsored by the Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Institute at Michael Reese Medical Center and the University of Chicago Committee on Human Development and Department of Psychiatry; it was supported, in part, by a grant from the Judith B. Offer Research Fund. A preliminary version of this work was presented at the conference on Socio-Cultural Influences on Adolescence at Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, June 16, 1978. It was revised in 1981–1983.

Recieved M.D. from University of Texas; graduate and postdoctoral psychology training at the University of Chicago; psychiatry residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Hamilton, J.A. Development of interest and enjoyment in adolescence. Part II. Boredom and psychopathology. J Youth Adolescence 12, 363–372 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02088720

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