Frequently Asked Questions

BOREDOM FAQ

Boredom is marvelously complex. There are things we know about it, things we think we know, and things that we’d like to know. We know that boredom is an unpleasant state—it doesn’t feel good to be bored. We know that boredom signifies dissatisfaction with our current situation. And we know that it involves a powerful desire to do something else. We think that we know its causes. Boredom arises in situations that are not meaningful, interesting, or important to us. It also arises in situations that cannot hold our attention. We think that we know its effects—it motivates us to do something other than what we are presently doing. Often, boredom leads us to seek novelty, meaning, or interest. Sometimes, it prompts us to seek excitement, to engage in risky behavior, or to do anything other than what bores us. We don’t know exactly how the body and the brain are affected during boredom—although we do have some ideas. And we don’t know but are trying to figure out why some people experience boredom more often than others.

In what follows, I offer answers to some common questions about boredom. These aren’t all the questions we can ask about boredom, but they are the ones that demand our attention.

Answers to questions about boredom

If you can’t find your question, feel free to ask it using the form below.

  • Boredom is the felt realization that we are not cognitively engaging with our environment in a desired or satisfactory way. Stated otherwise, boredom is what it feels like to find ourselves in a situation where the world (or our environment) fails to offer us adequate cognitive stimulation or engagement. During boredom, we wish our minds to be engaged, but they are not. Boredom is thus (a form of) cognitive thirst: we yearn for interest, meaning, stimulation, or novelty, but we find none (or not enough).

    The provided characterization of boredom makes evident the following features of boredom: (1) Boredom is an unpleasant experience. It is a state of cognitive discontent for it emotionally alerts us of the presence of a suboptimal form of cognitive engagement. (2) Boredom is not an apathetic state: it is not indifference. Instead, boredom involves a desire to do something else. In particular, during boredom we wish to escape the cause of our boredom and are motivated to find a different form of engagement that promises to be more cognitively engaging. (3) As an experience, boredom pertains to the manner in which we cognitively relate to and engage with your situation. It has to do with how our cognitive resources are being utilized. Situations that offer little or no cognitive engagement or situations that make such engagement exceedingly hard are prime candidates to bore us.

    Further readings:

    • Boredom as a felt realization of unsatisfactory cognitive engagement…: Elpidorou (2023); Danckert and Elpidorou (2023); Tam et al. (2021). See also The Anatomy of Boredom

    • Boredom and suboptimal cognitive engagement…: Elpidorou (2023); Eastwood et al. (2012); Danckert and Elpidorou (2023); Tam et al. (2021)

    • Boredom is not apathy…: Van Tilburg and Igou (2017); Goldberg et al. (2011)

    • The feelings of boredom…: Elpidorou (2023); Martin et al. (2006); Tam et al. (2021)

  • Boredom is an aversive experience. What that means is that it is disagreeable. It doesn’t feel good to be bored—boredom isn’t happiness or joy. It is instead a form of discontent or psychological pain. Due to its aversive character, we are motivated to seek escape from boredom. Indeed, mounting evidence shows that people will go to great lengths to escape the pain of boredom. Boredom can lead to self-harm, risk-taking, substance misuse, theft, arson, and even murder.

    Stating that boredom is an unpleasant or aversive experience does not fully do justice to its experiential complexity. Our experience of boredom isn’t uniform or constant across situations and time. For one, boredom has different experiential profiles. Sometimes boredom may feel like weariness—we feel tired or listless when bored. Sometimes it can be experienced as a frustrated state—during boredom we are dissatisfied, mildly angry, and itching for change. And sometimes boredom is a mixture of all those experiences: it is both apathetic and agitated, both deactivating and activating. Moreover, the subjective experience of boredom can differ depending on features of our situation. The boredom of monotony and repetition, for example, feels differently than the boredom that one experiences when their agency is severely restrained or when they are desperately trying, but are failing, to find meaning in their situation. Lastly, we should not forget that boredom is a temporally dynamic experience. As the experience unfolds, its associated feelings can change. Boredom may begin as a state of low arousal because initially subjects find themselves unable to engage with their situation. As time goes on, bored subjects will typically make efforts to engage with their environment and such attempts for engagement can result in an increase in arousal.

    Further readings:

    • Boredom as an aversive feeling…: Fahlman et al. (2013); Vogel-Walcutt et al. (2012)

    • On the experiential complexity of boredom…: Elpidorou (2023); Van Tilburg and Igou (2012); Van Hooft and van Hooff (2018); Westgate & Wilson (2018)

    • Boredom leads to action…: Bench and Lench (2013); Elpidorou (2014), (2018), (2023); Danckert and Elpidorou (2023)

    • Boredom leads to harmful behaviors…: Bench and Lench (2019); Elpidorou (2020); Nederkoorn et al. (2016); Pfattheicher et al. (2021); Wilson et al. (2014)

    • Boredom is both weariness and agitation…: Harris (2000); Martin et al. (2006); O’Brien (2014); Elpidorou (2021)

    • Boredom is a temporally dynamic experience…: Mills and Christoff (2018)

  • There are different ways that we can identify or recognize boredom. First, boredom can be identified in terms of its experiential qualities. Boredom is an aversive (i.e., unpleasant) experience. In a typical experience of boredom, we experience both mental languor and restlessness. We are aware of the fact that our situation does not fully satisfy us, and such a recognition gives rise to feelings of weariness. We remain disconnected from our situation, unable to engage with it in a meaningful manner.

    Boredom, however, is not a state of equipoise. We are not satisfied with our dissatisfaction. On the contrary, we strive to vitiate it. When bored, we want something more than what is given to us. Such an unfulfilled desire not only prompts us to act but also “colors” our experience of boredom: it bestows boredom a feel of frustration or restlessness. As the unpleasantly felt realization of suboptimal cognitive engagement, boredom thus involves a desire to escape what brings it about. This desire lies at the very core of boredom.

    Boredom can also be recognized on the basis of its cognitive features. Two such features are key for the experience of boredom. First, boredom involves a negative evaluation of one’s situation. That is to say, the very experience of boredom brings about a judgement regarding that which bores us. What bores us is thought to be lacking in meaning, interest, significance, or relevance. On the other hand, boredom is associated with a difficulty in concentrating and maintaining attention. Tasks or situations that make it exceedingly hard for us to pay attention are very likely to bore us. These two features of boredom not only underscore boredom’s role in regulating cognitive engagement but are also instrumental in individuating boredom from other related affective experiences.

    Lastly, boredom also carries an effect on the way we perceive the passage of time. Many descriptions of boredom emphasize that its experience involves a distorted sense of time. During the experience of boredom, time appears to move slowly, to linger, or even to stand still. Philosophers have spent considerable time examining the temporal character of boredom and its ramifications. Experimental studies have supported a close connection between time and boredom have found that bored individuals indeed experience an altered passage of time. Moreover, it was reported that the perception of a slow passage of time could give rise to the feeling of boredom. Finally, it has also been reported that individuals who are prone to boredom are likely to make mistakes in judging the duration of perceptual events.

    Further readings:

    • On how boredom feels…: Elpidorou (2021), (2023); Fahlman et al. (2013); Harris (2000); O’Brien (2014); Martin et al. (2006); Vogel-Walcutt et al. (2012); Van Hooft and van Hooff (2018); Westgate & Wilson (2018)

    • Boredom and the perception of meaningless…: Moynihan et al. (2021); Svendsen (2005); Van Tilburg and Igou (2012), (2017)

    • Boredom and attentional difficulties…: Eastwood et al. (2012); Hunter and Eastwood (2018); Tam et al. (2021)

    • Boredom slows down time…: Greenson (1953); Heidegger (1996); Wangh (1975); Witowska et al., (2020)

    • The perception of a slow(er) passage of time could lead to boredom…: London and Monello (1974)

    • On boredom proneness and perception of time…: Danckert and Allman (2005); Watt (1991)

  • Many (but not all) researchers think that boredom is a functional state. The claim that boredom is functional is ambiguous between (i) boredom occupies an important role in our mental and social economy (i.e., it affects our psychology, actions, and lives in important ways) and (ii) boredom ought to be defined functionally (i.e., boredom is its function and thus whatever shares this function is boredom and what doesn’t is not boredom). In my work (and especially in The Anatomy of Boredom), I argue that both (i) and (ii) should be accepted. That is, I argue that boredom doesn’t only affect us in ways that matter for us but that it should also be defined in terms of the effects that it has on our psychology, actions, and social lives. In Anatomy, I also show the many benefits that the functional view of boredom carries.

    If boredom is functional, then what is its function? Boredom is a mechanism for cognitive homeostasis (or allostasis). This is a fancy way of saying that the experience of boredom helps us to regulate the way that we cognitively engage with our environment. The emotional experience of boredom affords organisms with an ability to sense when their cognitive engagement is suboptimal and helps them to restore satisfactory cognitive engagement. Thus, according to the functional view, boredom is both a signal and a call for action: it alerts us of the presence of unsatisfactory cognitive engagement and pushes us act in ways that will change our cognitive connection to the world.

    Further readings:

    • Detailed presentation and defense of the functional view…: The Anatomy of Boredom

    • More on the functional view of boredom…: Bench and Lench (2013); Danckert and Elpidorou (2013); Danckert et al. (2018); Elpidorou (2014), (2018), (2023), and (2024)

  • This is a difficult question to answer. In Elpidorou (2018), I articulated the self-regulatory benefits of boredom and suggested that those benefits could have offered solutions to ancestrally recurring problems. My position centered around two key suppositions: (i) Self-regulation is beneficial for organisms—it is vital for well-being and survival. (ii) Negative emotions tend to confer an advantage because they narrow our thought-action repertoire.

    Insofar as boredom is both a self-regulatory state and a negative experience, it is a beneficial psychological state. It contributes to self-regulation and helps us to avoid and move away from cognitively unsatisfactory situations. There are, of course, other views/approaches. All of them, however, focus on the self-regulatory potential of boredom.

    Matters, however, aren’t so simple. To confidently identify a trait (an aspect of an organism’s phenotype) as an adaptation one needs not only to specify its function but also to determine the selection pressures that were responsible for its evolution. In other words, claiming that boredom confers to the experiencing subject an advantage does not prove that it was selected because of that advantage. In The Anatomy of Boredom, I take up this issue. I argue that conceiving of boredom as a mechanism aimed at regulating optimal cognitive function supports the contention that boredom is an adaptation. The functional view of boredom allows us to make progress in articulating the evolutionary origins of boredom.

    Further readings:

  • Boredom’s function is simple and easily stated: it helps to regulate cognitive engagement. Boredom, in other words, signals the presence of suboptimal cognitive engagement and prompts the experiencing agent to take action in order to restore engagement to satisfactory levels. Boredom’s functional simplicity belies, however, the complexity of its effects. There is no one way to restore satisfactory cognitive engagement. Consequently, boredom will give rise to (or instigate) a host of behaviors (actions and thoughts) the aim of which is to restore cognitive engagement.

    There are two broad courses of action that could restore satisfactory cognitive engagement. On the one hand, we can attempt to disengage from the current object of cognitive engagement and instead pursue a different object of cognitive engagement. In this case, we give up on a task (e.g., a job assignment, book, movie, conversation, relationship) because it bores us (i.e., it ceases to offer us proper cognitive engagement) and seek instead a new task—one that promises to offer a more satisfactory cognitive engagement. Mind wandering, going for a walk, socializing, watching a movie, drinking, binge eating, using one’s phone, speeding while driving, etc.—all of these are attempts to find satisfactory cognitive engagement. On the other hand, we might be motivated to restore satisfactory cognitive engagement not by seeking out a new object of cognitive engagement but by reassessing and ultimately transforming our relationship to that object. This is especially likely if we cannot (or we do not wish to) leave behind our boring situation. Some things are boring but necessary (think of long meetings, taxes, or classes). In that case, boredom could motivate us to try to find meaning or significance in our task or to change it so that engagement with it because less effortful (e.g., turning a tedious assignment into a game).

  • Yes and no. Or better, it depends. It depends on what exactly we mean by “boredom.”

    Most often, when we speak of boredom, we speak of something akin to an emotion. We have in mind a psychological state that depends on our situation and that can be easily alleviated. Understood as such, boredom is neither beneficial nor harmful, neither good nor bad.

    Boredom can be a very powerful psychological state. It tells us that what we are doing is not something that we should (or want to) be doing. It also motivates us to do something other than what we are doing when we experience boredom. Think of boredom like an emotional command. It forcefully directs us to do something else. Yet, boredom doesn’t specify to us what that something else is. And it’s up to us to figure out how to answer boredom’s command.

    Every occurrence of boredom is akin to an existential and agential crisis—relatively brief, often painless, but still vexing. Boredom is thus a bothersome call to find something better to do with ourselves and with our time. The literature supports this view. It shows that bored individuals don't always know what to do, but they do know that they don't want to be bored. The literature has also shown that the outcomes of boredom are many and varied. Boredom can promote prosocial actions and curiosity, but it can also lead one to eat more chocolate, set things on fire, shock oneself, or, in extreme cases, kill others.

    But there’s a complication. Sometimes boredom is more than an emotion or temporary feeling. That is, it’s not just something that we experience only sometimes and in some situations. For some individuals, boredom becomes a way of life. They experience boredom often and in a wide range of situations. They become “boredom-prone” individuals, which means that they tend to experience boredom often and almost everywhere.

    Those who are boredom prone face a number of psychological, physical, and social harms. Depression and anxiety, anger and aggression, poor interpersonal and social relationships, lower job and life satisfaction, problem gambling, and drug and alcohol abuse, are just some of the potential outcomes of boredom proneness.

  • Could AI experience boredom? According to the functional model of boredom, the answer is “Yes.” Boredom is defined functionally: boredom is what boredom does. As long as the workings of boredom (that is, its function) can be realized in an agent or a system, then that agent or system experiences boredom. Stated otherwise: understood functionally, boredom is a mechanism that contributes to the regulation of cognitive engagement in specific way and not the specific neurological states that make human cognitive engagement and its regulation possible. There is no need for bones or blood, brains or hearts. All that it is required is that the system in question implements the role that boredom occupies in our psychological lives. So, the question “Can AI experience boredom?” becomes “Can AI regulate its cognitive engagement in ways that are functionally similar to the ways in which boredom regulates our own cognitive engagement?” I see no reason to think that it can’t. Thus, I see no reason to deny AI the experience of boredom.

    In fact, it seems that sufficiently advanced AI systems would have a need for a mechanism that regulates their cognitive engagement. The ability to sense and react to situations that are deemed as cognitively unengaging or unsatisfactory seems to be highly desirable. It can guide AI from one task to another; it can also act as a safeguard against engagement loops (situations in which AI considers or learns the same fact over and over again).  

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