Alycia Chin, Amanda Markey, Saurabh Bhargava, Karim S. Kassam, and George Loewenstein, “Bored in the USA: Experience Sampling and Boredom in Everyday Life.” Emotion 17(2): 359-368, 2017 [pdf].
• This article is based on experience sampling: more than 3000 adults offer half-hour updates for 7-to-10 days, yielding more than one million observations; about 2.8% of these updates include a claim of boredom. (More than one-third pf participants, however, never report feeling bored.) "[S]ubjects additionally report details about their time-use, including what they were doing, who they were with, and their location, as well as their experience of 16 other emotions [page 360]."
• The data is collected via a custom-made iPhone app; participants without iPhones are loaned a phone dedicated to the app.
• Boredom is much more likely to be accompanied by a negative emotion (such as sadness) than by a positive emotion (such as happiness).
• Men are more likely (one-third more likely) than women to be bored; unmarried people and younger people are more likely to feel bored. High-school drop-outs suffer boredom at higher rates than the more educated.
• Studying and work seem to go along with boredom (and as locations, schools and workplaces are boring); boredom peaks around 2PM. (Neither napping nor exercise is associated with boredom!) Co-workers tend to be boring, but friends and spouses aren't boring. Dining or drinking out is not boring.
• Most of the variation in boredom is due to circumstances, not to the individuals involved.
• The authors cite Kierkegaard on boredom; they don't mention Bertrand Russell, who had lots of non-boring things to say about boredom.
• This article is based on experience sampling: more than 3000 adults offer half-hour updates for 7-to-10 days, yielding more than one million observations; about 2.8% of these updates include a claim of boredom. (More than one-third pf participants, however, never report feeling bored.) "[S]ubjects additionally report details about their time-use, including what they were doing, who they were with, and their location, as well as their experience of 16 other emotions [page 360]."
• The data is collected via a custom-made iPhone app; participants without iPhones are loaned a phone dedicated to the app.
• Boredom is much more likely to be accompanied by a negative emotion (such as sadness) than by a positive emotion (such as happiness).
• Men are more likely (one-third more likely) than women to be bored; unmarried people and younger people are more likely to feel bored. High-school drop-outs suffer boredom at higher rates than the more educated.
• Studying and work seem to go along with boredom (and as locations, schools and workplaces are boring); boredom peaks around 2PM. (Neither napping nor exercise is associated with boredom!) Co-workers tend to be boring, but friends and spouses aren't boring. Dining or drinking out is not boring.
• Most of the variation in boredom is due to circumstances, not to the individuals involved.
• The authors cite Kierkegaard on boredom; they don't mention Bertrand Russell, who had lots of non-boring things to say about boredom.
No comments:
Post a Comment