Wednesday, November 20, 2013
So boredom isn't really boring?
From the Dept. of Too Much Time On Their Hands comes a study that defines the various types of boredom, including a previously unstudied type.
A new study of students in Germany reveals that there are five distinct types of boredom. That's one more than researchers had expected.Yawn.
What's more, the newly discovered category - which they labeled "apathetic boredom" - was quite common among high school students, according to the study, published this week in the journal Motivation and Emotion...
By gathering empirical data about real-life situations, Goetz's team hoped to validate psychological models that divided boredom into four distinct categories:
- Indifferent boredom, a relaxing and slightly positive type of boredom that "reflected a general indifference to, and withdrawal from, the external world";
- Calibrating boredom, the slightly unpleasant state of having wandering thoughts and "a general openness to behaviors aimed at changing the situation";
- Searching boredom, the kind that makes you feel restless and leaves you "actively seeking out specific ways of minimizing feelings of boredom"; and
- Reactant boredom, which is so bad that it prompts sufferers "to leave the boredom-inducing situation and avoid those responsible for this situation (e.g., teachers)."
What they found is that the life of a German student can be very boring indeed...
The big surprise in the data was the emergence of the fifth type of boredom. Apathetic boredom accounted for 10 percent of all boredom among the college students and 36 percent of all boredom among the high-schoolers.
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