Test boredom: why we get bored and what to do
A Life / / December 19, 2019
In 1990, when James Dankertu (James Danckert) was 18, his older brother, Paul had an accident, crashing on his car into a tree. It was removed from the crumpled body with multiple fractures and bruises. Unfortunately, it was not without a traumatic brain injury.
rehabilitation period was very long and complicated. Before the accident, Paul was the drummer and loved music. However, even after his broken wrist healed, he did not have absolutely no desire to pick up a stick and start playing. This activity is no longer gave him pleasure.
Time after time, Paul complained to his brother that he insanely boring. And it was not in a fit of post-traumatic depression. Just now the things that he had loved with all his heart, did not cause there is absolutely no emotion except a deep disappointment.
A few years later, James began to learn from clinical neuropsychologist. During his studies he examined about twenty people, who received head injuries. Thinking about his brother, Dankert asked them whether they feel bored. All twenty people participated in the study, responded positively.
This experience really helped Dankertu in his future career. Now he works as a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo, located in Canada. This place is famous because it was here that scientists first began to engage in serious study of boredom.
The scientific community and boredom
It is believed that a universal and generally accepted interpretation of the term "boredom" is not yet displayed. Boredom - it is not just a kind of depression or apathy. These words can not be considered synonymous.
Scientists prefer to give the word "boredom" the following definition.
Boredom - this special mental state, staying in which people complain about the lack of even a minimum of motivation and interest in anything.
As a rule, this state has a negative impact on a person's mental health, as well as significantly affected their social life.
Conducted many studies devoted to boredom. For example, it turned out that she is one of the reasons that provoke binge eating, Along with depression and increased anxiety.
Another study focused on the relationship of boredom and behavior of the person behind the wheel. It was found that people prone to boredom, travel at much higher speeds than all other participants. In addition, they are slower to react to distractions and dangers.
Also, it was organized in 2003 poll among American teenagers, most of whom say they often get bored. As it turned out, these young people were more likely to ensure that at an early age to start smoking and using drugs and alcohol. Studies have also affected the education issues.
Jennifer Vogel Volkatt (Jennifer Vogel-Walcutt), adolescent psychologyStudent achievement is directly related to the fact they feel bored or not. Boredom - this is a problem that requires increased attention.
Scientists are trying to understand how boredom affects our brain, how the impact on the mental health and the effect on our self-control. "We need to thoroughly study the phenomenon of boredom before making any concrete conclusions", - said Bench Shane (Shane Bench), psychologist, dealing with the study of boredom in Texas lab University.
People who are interested in boredom becomes more and more. Genetics, philosophers, psychologists and historians are beginning to unite in order to work together to study it. In May 2015 the University of Warsaw organized the whole conference to discuss topics related to boredom, social psychology and sociology. In addition, a little later, in November, James Dankert collected about ten researchers from Canada and the United States to the workshop.
The history of the study of boredom
Kind of the beginning of the study of boredom can be considered as 1885, when the British scholar Francis Galton (Francis Galton) He published a short report, devoted to how restless and inattentive behaved students present at scientific meeting.
Since then it's been a long time, and the theme of boredom interested in a relatively small number of people. John Eastwood (John Eastwood), a psychologist at the University of Toronto, is convinced that this is because, that boredom seems all quite trivial thing, which is not necessary to pay close attention.
Things began to change when in 1986 Sandberg Norman (Norman Sundberg) and Richard Farmer (Richard Farmer) from the University of Oregon have shown the world the way by which you can measure boredom. They invented a special scale, whereby it was possible to determine the level of boredom, without specifying the test question "Are you bored?"
Instead, it was necessary to confirm or disprove the following statements: "Did you know that time passes too slowly it?", "Do you feel that not all of their zadeystvuete the possibility that work? "and" Are you easily distracted? "They were formulated by Sandberg and Farmer on the basis of surveys and interviews, in which people talked about how they felt when they are bored. After the respondents gave answers, each a grade on a scale on which determines the degree of susceptibility to boredom.
Scale tendency to boredom and Farmer Sandberg became the starting point from which began a new round of research. She was the inspiration for the emergence of other types of scales, and become incredibly useful in other applied sciences, helping to bind boredom with such things as mental health and progress.
However, the proposed scale of boredom had significant drawbacks. According to Eastwood, this figure depends on the human self, and so it is very subjective, that spoils the purity of the experiment. In addition, the scale measures only the level of susceptibility to boredom, rather than the intensity of this feeling. The inaccuracy of the concepts and definitions still creates some confusion among scientists.
Work on improving the boredom scale goes so far. In 2013, Eastwood engaged in the development of a multidimensional state of boredom scale, which includes 29 allegations of different sensations. Unlike Sandberg and Farmer scale Eastwood scale measures the respondent state at the current time. You can use it to establish that the person feels right now.
However, before you measure the level of boredom, the researchers had to make sure that participants in the experiment really experiencing it. And this is a completely different task.
The most boring in the world of video
In psychology, it has been for many years one of the most effective ways to create a certain mood in the man considered to see related videos. There are special videos that stimulate a human occurrence of such emotions as joy, anger, sorrow, sympathy. That is why Collin Merrifield (Colleen Merrifield), engaged in writing his dissertation, he decided to create a video that would be so boring that drove people to to tears.
In the video, the following occurs: the two men are in a completely white room with no windows. Without uttering a word, they're taking clothes from a huge pile and hang it on a rope - jackets, shirts, sweaters, socks. Seconds ticking: 15, 20, 45, 60. Men hang clothes. Eighty seconds. One of the men takes a clothespin. One hundred seconds. Men continue to hang clothes. Two hundred seconds. Three hundred seconds. Once again, no change - men hang clothes. Video looped so that there is no longer anything. Its total duration was 5.5 minutes.
Not surprisingly, people who Merrifield showed the video, found it incredibly boring. Then she decided to try to learn how boredom affects the ability to concentrate and focus.
Merrifield asked participants to perform a classical problem in the concentration: It was necessary to observe the light spots that appear and disappear on the screen. All this specially lasted an incredibly long time. The result exceeded expectations: the task was many times more boring than the most boring video. More than half of the subjects were not able to cope with it.
It was not a surprise. In many past studies, scientists also asked the participants in the experiment perform some repetitive actions rather than watch. In order to man began to get bored, he was asked, for example, to fill in the same forms, or twist to tighten the screws. Compare the results of different studies is problematic because no single standardized approach to the methods of stimulation boredom. It was impossible to find out whose results are true, and whose - not.
In 2014, researchers from the University of Carnegie - Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, published article, Which we tried to start the standardization process. They identified three groups of actions that are more likely to cause people's boredom:
- repetitive physical tasks;
- simple mental tasks;
- watching and listening to the special video and audio recordings.
The researchers used a scale multidimensional state of boredom Eastwood, to determine how much each of the tasks performed forced to miss the test and whether it caused them any more emotions. A total of six extremely dull tasks. Most boring was to endlessly click the mouse, turning the icon on the screen half a turn clockwise. After that, it was decided no longer to show special videos to make people bored and instead use common behavioral problem.
Boredom and self-control
Many scientists link the emergence of boredom with a deficit self-control. The better you are able to answer for their actions, the less you are inclined to spontaneous manifestations of boredom. That is why researchers often associated susceptibility to boredom and a tendency to bad habits such as gambling, alcoholism, smoking and overeating.
Does it follow that boredom and a lack of self-control - is things related? Scientists have not yet taken to answer this question. Citing as an example of people who have had a traumatic brain injury, Dankert suggests that in their self-control system failure occurred. That's why they start to behave too impulsive and often acquire a great lot bad habits. This scientist had noticed, watching his brother.
However, for several years, brother Dankerta actively struggled with the problems of self-control and virtually ceased to complain of boredom, simultaneously reviving his love of music. Therefore, researchers have reason to believe that boredom and self-control can depend on each other, but the facts and the evidence so far is not enough.
Boring plans for the future
Despite some confusion in terms of the lack of standardization and researchers concerned with the study of boredom, consider that the foundation has already been laid. For example, a search for the definition of the concept of "boredom" is considered an important part of her learning process. Different researchers identify different types of boredom. German scientists counted five and found that the propensity to any type depends on personal characteristics of the person.
Scientists also believe that there is such a group of people who will work hard, if only to not get bored. Sometimes these people are willing to choose a very strange and even unpleasant lessons in order to avoid boredom. This hypothesis is based on studies that have shown a correlation between risk appetite and susceptibility to boredom.
The first study was as follows: the participants were asked to sit on a chair in a completely empty room and within 15 minutes of doing nothing. Some of the participants were willing to even receive small electric shocks, but would not be alone with their thoughts. It conducted a few more advanced experiments with the same facilities. In one of the participants had unrestricted access to sweets, but in order to get them, it was necessary to suffer an electric shock. When the experiment participants get bored, they would rather experience the pain than to sit on a chair and do nothing.
A group of researchers led by psychologist Reinhard Pekrunom (Reinhard Peckrun) from the University of Munich in Germany for a year watching the behavior of 424 students. They searched for their evaluation, examination results documented and measured the level of boredom. The team found some cyclic pattern, according to which all students were observed during periods when they were bored. And that's when it was observed a significant decrease in the internal motivation students and their academic performance. Such periods occurred during the year and did not depend on age and sex of the student and his interest in the subject. Scientists have suggested that students need something that would help them overcome boredom.
Say Schatz (Sae Schatz), director of the company, which is engaged in the development of textbooks and educational tools US Department of Defense, cites as evidence an interesting example of a computer system that taught students of physics. The system was programmed in such a way that should offend anyone who incorrectly answered the question, and sarcastically praising those who gave correct answers. This unusual approach to learning stimulate students to achieve better result, Always kept their brain in good shape and did not give bored.
Looking ahead, we can say that the scientists are determined to continue to explore boredom. They want to better understand how this phenomenon is related to other mental condition of the person. It is also planned to expand the area of research and conduct experiments with the elderly and with people of different ethnic groups and nationalities. Considering the huge impact of boredom on the educational process, the scientists want to work on improving the measurement scales boredom and adapt them for children.
There is also an urgent need to as many scientists understood the importance of studying this question, as the boredom. Dankert sure that in this case will be much more likely to quickly organize already acquired knowledge and proceed to new discoveries.