Existential escape of the bored: A review of meaning-regulation processes under boredom

Cultural applicability and desirability of 'Broodles': The first serious game intervention for siblings of children with disabilities

Objective

Serious games can serve as easily accessible interventions to support siblings of children with disabilities, who are at risk of developing mental health problems. The Dutch serious game 'Broodles' was developed for siblings aged 6-9 years. The current study aims to assess the cultural applicability, desirability, feasibility, and acceptability of 'Broodles' in Norway.

Methods

Norwegian siblings (N = 16) aged 6-13 years and parents (N = 12) of children with intellectual disabilities assessed the game. Their feedback data from interviews and questionnaires were sorted using a model of engagement factors in serious games.

Results

At pre-use, participants showed interest in the game, and after initial use the participants were overall positive about the format, content and objectives, including validation of emotions and recognition. The participants had suggestions for improved engagement and feasibility.

Conclusion

The game was found to be culturally applicable, desirable and acceptable, although Norwegian translation is necessary for further evaluation. Recommendations to enhance engagement were provided, including suggestions to play the game with parents or in a group.

Innovation

This initial assessment of the serious game Broodles in a non-Dutch setting shows promise for an innovative way of supporting siblings of children with disabilities.

Boring People: Stereotype Characteristics, Interpersonal Attributions, and Social Reactions

Unfortunately, some people are perceived as boring. Despite the potential relevance that these perceptions might have in everyday life, the underlying psychological processes and consequences of perceiving a person as "boring" have been largely unexplored. We examined the stereotypical features of boring others by having people generate (Study 1) and then rate (Study 2) these. We focused on occupations (e.g., data analytics, taxation, and accounting), hobbies (e.g., sleeping, religion, and watching TV), and personal characteristics (e.g., lacking humor and opinions, being negative) that people ascribed to stereotypically boring others. Experiments then showed that those who were ascribed boring characteristics were seen as lacking interpersonal warmth and competence (Study 3), were socially avoided (Study 4), and enduring their company required compensation (Study 5). These results suggest that being stereotyped as a bore may come with substantially negative interpersonal consequences.

In search of boredom: beyond a functional account

Boredom has been characterized as a crisis of meaning, a failure of attention, and a call to action. Yet as a self-regulatory signal writ-large, we are still left with the question of what makes any given boredom episode meaningless, disengaging, or a prompt to act. We propose that boredom is an affective signal that we have deviated from an optimal ('Goldilocks') zone of cognitive engagement. Such deviations may be due to a perceived lack of meaning, arise as a consequence of struggles we are experiencing in attending to a task, or be interpreted as a blunt call to find something different to engage with. Thus, the key to understanding boredom lies in its role in keeping us cognitively engaged.

Locating nostalgia among the emotions: A bridge from loss to love

An effective way of identifying the psychological role of an emotion is by probing its position relative to other emotions, such as in terms of appraisals, occurrence, lay conceptualization, and consequences. A set of recent studies offer such comparisons for nostalgia against a backdrop of many other emotions. These studies depict nostalgia as an approach-oriented emotion that resembles positive emotions more closely than negative ones, and place nostalgia especially close to positive social emotions. A complementary new analysis of the correlations between nostalgia and 31 other emotions furthermore locates nostalgia between experiences related to loss and love. Altogether, recent work on nostalgia among the emotions portrays it as a psychological bridge from loss toward love.

Towards a psychological framework on time perception in patients with chronic tinnitus

Although disabling tinnitus is a chronic auditory phantom sensation, current knowledge on time perception (i.e., subjective time) in sufferers is limited and unsystematic. This theoretical analysis provides a first approach to this topic, highlighting the heterogeneity of time perception in humans as shown in various research areas. This heterogeneity is inherently related to goal attainment. Our immediate perception of time is restricted to present moment and recent past, whereas our sense of time is mostly future-oriented and represented as our past in a mental time line. The heterogeneity of time translates into a tension between anticipated changes one wants to see happen and full commitment that is required to goal attainment. Tinnitus sufferers are intensely aware of this tension in their self-perception. Their most compelling desire is that they no longer perceive tinnitus, but they get closer to this goal only by avoiding to put all their thoughts into it. Our analysis provides new perspectives on acceptance of tinnitus in relation to this time paradox. Building on the Tolerance model and the role of self-awareness in time perception, we contend that the main way for patients to gain long-term self-confidence is to engage in the present moment. Attention to this attitude is obscured in chronic sufferers by worries and ruminations associated with the ongoing presence of tinnitus. We provide arguments that time perception is a social perception, emphasizing the role of rewarding interactions in helping sufferers to overcome the feeling of being prevented from living in the moment. In the course of improvement towards acceptance, different changes in time perception are hypothesized that promote individuals' disengagement from unattainable goal (i.e., tinnitus suppression). A framework for future research is proposed, which distinguishes individuals' behaviors and associated emotions in relation to the time paradox.

Consumed by Boredom: Food Choice Motivation and Weight Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Boredom is an established cause and correlate of eating behavior. Yet, existing work offers a scattered range of plausible motivations for why this is. We examined among 302 people representative of the adult UK population what motivations they had for selecting food during the COVID-19 pandemic and how this related to boredom. As predicted, bored people choose food less for health reasons and more for convenience. Boredom reduced ethical and ‘natural content’ motivations for selecting food and was not associated with choosing food to regulate one’s mood or to experience unfamiliarity. Boredom was also associated with greater absolute changes in weight over the course of the pandemic. Boredom did not predict weight gains or losses overall. These findings offer insights into the role that boredom plays in eating motivations in particular and health-relevant outcomes in general.

24 Hours on the Run-Does Boredom Matter for Ultra-Endurance Athletes' Crises?

Sport and exercise can be boring. In the general population, thinking of sports as boring has been linked to exercising less. However, less is known about the role of boredom in people who participate in ultra-endurance competitions: Do these athletes also associate their sports with boredom, and does boredom pose a self-regulatory challenge that predicts if they encounter a crisis during an ultra-endurance competition? Here, we investigate these questions with a sample of N = 113 (n = 34 female) competitors of a 24 h hour running competition, aged M = 37.6 ± 13.8 years. In this study, n = 23 very extreme athletes competed as single starters or in a relay team of 2, and n = 84 less extreme athletes competed in relay teams of 4 or 6. Before the run, athletes completed self-report measures on sport-specific trait boredom, as well as the degree to which they expected boredom, pain, effort, and willpower to constitute self-regulatory challenges they would have to cope with. After the run, athletes reported the degree to which they actually had to deal with these self-regulatory challenges and if they had faced an action crisis during the competition. Analyses revealed that very extreme athletes displayed a significantly lower sport-specific trait boredom than less extreme athletes (p = 0.024, d=−0.48). With respect to self-regulatory challenges, willpower, pain, and effort were expected and reported at a much higher rate than boredom. However, only boredom was as a significant predictor of experiencing a crisis during the competition (odds ratio = 12.5, p = 0.02). Our results show that boredom also matters for highly active athletes. The fact that the experience of boredom—and not more prototypical competition-induced challenges, such as pain or effort—were linked to having an action crisis highlights the relevance of incorporating boredom into the preparation for a race and to the performance management during competition.

Boredom proneness, political orientation and adherence to social-distancing in the pandemic

Research recently showed that boredom proneness was associated with increased social distancing rule-breaking in a sample collected early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we explore data collected early in the pandemic to examine what factors might drive this relation. We focus on political affiliation. Given the functional account of boredom as a call to action, we hypothesized that this urge to act may drive individuals towards outlets replete with symbolic value (e.g., ideology, identity). In addition, given the politicization of some social distancing rules (e.g., mask wearing), we explored whether those who adhere to strong political ideologies—particularly conservative ideologies—would be more likely to rule-break. Moderation analyses indicated that boredom proneness and social (but not fiscal) conservatism were indeed predictive of rule-breaking. These results highlight the need for both clear messaging emphasizing the strength of communal identity and action (i.e., that “We are all in this together”) and for interventions that emphasize shared collective values in contexts that appeal directly to social conservatives.