Stay in Your Time-Lane: How Thinking During a State of Boredom Tends to Stay in Either the Past, Present, or Future

Abstract

Boredom, as a subject in psychological research, is a drastically under-researched topic. This preliminary investigation examined a person’s thoughts while a person is in a bored state, how these thoughts are related to each other, and how responses varied depending on individual differences in the frequency of boredom. To begin to understand responses to boredom, we observed and surveyed undergraduate college students randomly assigned to two types of boredom-eliciting conditions. For twenty minutes, participants watched a video that induces a state of boredom or they were alone in a room. Their actions were recorded and coded during this time, and they self-reported their thoughts on a survey after the boredom elicitation. Preliminary results showed that participants thought about present topics more than topics in the past or future. Participants also tended to think about topics in either the past, present, or future, and not venture into other topics. These preliminary results are a step forward for boredom research, and further research should focus on different age and demographic groups to find various coping mechanisms with boredom.