In conventional usage, boredom, ennui, or tedium is an
emotion
Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definitio ...
al and occasionally
psychological state experienced when an individual is left without anything in particular to do, is listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement, is not interested in their surroundings, or feels that a day or period is dull or tedious. It is also understood by scholars as a modern phenomenon which has a cultural dimension. "There is no universally accepted definition of boredom. But whatever it is, researchers argue, it is not simply another name for
depression or
apathy
Apathy is a lack of feeling, emotion, interest, or concern about something. It is a state of indifference, or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation, or passion. An apathetic individual has an absence of inter ...
. It seems to be a specific mental state that people find unpleasant—a lack of stimulation that leaves them craving relief, with a host of behavioral, medical and social consequences." According to BBC News, boredom "...can be a dangerous and disruptive state of mind that damages your health"; yet research "...suggest
that without boredom we couldn't achieve our creative feats."
In ''Experience Without Qualities: Boredom and Modernity'', Elizabeth Goodstein traces the modern discourse on boredom through literary, philosophical, and sociological texts to find that as "a discursively articulated phenomenon...boredom is at once objective and subjective, emotion and intellectualization—not just a response to the modern world, but also a historically constituted strategy for coping with its discontents." In both conceptions, boredom has to do fundamentally with an experience of time—such as experiencing the slowness of time—and problems of meaning.
Etymology and terminology
The expression ''to be a bore'' had been used in print in the sense of "to be tiresome or dull" since 1768 at the latest. The expression "boredom" means "state of being bored," 1852, from bore (v.1) + -dom. It also has been employed in a sense "bores as a class" (1883) and "practice of being a bore" (1864, a sense properly belonging to boreism, 1833). The word "bore" as a noun meaning a "thing which causes ennui or annoyance" is attested to since 1778; "of persons by 1812". The noun "bore" comes from the verb "bore", which had the meaning "
obe tiresome or dull" first attested
n1768, a vogue word –81 according to Grose (1785); possibly a figurative extension of "to move forward slowly and persistently, as a
ole-boring tool does." A popular misconception is that
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...
coined the term "boredom" in his work ''
Bleak House'', published in 1853. The word, however, has been attested since at least 1829 in an issue of the publication ''The Albion''.
The French term for boredom, ''ennui'', is sometimes used in English as well, at least since 1778. The term ''ennui'' was first used "as a French word in English;" in the 1660s and it was "nativized by 1758".
The term ''ennui'' comes "from French ennui, from Old French enui "annoyance" (13c.),
back-formation from enoiier, anuier.
"The German word for "boredom" expresses this: ''
Langeweile'', a compound made of ''lange'' "long" and ''Weile'' "while", which is in line with the common perception that when one is bored, time passes "tortuously" slowly.
Psychology
Different scholars use different definitions of ''boredom'', which complicates research. Boredom has been defined by Cynthia D. Fisher in terms of its main central
psychological processes: "an unpleasant, transient
affective
Affect, in psychology, refers to the underlying experience of feeling, emotion or mood.
History
The modern conception of affect developed in the 19th century with Wilhelm Wundt. The word comes from the German ''Gefühl'', meaning "feeling ...
state in which the individual feels a pervasive lack of
interest
In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distin ...
and difficulty concentrating on the current activity."
Mark Leary Mark Richard Leary, Ph.D. (born November 29, 1954) is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University (Durham, North Carolina). His research has made significant contributions to the fields of social psychology and personality psycholo ...
et al. describe boredom as "an affective experience associated with cognitive attentional processes."
Robert Plutchik characterized boredom as a mild form of
disgust. In
positive psychology, boredom is described as a response to a moderate challenge for which the subject has more than enough skill.
There are three types of boredom, all of which involve problems of engagement of
attention. These include times when humans are prevented from engaging in wanted activity, when humans are forced to engage in unwanted activity, or when people are simply unable for some other reason to maintain engagement in an activity. Boredom proneness is a tendency to experience boredom of all types. This is typically assessed by the Boredom Proneness Scale. Recent research has found that boredom proneness is clearly and consistently associated with failures of attention. Boredom and its proneness are both theoretically and empirically linked to
depression and similar symptoms.
Nonetheless, boredom proneness has been found to be as strongly correlated with attentional lapses as with depression.
Although boredom is often viewed as a trivial and mild irritant, proneness to boredom has been linked to a very diverse range of possible
psychological, physical, educational, and social problems.
Absent-mindedness
Absent-mindedness is where a person shows inattentive or forgetful behavior. It can have three different causes:
# a low level of attention ("blanking" or "zoning out")
# intense attention to a single object of focus (hyperfocus) that makes a perso ...
is where a person shows inattentive or forgetful behaviour.
Absent-mindedness is a mental condition in which the subject experiences low levels of
attention and frequent distraction. Absent-mindedness is not a diagnosed condition, but rather a symptom of boredom and sleepiness which people experience in their daily lives. People who are absent-minded tend to show signs of memory lapse and weak recollection of recently occurring events. This can usually be a result of a variety of other conditions often diagnosed by clinicians such as
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by excessive amounts of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that are pervasive, impairing in multiple contexts, and otherwise age-inap ...
and
depression. In addition to absent-mindedness leading to an array of consequences affecting daily life, it can have as more severe, long-term problems.
Physical health
Lethargy
Lethargy is a state of tiredness, sleepiness, weariness, fatigue, sluggishness or lack of energy. It can be accompanied by depression, decreased motivation, or apathy. Lethargy can be a normal response to inadequate sleep, overexertion, overwo ...
is a state of tiredness, weariness,
fatigue, or lack of energy. It can be accompanied by depression, decreased motivation, or apathy. Lethargy can be a normal response to boredom, inadequate sleep, overexertion, overworking, stress, lack of exercise, or a symptom of a disorder. When part of a normal response, lethargy often resolves with rest, adequate sleep, decreased stress, and good nutrition.
Philosophy
Boredom is a condition characterized by
perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...
of one's environment as dull, tedious, and lacking in
stimulation
Stimulation is the encouragement of development or the cause of activity generally. For example, "The press provides stimulation of political discourse." An interesting or fun activity can be described as "stimulating", regardless of its physic ...
. This can result from leisure and a lack of aesthetic interests.
Labor and
art may be alienated and passive, or immersed in tedium. There is an inherent
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
in boredom; people will expend considerable effort to prevent or remedy it, yet in many circumstances, it is accepted as suffering to be endured. Common passive ways to escape boredom are to sleep or to think creative thoughts (
daydream
Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction. This phenomenon is common in people's daily life shown by a large-scale study in which partici ...
). Typical active solutions consist in an intentional activity of some sort, often something new, as familiarity and
repetition
Repetition may refer to:
* Repetition (rhetorical device), repeating a word within a short space of words
*Repetition (bodybuilding), a single cycle of lifting and lowering a weight in strength training
*Working title for the 1985 slasher film '' ...
lead to the tedious.
During the , the French term for the end of the 19th century in the West, some of the cultural hallmarks included "ennui",
cynicism,
pessimism, and "...a widespread belief that civilization leads to
decadence."
Boredom also plays a role in
existentialist thought.
Søren Kierkegaard and
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
were two of the first philosophers considered fundamental to the existentialist movement. Like
Pascal
Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name
* Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name
** Blaise Pascal, Frenc ...
, they were interested in people's quiet struggle with the apparent meaninglessness of life and the use of diversion to escape from boredom. Kierkegaard's ''
Either/Or'' describes the
rotation method, a method used by higher-level aesthetes in order to avoid boredom. The method is an essential
hedonistic aspect of the aesthetic way of life. For the aesthete, one constantly changes what one is doing in order to maximize the enjoyment and pleasure derived from each activity.
In contexts where one is confined, spatially or otherwise, boredom may be met with various religious activities, not because religion would want to associate itself with tedium, but rather, partly because boredom may be taken as the essential human condition, to which God, wisdom, or morality are the ultimate answers. Many existentialist philosophers, like
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
, espouse this view. This view of religiosity among boredom does affect how often people are bored. People who had a higher religiosity while performing boring tasks reported less boredom than people of less religiosity. People performing the meaningless task had to search less for meaning.
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centu ...
wrote about boredom in two texts available in English, in the 1929/30 semester lecture course ''The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics'', and again in the essay ''What is Metaphysics?'' published in the same year. In the lecture, Heidegger included about 100 pages on boredom, probably the most extensive philosophical treatment ever of the subject. He focused on waiting at
railway station
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in Track (rail transport), tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the ...
s in particular as a major context of boredom.
Søren Kierkegaard remarks in ''
Either/Or'' that "patience cannot be depicted" visually, since there is a sense that any immediate moment of life may be fundamentally tedious.
Blaise Pascal in the ''
Pensées
The ''Pensées'' ("Thoughts") is a collection of fragments written by the French 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Pascal's religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the ''Pensées'' was in many ways hi ...
'' discusses the human condition in saying "we seek rest in a struggle against some obstacles. And when we have overcome these, rest proves unbearable because of the boredom it produces", and later states that "only an infinite and immutable object—that is, God himself—can fill this infinite abyss."
Without stimulus or focus, the individual is confronted with
nothingness, the meaninglessness of existence, and experiences existential
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
. Heidegger states this idea as follows: "Profound boredom, drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence like a muffling fog, removes all things and men and oneself along with it into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals being as a whole." Schopenhauer used the existence of boredom in an attempt to prove the
vanity of human existence, stating, "...for if life, in the desire for which our essence and existence consists, possessed in itself a positive value and real content, there would be no such thing as boredom: mere existence would fulfil and satisfy us."
Erich Fromm and other thinkers of
critical theory speak of boredom as a common psychological response to industrial society, where people are required to engage in
alienated labor
Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the estrangement (German: ''Entfremdung'') of people from aspects of Marx's theory of human nature, their human nature (''Gattungswesen'', 'species-essence') as a consequence of the division of labor and ...
. According to Fromm, boredom is "perhaps the most important source of aggression and destructiveness today." For Fromm, the search for thrills and novelty that characterizes consumer culture are not solutions to boredom, but mere distractions from boredom which, he argues, continues unconsciously. Above and beyond taste and character, the universal case of boredom consists in any instance of ''waiting'', as Heidegger noted, such as in line, for someone else to arrive or finish a task, or while one is travelling somewhere. The automobile requires fast reflexes, making its operator busy and hence, perhaps for other reasons as well, making the ride more tedious despite being over sooner.
Interestingly, in some
Nguni languages such as
Zulu, boredom and loneliness are represented by the same word (isizungu). This adds a new dimension to the oft-quoted definition of
ubuntu
Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...
: "A person is a person through other people".
Causes and effects
Although it has not been widely studied, research on boredom suggests that boredom is a major factor impacting diverse areas of a person's life. People ranked low on a boredom-proneness scale were found to have better performance in a wide variety of aspects of their lives, including career, education, and autonomy. Boredom can be a symptom of
clinical depression
Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive low mood, low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Intro ...
. Boredom can be a form of
learned helplessness
Learned helplessness is the behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control. It was initially thought to be caused by the subject's acceptance of their powerlessness, by way of their discontinuing att ...
, a phenomenon closely related to depression. Some philosophies of
parenting
Parenting or child rearing promotes and supports the physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood. Parenting refers to the intricacies of raising a child and not exclusively for a ...
propose that if children are raised in an environment devoid of
stimuli, and are not allowed or encouraged to interact with their environment, they will fail to develop the mental capacities to do so.
In a learning environment, a common cause of boredom is lack of understanding; for instance, if one is not following or connecting to the material in a class or lecture, it will usually seem boring. However, the opposite can also be true; something that is too easily understood, simple or transparent, can also be boring. Boredom is often inversely related to
learning, and in school it may be a sign that a student is not challenged enough, or too challenged. An activity that is predictable to the students is likely to bore them.
A 1989 study indicated that an individual's impression of boredom may be influenced by the individual's degree of
attention, as a higher acoustic level of distraction from the environment correlated with higher reportings of boredom. Boredom has been studied as being related to
drug abuse among teens. Boredom has been proposed as a cause of
pathological gambling behavior. A study found results consistent with the hypothesis that pathological gamblers seek stimulation to avoid states of boredom and depression. It has been suggested that boredom has an evolutionary basis that encourages humans to seek out new challenges. It may influence human learning and ingenuity.
Some recent studies have suggested that boredom may have some positive effects. A low-stimulus environment may lead to increased creativity and may set the stage for a "
eureka moment".
In the workplace
Boreout is a
management theory that posits that lack of work, boredom, and consequent lack of satisfaction are a common malaise affecting individuals working in modern organizations, especially in office-based white collar jobs. This theory was first expounded in 2007 in ''Diagnose Boreout'', a book by Peter Werder and Philippe Rothlin, two Swiss business consultants. They claim the absence of meaningful tasks, rather than the presence of stress, is many workers' chief problem.
A "
banishment room" (also known as a "chasing-out-room" and a "boredom room") is a modern
employee exit management strategy whereby employees are transferred to a department where they are assigned meaningless work until they become disheartened enough to quit.
Since the resignation is voluntary, the employee would not be eligible for certain benefits. The legality and ethics of the practice is questionable and may be construed as
constructive dismissal by the courts in some regions.
In popular culture
"
Meh" is an
interjection used as an expression of
indifference or boredom. It may also mean "be it as it may".
It is often regarded as a verbal shrug of the shoulders. The use of the term ''"meh"'' shows that the speaker is apathetic, uninterested, or indifferent to the question or subject at hand. It is occasionally used as an
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...
, meaning something is mediocre or unremarkable.
Superfluous man
The superfluous man (russian: лишний человек, ) is an 1840s and 1850s Russian literary concept derived from the
Byronic hero
The Byronic hero is a variant of the Romantic hero as a type of character, named after the English Romantic poet Lord Byron. Both Byron's own persona as well as characters from his writings are considered to provide defining features to the cha ...
.
It refers to an individual, perhaps talented and capable, who does not fit into social norms. In most cases, this person is born into wealth and privilege. Typical characteristics are disregard for social values,
cynicism, and
existential boredom; typical behaviors are gambling, drinking, smoking, sexual intrigues, and
duels. He is often unempathetic and carelessly distresses others with his actions.
Existentialist fiction
The bored
antihero became prominent in early 20th century
existentialist works such as
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...
's ''
The Metamorphosis'' (1915),
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lite ...
's ''
La Nausée'' (1938) (), and
Albert Camus
Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His work ...
' ''
L'Étranger'' (1942) (). The protagonist in these works is an indecisive central character who drifts through his life and is marked by ennui,
angst, and
alienation.
Grunge lit
Grunge lit is an Australian
literary genre of
fictional or
semi-autobiographical
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. B ...
writing in the early 1990s about young adults living in an "inner cit
"...world of disintegrating futures where the only relief from...boredom was through a
nihilistic
Nihilism (; ) is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning. The term was popularized by Iva ...
pursuit of sex, violence, drugs and alcohol".
Often the central characters are disfranchised, lacking drive and determination beyond the desire to satisfy their basic needs. It was typically written by "new, young authors"
who examined "gritty, dirty, real existences"
of everyday characters. It has been described as both a sub-set of
dirty realism and an offshoot of
Generation X
Generation X (or Gen X for short) is the Western demographic cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the millennials. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1960s as starting birth years and the late 1970s to early 1980s ...
literature.
Stuart Glover states that the term "grunge lit" takes the term "grunge" from the "late 80s and early 90s—...Seattle
runge Runge may refer to:
Locations
*Runge, Texas, a town, United States
* Runge (crater), a lunar crater Mare Smythii
Other uses
* Runge Newspapers, a newspaper chain in Ontario, Canada
*Inspector Heinrich Runge (though it is more often spelled ...
bands".
Glover states that the term "grunge lit" was mainly a marketing term used by publishing companies; he states that most of the authors who have been categorized as "grunge lit" writers reject the label.
See also
*
Apathy
Apathy is a lack of feeling, emotion, interest, or concern about something. It is a state of indifference, or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation, or passion. An apathetic individual has an absence of inter ...
*
Cabin fever
*
Drab (color)
Drab is a dull, light-brown color. It originally took its name from a fabric of the same color made of undyed, homespun wool. The word was first used in English in 1686. It probably originated from the Old French word ''drap'', which meant clot ...
*
Dysthymia
Dysthymia ( ), also known as persistent depressive disorder (PDD), is a mental and behavioral disorder, specifically a disorder primarily of mood, consisting of similar cognitive and physical problems as major depressive disorder, but with l ...
*
Motivation
References
External links
Boredom: A History of Western Philosophical Perspectives ''
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
{{Authority control
Concepts in aesthetics
Emotions
Existentialist concepts