If this weekend is yawning ahead of you, offering nothing but the same old routines and dull chores, then don't despair: boredom is good for you, a new study claims.
Far from dulling the mind and leading to a lack of productivity, boredom can inspire people to seek out ways of being altruistic, empathatic and to engage in prosocial tasks, particularly unpleasant ones such as giving blood.
"Bored people feel that their actions are meaningless and so they are motivated to engage in meaningful behaviour," said Wijnand van Tilburg, from the University of Limerick, co-author of the paper, Bored George Helps Others: A Pragmatic Meaning-Regulation Hypothesis on Boredom and Prosocial Behaviour. "If prosocial behaviour fulfills this requirement, boredom promotes prosocial behaviour.
"Investigating the link between boredom and prosocial behavior is not only highly novel but also counter-intuitive," said Van Tilburg, who will present the paper with co-author, Dr Eric Igou, on Friday at the British Psychological Society 2011 Annual Conference.
"Past research has associated boredom almost exclusively with aversive correlates, yet closer inspection suggests a much richer array of potential consequences that may well go beyond merely negative outcomes, such as prosocial behaviour."
People who are easily bored typically score highly on so-called "dispositional measures of sensation seeking". This may, says Van Tilburg, at least partially explain the positive relationship between boredom proneness with aggression, anger, and hostility.
But when people feel meaningless, Van Tilburg found that they are more likely to engage in behaviour they believe will re-establish their sense of meaningfulness. They do not, he added, simply turn to distractions that are fun and interesting.
"Boredom can paradoxically be a very strong motivator for people to seek out unpleasant yet meaningful tasks, such as blood donations, against meaningless but pleasant behaviour," he said. "It does not promote engagement in meaningless yet pleasant behaviour."
Through a series of seven studies, researchers found that boredom increases prosocial motivations that impact on positive behaviours that last far beyond the length of time of the boring activity itself.
"Boredom makes people long for different and purposeful activities, and as a result they turn towards more challenging and meaningful activities, turning towards what they perceive to be really meaningful in life," said Van Tilburg.
"Donating to charity or signing up for blood donations could not have increased the level of stimulation, interest, arousal, novelty, fun, or challenge experienced during the boring activity, simply because the boring activity finished before prosocial behavior was assessed," he said. "Therefore, we show that boredom affects attitudes and behaviour even after the boring activity, if people have not had the chance to re-establish meaningfulness."
Van Tilburg said his research proves that boredom can promote behaviour that benefits society. "Being bored may be miserable, but at the same time it provides benefits for others who are in need of support," he said. "This is important as past boredom research mainly suggested detrimental correlates such as aggression or pathological gambling.
"Of course, this does not mean that boredom is necessary for prosocial behaviour," added Van Tilburg. "It is one positive effect of an utterly negative experience, demonstrating the dynamic character of how people attempt to re-establish a sense of meaningfulness."
The paper has been welcomed by Adrian Savage, an editor at the online life coach site, www.lifehack.org. "Being bored turns your mind inward and encourages reflection. When you're rushing about, there's no time to think. When you're bored, there's nothing else to do but think," he said.
"Boredom is nearly always essential to creativity. It isn't true that creativity is mostly sparked by having a specific problem to be solved. It's far more likely to arise because the person is bored with the way something has been done a thousand times before and wants to try something new," added Savage. "Boredom stimulates the search for better ways to things like nothing else does."