1. Introduction
Let’s imagine a
conference in which the content of its papers is finite but the convergence and
intersection of a set of apparently disparate ideas presented is infinite. It
is impossible not to recognize this form, which in mathematics alludes to a
solid of finite volume and infinite area, in the conference at hand. We could
then call it, to our inner selves and with fervent devotion, under the name of
Torricelli;[1]
and on the sides of its infinite area we would then find a gathering of
researchers from all over the world, whose object of study is centered on the
phenomenon of boredom investigated under the optics of the most diverse
disciplines and areas of knowledge. The famous universitas is constituted here in a double direction: not only
does it appear, in the form of a pictorial picture, showing to an observer who
keeps sufficient distance the whole synthetic panorama of the sum and union of
its colors and forms; it is also alive, and moves energetically from one
researcher to another, from one discipline to the next, in order to establish
new connections and develop the existing ones among them.
Based
on this underlying melody arises then, in the most natural and spontaneous way,
a space for interdisciplinary academic debate on boredom; an aspect that, of
course, becomes essential in our days. In this regard, the researcher
specialist in Boredom Studies, a reference and pioneer in Spain, National
Research Award for Young Researchers María Moliner and president of the
International Society of Boredom Studies Josefa Ros Velasco (2023a) refers that “this is a complicated exercise, but […] essential for the
continuity of progress. Throughout history we have made the mistake of
understanding boredom as something embarrassing […] instead of seeing it as a
useful experience”. And the fact is that Boredom Studies, at the dawn of their
youth,[2]
are becoming increasingly relevant in societies such as ours and claim for
themselves, in spaces such as this one, their recognition as a justified,
significant, and necessary field of scientific research. The complexity of a
universal phenomenon such as boredom can only be studied in the form of this
almost infinite approximation of approximations; only in this way can we build
a body of knowledge that comes as close as possible to the reality of its true
nature, to the origin and characterization of its different causes and
consequences, and to the fundamental mechanism underlying its manifestations.
The Boredom Conference was born in Poland in 2015
under the organization of Mariusz Finkielsztein, also a pionner in Boredom
Studies in that country. After two sequels there, from 2021 it became part of
the activities of the International Society of Boredom Studies. The
online format required at that time by the COVID-19 pandemic has been
maintained, finally, in the subsequent editions; this fact has greatly
facilitated the participation of scholars from all over the world. Taking into
account that the previous edition only had the presence of invited researchers,
this year’s edition has only invited women who are especially recognized in the
studies of boredom: Elizabeth Goodstein, specializing in the ways in which
modernity and modern subjectivity have been represented and understood in
European literature and culture since the industrial revolution from an
interdisciplinary perspective; Sandi Mann, Doctor in Psychology and Professor
of Applied Clinical Psychology at the University of Central Lancashire, and Dr.
Erin Westgate, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Florida.[3]
2. Culture Panel I
2.1. Josefa Ros Velasco
(Complutense University of Madrid, Spain).
Contemporary Myths on Boredom
In
her presentation Contemporary Myths on Boredom, the researcher
specialized in Boredom Studies Josefa Ros Velasco (National Research Award
María Moliner 2022 and author of the essay The Disease of Boredom [2022])
debunks some of the contemporary myths that circulate around us about this
everyday experience. The first and most frequent of all asserts that boredom
remains an unknown to us; a subject we know nothing about. But the truth is
that boredom has been the subject of considerable study by a long list of
thinkers and authors from all periods and currents—and then, with the musical
fluency of a sage, she names the contributions of Lucretius, Seneca and St.
Augustine, passing through those of St. Thomas, Kleist, Wagner, Flaubert,
Baudelaire, Adorno, Eastwood or Westgate, among many others—and, as such, the
existence of a substantial body of knowledge about it cannot be denied.
Defined as “a state of imbalance between what we
expect from the context and what we actually get from it” (Ros Velasco, 2023a), boredom then becomes a universal
experience that anyone can experience at any time. And if “we can all see
ourselves reflected in such a situation”, adds Ros Velasco, “then we are also
in a position to affirm that we possess a certain knowledge, however small it
may be, about boredom” (2023a). Thus,
whether through the individual knowledge that each one has of the experience,
or through the knowledge constructed over the centuries, that ‘the study of
boredom is still in its infancy’ can only be a myth (since, in any case, the
only thing that is still in its infancy is the academization and
institutionalization of it, the researcher clarifies). By the same token,
neither can it be true what one hears so much about boredom as a phenomenon for
which hardly any interest has been shown.
To this long list of false beliefs,
we should add the one that relates the birth of the experience of boredom to
modern societies. Nothing could be further from the truth, since “having more
free time does not imply that one experiences more boredom; boredom can arise
just as easily in free time as in busy time” (Ros Velasco, 2023a). In fact, if one is busy performing an
unstimulating task, boredom can lurk at any time. Contrary to popular belief,
hunter gatherer societies did suffer from boredom, since performing tasks does
not necessarily mean not being bored. However, as Ros Velasco (2023a) points out, “what does differentiate our
era from others is that we have much more time to write about boredom, about
our experiences, whatever the context”. That is the reason why it may seem that
boredom is only present in those individuals who have a lot of free time: it is
to them that the written heritage belongs by majority.
Having clarified this first point,
Ros Velasco now goes a step further and delves even deeper into the intricacies
and complexities of the phenomenon. Directly related to the myth of modern
societies is the one, already mentioned above, that equates boredom with doing
nothing: a statement defended in such a generic way is false, since boredom
arises in this case only when we are not doing anything out of obligation or,
in other words, when we would really like to be doing something else. The
reverse is also true: if we are busy doing something out of external demand and
we do not find that activity stimulating, then we get bored (Ros Velasco, 2023a). Thus, the reader will notice the number of
nuances and subtleties that underlie the experience of boredom: nothing is so
evident, nothing is so clear as to establish statements that come from our so
often not very rigorous common sense if a phenomenon as complex and
multifactorial as boredom has not been studied in depth.
Another of the myths dismantled by
Dr. Ros Velasco is that of creativity following boredom: more and more media
outlets are spreading this idea as if boredom were directly responsible for
creativity. The point is that such a statement is fundamentally wrong: the very
definition of boredom as a symptom—which Ros Velasco provides in her essay The Disease of Boredom, a synthesis of all her previous research—already
hints at the little real or existing relationship between a human ability that
depends on the subject and/or its context and not on a mere symptom. In this
regard, Ros Velasco (2023a) states
that, although boredom acts as a driving force—as a propellant of change—thanks
to its reactive component, the nature of that change need not be at all of a
new and/or original character. Moreover, we often react to boredom in
dysfunctional or unhealthy ways.[4] Most of those who link
boredom with creativity also negatively associate being continually busy with
the arrival of inspiration, as if one has to be bored for the muses to appear
to one. But this assertion is, once again, false: we often find the source of
inspiration while working.
Finally, there are the myths
associated with dysfunctional boredom,[5] which Ros Velasco
describes as stigmatizing, since they generate a series of unfounded beliefs in
the collective imagination about the nature of individuals who suffer from
boredom. Thus, we often hear unfounded clichés such as ‘only those who lack
curiosity get bored’, ‘only lazy people get bored’, or ‘only fools get bored’.
There is nothing good in making such a statement: firstly, because it ignores
the theoretical corpus—and therefore the true nature—of boredom, since it
ignores “the context and the possible existence of a pathological state of
boredom” (Ros Velasco, 2023a), and,
secondly, because it is an act of contempt. By stating something like this, the
only thing that is achieved is that people are ashamed of feeling boredom and
therefore avoid talking about the subject or reflecting on it in greater depth.
Instead of “tolerating” boredom, as some media propose, the right thing to do
is to “integrate [it] […] into the public dialogue”, concludes Ros Velasco (2023a). This is the only way to make visible a
phenomenon that, despite its undeserved bad reputation, can be profoundly
beneficial in many ways and can help us to know ourselves (and the society in
which we live) much better.[6]
2.2.
Salamis Aysegul Sentug (University of Kent, UK). Exploring Feminine Boredom
in 19th Century and Contemporary European Paintings Depicting Women Travelers
Establishing a dialogue
between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, and using Martin Doehlemann’s
typology to analyze artistic work, Salamis Aysegul Sentug explores in her
research the role of boredom in the representation of ‘the woman traveler’ in
painting. Travel— and above all and above all, rail travel—meant for a
nineteenth-century woman—certainly only for a very privileged one, since travel
in general was forbidden even for most wealthy women—a remedy against her
domestic boredom, as well as a means of escape.
What
Sentug is attempting to explain is that, as happened in the nineteenth century
with the invention of the railroad, today we are facing a new reconfiguration
between the world and the self mediated by our cybernetic era. If before the
escape route was the train ride, now it is the virtual world. However, the
perceptual crisis originated by the travel experience itself—with its own
particular reconfiguration between the self and the world—has always led to an
increase in boredom, the researcher explains. The nineteenth-century perceptual
crisis, Sentug (2023) explains, stems from the
impossibility of linking the individual with the outside world when the former
is on a moving train: “every journey becomes boring in exact proportion to its
speed”, said a nineteenth-century art critic, John Ruskin, referring to train
travel. In addition, there was the boredom caused by waiting—situational
boredom, following Doehlemann’s typology—and the uncomfortable effect of a
man's indiscreet gaze directed at a woman, namely the boredom of society.
Similarly,
a twenty-first-century user experiences increased boredom when he or she tries
to escape from boredom by turning to the virtual world. Following Pettmann,
Sentug explains how our attention starts to disintegrate due to the speed at
which information travels through our computers. For that reason, one begins to
react in a similar way “to a joke, to a family photo, to a recipe […] to a
massacre” (Pettmann, quoted in Sentug, 2023). This
general principle of technological symbiosis underlies the artistic activity of
contemporary painter Nathaniel St. Amour, who explores with his art the virtual
journeys in which we are increasingly immersed today.
3. Culture Panel II
3.1. Annie Runkel
(University of Dundee, UK). Boredom and
the Unoriginality of Romance Fiction
In her research Boredom and the Unoriginality of Romance
Fiction, Annie Runkel wonders about the surprising success of fictional
romances despite the repetitive and predictable nature of their novels. While
everything in them is trite—the characters, the three-act structure with a
happy ending, and the settings are often cut from the same cloth—the number of
readers who consume these novels in no small numbers is substantial, suggesting
that there are mechanisms to compensate for the repetition and predictability
that would otherwise have led readers to experience boredom. Anticipating what
is going to happen, becoming an expert capable of noticing the slightest
variations from one novel to another, or finding in the reading of these novels
a safe space in which to obtain positive emotional reinforcement are some of
the most fundamental mechanisms. Most readers of this genre turn to romance
novels as an escape from their own problems, so they find a predictable story
with a happy ending and prototypical characters particularly enjoyable. There
is a certain playful component to this process in which rewarding cognitive
activities are triggered for the reader; hence, the reader experiences a sense
of control that he or she cannot experience in real life.
What
can certainly be very interesting in the context of Boredom Studies is the
debate with which the researcher concludes her presentation: the dichotomy ‘boredom
versus fictional romance’ is very present today in the world of romantic
literature. Many believe that reacting through boredom to a situation of
dissatisfaction is much more likely to lead to a healthy attitude change, while
resorting to fictional romances would lead to perpetual avoidance of the real
problem by the subject. In contrast, other voices see in fictional romances a
possible germ of change due to the absence of social constraints in their
scenarios. In such an assumption, literature serves as a place of prior
experimentation that inspires the individual to change his or her behavior
(Figure 1).
Figure 1. Screenshot
of Runkel’s presentation. Outline around the ‘boredom vs. reading romance
fiction’ debate.
3.2. Tirna Chatterjee
(Jawaharlal Nehru University, India). Beckett
in Bengal: Boredom, Waiting and Repetition in the Cinema of Ashish Aviunkthak
If it is more usual to
find studies on boredom in the West, Tirna Chatterjee takes it upon herself in Beckett in Bengal: Boredom, Waiting and
Repetition in the Cinema of Ashish Aviunkthak to claim a place for
postcolonial or decolonial research on boredom. She does so through her
particular interpretation of two films by film director and cultural
anthropologist Ashish Avikunthak: his two Beckett adaptations Waiting for Godot and Come and Go, among others, show with a
certain rawness a shared vision between literary and director about the nature
of time, memory and repetition.
In a rather successful attempt to disintegrate the
boundaries of discourse, Waiting for
Godot—as the “postcolonial
meditation on the future” that it is (Chatterjee, 2023)—is
able to create a bridge between ancient Indian philosophical and religious
treatises and Beckett’s great philosophical, political, and theological themes.
In a vague minimal setting, violence, sexuality, rancorous emotions and drives,
and expressions of affection follow one another like a moving specter of a
transgeographical, translinguistic, and transcultural piece that, at the zenith
of its deliberate expressions, goes “so far as to recommend suicide as a way of
passing or killing time” (Chatterjee, 2023).
Avikunthak plays with the Beckettian nature of time and the boredom of waiting
to contextualize within that framework a new geographical and translinguistic
reference to the Indian revolutions of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He thus displays
a delicate ability to add layers of meaning around the postcolonial experience.
3.3. Mariusz
Finkielsztein (Collegium Civitas, Poland). L'Ennui
des Syrtes: Or the Boredom of Empires
According
to Mariusz Finkielsztein’s research, an analysis of boredom in Julien Gracq’s
novel Le Rivage des Syrtes reveals how this fictional narrative can
illustrate the thinking of one of the greatest and most important
representatives of historical catastrophism and pessimism, Oswald Spengler. In The
Decline of the West—“Gracq sees this book […] as a prophetic
work that perfectly describes our epoch”, clarifies Finkielsztein (2023)—Spengler defines culture as a living creature that “reaches old age,
the fall and the end” (1946, p. 106). When it reaches the totality of
its possibilities, “culture suddenly hardens, becomes mortified, its blood
coagulates, its strength decays, and it becomes Civilization” (Spengler, 1946, p.
106). In the latter state, culture is decadent; the society that lives immersed
in it—as the novel demonstrates—cannot avoid boredom.
The protagonist narrator, Aldo, is a young
aristocrat who belongs to one of the ruling families of Orsenna—a city-state whose similarities are evident with the Venetian Republic
and Empire—and who, out of
boredom, gives up his youthful revelry to become a spy for the ruling class. Although
Orsenna has been engaged in a dull cold war against Farghestan for decades,
none of the opponents have made any hostile or threatening moves so far. Only
boredom will cause catastrophe to be unleashed: the intrigues surrounding Aldo’s
affair with the traitor Vanessa will inflame Orsenna’s collective animus
against his adversary. Thus—warns
Finkielsztein (2023)—if anything is evident in
Julien Gracq’s novel, it is that “the state of societal existential boredom”
leads to such a lack of meaning that even absurdity is reached, and this
disposition, shared by society, makes even “the spectacle of destruction by
barbarians or the mere anticipation of it […] [more] meaningful than living in
Orsenna”.
If they look outside to find a significant
change—says the Polish researcher—, it is because they do not see themselves
capable of leading that change on their own. Only in this way does it make
sense that war becomes a source of novelty that can put an end to boredom:
structural inertia, extended from generation to generation, ends up manifesting
itself in the form of a dominant passivity in the subjects, who only receive
orders. However—clarifies
Finkielsztein (2023) in the question time—the depoliticizing character of boredom is not always a constant: “as
Ros Velasco has already investigated, boredom can also lead to a revolution […]
[i.e.] boredom has these two paths” (Finkielsztein, 2023).[7] Ultimately, the reality
is that both subjects and members of ruling classes have at some point become
bored with their empire. The boredom of empire, Finkielsztein makes clear,
occurs either in the fictional setting of Gracq’s novel, or in the decadent
historical reality of a British Empire in its last cultural stage. A great
testimony of the latter is the essay Imperial Boredom, by Jeffrey A.
Auerbach, whose reading is highly recommended.
4. Special Guests I
4.1.
Sandi Mann (The University of Central Lancashire, UK). Why Bored People Don’t
Eat Nuts: The Effect of Boredom on Food Choices
We
could not miss the significant contribution of the renowned researcher Dr.
Sandi Mann, active in the area of psychology and Senior Lecturer in Occupational
Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Central
Lancashire since 1998, expert in emotions—especially in the area of work—and
member of the Health Psychology Research Group. She is the author of several
psychology books such as The Science of Boredom: Why Boredom is Good (2016).
The title of her paper already reveals the
important relationship between eating behavior and boredom: Why Bored People
Don’t Eat Nuts: The Effect of Boredom on Food Choices. The key point of
boredom, says the researcher, lies in our reaction to it: the search for neural
stimulation—which is, in short, what we lack when we are bored—will lead us
either to direct our resources and attention towards a redefinition of the task
that bores us to make it a more stimulating or meaningful occupation, or to
seek in external or internal activities the source of additional stimulation
that we lack, distancing us from the boring task (Mann, 2023). This
last behavioral pattern is the most interesting from the point of view of
eating behavior research; in fact, it is no coincidence that this was the
majority reaction to boredom during the pandemic.
Numerous studies, Mann clarifies throughout the
central part of her lecture, have found a direct relationship between eating
more and being bored. Moreover, according to studies from the 1990s, such as Schlundt
et al. (1993) or Hill
et al. (1991), there
is a positive correlation between boredom and an increase in unhealthy
cravings. An important—and it seems to be, predominant—role in this is played
by the choice of chocolate—in Hill et al.’s study, 60% of the participants
chose it when they felt bored—which, in fact, is corroborated by a more recent
study by Havermans et al. (2015). In line with previous research, two
studies conducted by Dr. Mann verified the starting hypothesis: after
performing a boring task, participants prefer one fatty or sugary food over
another (Figure 2). In fact, not only did they conclude that French fries,
sweets, and fast food are significantly more highly valued after a boring task,
but also that people who are prone to boredom are more likely to consume
unhealthy foods when they experience boredom than those who are not. Mann’s
findings are consistent with previous experimental results (Abramson and
Stinson, 1977;
Havermans et al., 2015; Willis, 2014). In this way, Mann’s
latest research (2023), and,
in general, her long trajectory in Boredom Studies, are constituted as an
essential prevention method when it comes to awakening a collective wake-up
call regarding the existence of boredom-induced negative behaviors.
Figure 2. Screenshot of the first of two studies conducted by Mann. The
results show a preference for unhealthy food after performing a boring task
4.2.
Erin Westgate (University of Florida, US). Why Boredom Is
Interesting
If
we can name one particularly interesting method of approaching the complex
phenomenon of boredom, it is undoubtedly the Meaning and Attentional Component
Model (MAC) (Westgate and Wilson, 2018). In her
presentation, Dr. Erin Westgate discusses how it can answer fundamental
questions related to boredom, as well as connecting and explaining the causes
and consequences of this phenomenon. The MAC, Westgate (2023) explains,
is based on a constructionist approach to emotion, since it considers boredom
as an emotional signal that warns us about our state and disposition towards
the activity we are performing. This is how it can tell us a whole variety of
fundamental data; from whether or not we are involved in an activity, to
whether or not it really has a significant value for us. For the first premise
to be fulfilled, we have to pay attention to the activity; this is what experts
in the field call the attentional component. The second, on the other hand, is
a fundamental requirement of the meaning component (Westgate, 2023).
By studying how these and other variables change—some
dependent on the attentional component, the others related to the meaning
component—we then obtain a whole variety of situations. For there to be no
boredom—or rather, for the subject to experience a low level of boredom—two
conditions must be met: firstly, the level of resources must coincide with the
level of demand, because only in this way will the individual in question be in
a position to pay attention to the activity he or she is carrying out.
Secondly, and no less important, the activity in question must be meaningful to
the person performing it. If the latter is not the case, we would be dealing
with the type of boredom that Westgate calls Meaningless Boredom. In
situations of low stimulation or overstimulation, resources and demand do not
coincide, so the subject in question experiences Attentional Boredom
(Westgate, 2023) (Figure
3).
Figure 3. Capture of boredom typologies as a function of the meaning
component and the attentional component
4.2.1. The Causes of Boredom
Among
the causes of boredom, Westgate launched a series of predictions that were to
be verified or refuted by actual studies. The first prediction (attention
and meaning produce boredom independently) turned out to be true, as there
were main effects of both components (Figure 4).[8] The second prediction (deficits
of attention and meaning produce different types of boredom) has also been
corroborated by the empirical results. Attentional Boredom would then be
“characterized by difficulty in concentrating”, whereas Meaningless Boredom
would be “characterized by feelings of agitation and sadness” (Westgate, 2023).
Westgate and Wilson (2018) saw that attention and meaning produce
boredom independently, and that, moreover, they are not highly correlated; they
do not interact.
The second prediction (deficits
of attention and meaning produce different types of boredom) has also been
corroborated by empirical results. Attentional boredom would then be “characterized
by difficulty concentrating,” whereas “meaningless” boredom would be “characterized
by feelings of agitation and sadness” (Westgate, 2023). Westgate and
Wilson saw that attention and meaning produce boredom independently, and that,
moreover, they are not highly correlated; they do not interact (Figure 5).
It was also interesting to verify
the hypothesis that both an excess and a shortage of stimulation can produce
boredom. The direct relationship of boredom with the process effectively
results in a linear curve: the function reaches the maximum values of boredom
when the level of demand is too low or too high (the subject's attention span
decreases, which makes it easier for the subject to experience boredom). Only
if the demands are just right does the subject performing the activity has the
capacity to maintain the attention necessary to avoid boredom.
Figure 4. Capture of the results of the first real study: the first
starting hypothesis is fulfilled (Westgate and Wilson, 2018)
Figure 5. Capture of the results of the second prediction (Westgate and
Wilson, 2018)
4.2.2. The Consequences of Boredom
In an attempt to clarify
whether boredom can be bad—to the point of prompting someone to harm themselves
or someone else—Westgate conducted a joint study with Stefan Pfattheicher and
other colleages (2021) in which some participants were
shown a rather boring 20-minute video, while others were shown an interesting
documentary. The focus of the study was to observe what the participants did
while watching the video (hence, among other things, the participants were allowed
to kill worms). The results showed that those who were bored tended to kill
worms more often than those who were not bored.
However,
clarifies Westgate (2023), boredom is not always bad:
the response to boredom depends on its cause. Proof of this is that, if we
change activities to reduce the boredom caused by the first one due to low
stimulation, the probability that we will choose an interesting activity is
very high. If, on the other hand, the cause of our boredom had been
overstimulation, then we would have chosen as our new activity one that was
simply enjoyable. In the long run, Westgate clarifies, the most beneficial
thing is to have chosen the interesting activity: the fact that we have
previously increased our level of knowledge allows us to find some activities
stimulating or interesting that would otherwise probably bore us.
5. Psychology Panel
5.1. Sumana Sri
(Claremont Graduate University, US). Boredom
Experiences During the COVID-19 Lockdown
In order to promote
healthy and effective coping strategies to boredom, Dr. Sumana Sri has
conducted an in-depth experimental analysis that aims to shed light on the
influence of individual and contextual factors in the process of regulating
current boredom experiences. Through a study conducted during the COVID-19
pandemic in the United States, Sri has obtained enlightening results on the
type of coping strategy, the type of activity performed, the intensity of
boredom and the individual's own dispositions. Significant conclusions are
drawn from the experiment, such as the following: when coping with boredom,
most people make use of behavioral strategies, especially behavioral avoidance
strategies (Sri, 2023).
This means that instead of persisting with what we are
bored with (perhaps a work task), we usually switch to another activity,
especially one that calms or distracts us. However, what Sri (2023) has determined is that the use of cognitive focus strategies is much
more effective and healthier in coping with boredom. The subject using this
type of tactic continues to experience boredom but changes his or her thinking
by neutrally re-evaluating the fact that he or she is bored and trying to
improve, as much as possible, the quality of his or her experiences (Figure 6).
5.2. James Danckert
(University of Waterloo, Canada). Boredom
as Information Processing: Revisiting Orin Klapp (1986)
James Danckert, Professor
at the University of Waterloo in Canada, is particularly interested in the
behavior of boredom as a function of the rate of change of information, as the
American sociologist Orin Klapp theorized in his book Overload and Boredom: Essays on the Quality of Life in the Information Society
back in the 1980s. In a society like ours, full of constant barrages of
information, we can verify what special guest Erin Westgate has already stated
in her presentation: boredom occurs not only when what we are doing is too
simple for us, but also when the activity we are engaged in is too complicated
and/or we cannot give it the attention it requires. Contrary to what might be
imagined, the implications of this kind of accelerated background—a high rate
of information exchange—are not always negative: according to Danckert’s recent
research, some computational models suggest that an agent driven by boredom
learns better than one driven by curiosity (Yu et al., 2019).
Similarly,
a study by Burda et. al (2018) obtained a particularly
interesting result: faced with a screen that changes image every two or three
seconds, an agent driven by curiosity would stand in front of it forever, while
a bored agent would remain a finite time in front of it, changing activity as
soon as he began to be aware of the little meaning it has for him. Nor does the
irruption of boredom at a low rate of information change cease to be positive:
then, the former becomes a signal to explore other activities (Gomez-Ramirez and
Costa, 2017).
Hence
Dr. Danckert’s eagerness to thoroughly investigate and analyze the
relationships and influences between boredom and this new accelerated pace that
defines our contemporary world: “I don't even think Orin Klapp could have
imagined […] the vast amount of information available to us right now, which
implies the emergence of major challenges at a high rate of information change”
(Danckert, 2023).
Figure 6. Screenshot
of the experimental results of the study. In red the majority percentage:
avoidance behavioral strategies are the most used as a reaction to boredom
(46%)
5.3. Vanessa Baaba
Dadzie (University of Waterloo, Canada). Exploring
Differences in the Relationship Between Boredom Proneness and the Feeling and
Judgement of Agency
In response to Gorelik and
Eastwood’s research (2023), Vanessa Baaba Dadzie conducts two
studies in her research on boredom that seek to shed light on the relationship
between boredom and agency. In the process, she goes even further than Garlic and
Eastwood in that she “[places] agency in the context of self-regulation”: that
is, she first inserts it in the contexts of self-control and regulation and, in
addition, takes into account self-efficacy as “a measure of one’s confidence in
one’s ability to achieve what one sets out to do” (Baaba Dadzie, 2023). From this, she derives and verifies—in line with Gorelik and Eastwood’s
results—that the propensity to boredom is higher the lower the level of
self-efficacy (and, to the same extent, the lower the agency). In fact,
negative agency is often directly linked to mental disorders such as
depression, and explains the difficulty that sufferers have in participating or
taking part in meaningful activities. Moreover, the results are consistent with
theories such as Kruglanski’s regulatory mode, which distinguishes two
different approaches to goal pursuit—the locomotion approach and the evaluative
approach—and in whose characterization we find similar correspondences between
boredom and passivity. After all, negative agency is much more likely to occur
in subjects who, far from taking action, prefer to think carefully about the
different options, possibilities and implications of their own decisions
(Figure 7).[9]
Figure 7. Screenshot
of the study they conducted proving the negative relationship between tendency
to boredom and agency
5.4. Chantal Trudel
(University of Waterloo, Canada). Connecting
Interoception and Boredom Proneness: A Novel Finding
As an active member of
the Danckert’s Lab at the University of Waterloo, Dr. Chantal Trudel seeks to
elucidate and explore in her new research the relationship between boredom
propensity and interoception. From a series of self-reported surveys, Trudel (2023) has concluded a positive correlation between boredom propensity and
self-awareness (r= 0.826, p < 0.001), as well as between the former and
interoceptive processing (r= 0.767, p < 0.001). Although boredom proneness
is also found to be related to awareness of one's own body states (r = 0.497, p
< 0.001) and interoceptive accuracy (r = 0.375, p < 0.001), for the
latter the results suggest a weaker correlation. This fact has interesting
consequences because it implies a somewhat paradoxical situation: the subject
prone to boredom pays much attention to his or her internal states and yet
demonstrates a lower capacity to represent them accurately (Trudel, 2023). We will have to wait, not without expectation, for the arrival of
experimental data on interoceptive accuracy to be able to connect all the
pieces of the puzzle (Figure 8).
Figure 8. Capture
of the first sample of experimental results on the relationship between boredom
tendency and self-consciousness and boredom tendency and interoceptive
processing
6. Philosophy & Miscellaneous Panel
6.1. Julia Köwitz García (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain). From Chronicled Situational Boredom to Deep
Boredom
Based on the prolific research by Dr. Josefa
Ros Velasco (2022), Julia Köwitz
frames a selection of Georg Büchner’s works—Leonce und Lena; Lenz;
Woyzeck, and, more
superficially, Danton’s Tod—within the cosmos of Boredom Studies,
finding in a significant part of them the reflection of a real phenomenon that
took place on a massive scale in nineteenth-century Germany: the passage from a
chronic situational boredom to a deep boredom. The readers of that time,
immersed in the pain of a deep boredom, enjoyed then a process of
identification and catharsis when they saw reflected in literature the tedious
drive of their time. And if anything is to be highlighted as a fundamental
component of the process, it is the double reactive component of boredom as
defined by Ros Velasco in La enfermedad del aburrimiento. Köwitz’s
argument is that, thanks to its duality, the impossibility of a revolution in
German territory—or, in other words, the unfeasibility of access to the second
reactive component of boredom, the passage to action—is not limited to inducing
only a mood of despair in the author and his readers, but—thanks to the first
reactive component, that of awareness—the force of the idea acquires, even in
spite of Büchner’s malinadversion toward German idealism, a higher form and
meaning. In this cosmos, the first reactive component of boredom has sublimated
the Thelema by turning it into Boulesis.
6.2. Lutz Niemann (Charles University, Czech
Republic). Boredom and the Lived Body - Between Fullness and Emptiness
With nihilistic accents—very similar to those
that Dr. Goodstein will later develop in her presentation (2023)—Niemann outlines
in his presentation a phenomenology of boredom based on the thought of
Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Sepp. An excess of appropriation of
otherness mediated by the senses leads the subject suffering from boredom to
experience a specific loss of reality, given that he or she no longer lives, no
longer perceives the experiences of real otherness (Niemann, 2023). In order not to fall into the void there should be a dialogue
between the self and the fullness of the world, a condition that, in any case,
is not present in deep boredom. If the center of gravity of the identity of the
self pivots on a relationship that in cases of deep boredom does not exist, the
identity crisis of the subject is imminent.
In his desire to control
the resistance of otherness—the real, according to Sepp—the human being directs
his forces and yearnings towards plenitude with the intention of converting his
field of action into a “spatio-temporal domestication of otherness” (Niemann, 2023). And the fact is that, in our eternal disposition towards the future—because
this is something we cannot avoid, “the human […] is always ahead of itself”,
says Heidegger (quoted in Niemann, 2023)—and circumscribed to an existence that is equivalent to a directed
movement, boredom occurs precisely when this continuous circulation stops or is
frustrated.
What Niemann comes to
emphasize in Heidegger’s thought is precisely the importance of boredom as a
state of mind: by its very nature, it possesses the ability to reveal to us our
practical situation in the world. If situational boredom is still localized,
deep boredom “extends to the whole world” (Niemann, 2023). In it, the dialogue between the self and otherness has been broken
and the Dasein has burst into a world that has ceased to speak to it.
The aversion experienced by the individual is no longer focused on the world
but, as Levinas affirms, on the self. Let us emphasize in this aspect the
importance of social contact according to Levinas for the prevention of boredom
and the fullness of life.
6.3. Morgan Heslop (Massey University, New
Zealand). Lessons from the Bored Room: Applying Concepts of Boredom to
Animals
There is still very little known about how
animals understand monotony or boredom, how it differs between species and the
different forms of it. This being the subject of study of the Heslop (2023) thesis, the researcher makes clear from the outset the fundamental
importance of an unwavering maxim in the welfare sciences: it is not so much a
question of whether animals are bored, but whether they have a hard time in
certain situations that we as humans would consider boring. We are used to
keeping animals in kennels, stables, or battery cages; and these are
environments in which two factors related to boredom are present: a high degree
of monotony and a low degree of free will. What the welfare sciences are
positing here, therefore, is that “we have a duty to ensure that the ways in
which we keep animals do not harm them” (Heslop, 2023). However, the issue is complex and far from simple to address; we do
not yet know whether boredom is an animal welfare problem or whether it is more
a phenomenon of the human experience (Figure 9).
Figure 9. Capture of Heslop’s presentation on
the Dawkins Bridge, which allows us to infer with a certain degree of certainty
the mental state—in this case, of an animal—with prior knowledge of a large
number of indicators of animal welfare (behavior, psychology, environment,
etc.)
6.4. Jolien de Schepper (University of
Antwerp, Belgium). Phone in Hand - A Boredom Demand? Studying the Regulation
of Boredom Through Smartphone Use
Nor was there any absence of an approach to
boredom from the perspective of the communication scientist. This is how de Schepper
(2023), doctoral student
at the University of Antwerp, has described her own work. To carry out her
research she conducted two parallel studies which, although they did not yield
significant results in terms of predicting boredom in media choice, did manage
to find evidence for a U-shaped relationship between arousal and boredom (de
Schepper, 2023). An important
implication follows from this: an optimal level of arousal does not generate a
high intensity of boredom, but lower and higher levels do lead to considerable
boredom. Added to this finding is a very interesting one, namely, the finding
that, on diary days, boredom levels are significantly higher.
7. Education Panel
7.1.
Jennie Plate Blomberg (Södertörn University, Sweden). The Affective Economy
of Boredom - Teachers Practical Knowledge of Boredom as "Sticky"
On the other hand,
boredom in education is a real challenge—and even more so today—for teachers.
Blomberg, from the University of Sördertön in Stockholm, is currently
researching the experience of Swedish and Finnish upper secondary school
teachers in relation to boredom in her doctoral thesis on the theory of
practical knowledge. Taking a close look at the different forms of practical
knowledge in the professions—in this case, teaching—is essential for a better
understanding of the emotions surrounding the classroom. Only in this way, Blomberg
(2023) asserts, “do we adjust our practice to action”.
Drawing on interviews with teachers and Sara Ahmed’s ideas about the
circulation of emotions, Blomberg derives a novel perspective on boredom and
its real-world implications.
Starting
from Ahmed’s Marxist premise that the effective value of a body increases
proportionally to the circulation of the emotion it carries, Blomberg (2023) infers that the effective value of a bored
student increases proportionally to the circulation of this emotion. This
repetition of an impression turns out to be precisely what Ahmed calls ‘stickiness’;
a fundamental conception in Blomberg’s studies of boredom. In that same line,
interviews with teachers reveal that boredom always circulates linked to three
phenomena: the idea of the immature student, cell phones and computer screens,
and anxiety (Blomberg, 2023). As for the teachers, they have to
cope with a new phase of widespread digitalization at school—in Sweden, every
pupil owns his own computer—which, in turn, promotes their own boredom.
Teachers’
adaptation to the new digital reality leads them to take on the unwanted role
of ‘screen police’ or ‘entertainer’ when in fact they would like to carry out
their teaching work without having to enter into a kind of competitive
situation with their students’ screens. This gives rise not only to ethical
dilemmas (‘how should a teacher relate to his students?’), but also to
aesthetic considerations (‘how should interesting and instructive teaching be
composed?’) or even personal questions (‘what kind of teacher do I want to be?’).
7.2. Carrie Hall (CUNY,
US). The Boredoms: Learning under Duress
For
Carrie Hall (2023),
boredom “is an interaction between the student, the text and the situation”
and, to that extent, “lies in the tension between engagement and disengagement”.
The researcher states clearly that the investigation of this phenomenon can
serve as a basis for promoting important curricular changes as well as the
degree of student engagement. That is why one of the keys in Hall’s boredom
studies consists of analyzing her students’ writings, insofar as individual
reflection on their own experience can encourage them “to develop a
metacognitive awareness of boredom” (Hall, 2023). Furthermore, Hall
qualifies (2023), “one
can perform boredom without actually being bored”, i.e., there is actually a
big difference between being bored and performing boredom, and this distinction
should always be kept in mind; there are many cases in which the learner
pretends to be bored but is not really bored.
Based on the testimonies of her students and on Hall
(2021) and
Rallin’s (2019)
theories of coercion and engagement, Hall (2023) sheds light on the
nature of the phenomenon of boredom in the context of teaching and literacy.
The aforementioned need to destigmatize boredom—in this respect, Ros Velasco (2023a) and
Hall share the same concern—makes a generalized awareness of it on the part of
the population essential. Contrary to popular belief, it is a sign of change
capable of shedding light on the nature of the human being: “people”, Hall (2023) begins,
“think of boredom as something atypical and an experience without qualities […]
[but] boredom is the key part of the history of everyone”.
8. Special Guests II
8.1 Elizabeth Goodstein (Emory Universty, US).
Nothing to Do: Boredom and the Technological Imaginary
In her special guest lecture, Professor Elizabeth Goodstein describes the
contours of the theoretical foundation of her new project, titled Nothing to Do: Boredom and the Technological
Imaginary. Expanding on her previous work, Goodstein (2023) develops
a critical concept of boredom “as a philosophically and politically significant
and historically specific experiential configuration”—with clear and direct
allusions to Simmel’s philosophy of money or Max Weber’s reflections on
nihilism—locating it spatially and temporally on the complex and contradictory
consumerist society of our time. Under the imperative of what Goodstein agrees
to call a nihilistic dynamic—inherent
to the experience without qualities—the individual not only does not
appease his boredom when he turns to the most representative distractions of
our hypermediatized world but aggravates and intensifies it in a worrying way
(Goodstein, 2023).
Moreover, as a “diffusion index of skepticism in the self” (Goodstein, 2023), boredom
is nothing more than a “tip-off” to the truth: we should not turn to the motive
to relieve our meaninglessness, but rather turn away from it, she advises.
Although
the language of boredom has not lost in all cases its previous pre-industrial
meanings and resonances, during the nineteenth century—Goodstein states (2023)—the
evolution of the discourse on boredom shows the irruption of a new rhetoric of
experience: the previous spiritual-existential connotation—name, for example, l'ennui—has
given way to a new secularized terminology, linked to a self-understanding
rooted in the deep contradictions of scientific progress. Hence Dr. Goodstein (2023) repeatedly
refers in her presentation to the ambiguity of reason and, to the same extent, “the
ambiguity of the rationality of modern life”.
If
its peak manifestation is now in the form of “doubt, self-doubt and unfreedom”
(Goodstein, 2023) in an
increasingly polarized society, mediated by massive technologies of
disinformation and surveillance, it is impossible not to share the researcher’s
concern for the future of democracy and the integrity of the individual. But
probably the most remarkable aspect of the ambiguity of the discourse on
boredom is the following: despite the difficulties it offers to interpretation,
it possesses the valuable capacity to reveal the nature of this “fundamental
transformation […] in the way of understanding the human relationship with
history” (Goodstein, 2023). This is precisely what Goodstein is
interested in: relating subjective experience to cultural modernization and
bringing together, at the same time, philosophical, sociological, and
historical reflection on boredom.
9. Culture Panel III
9.1.
Julian Jason Haladyn (OCAD University, Canada). Chantal Akerman in the Time of Covid-19
Chantal
Ackermann’s films took on a new significance during the pandemic because they
dealt with a phenomenon that every human being, at that time, experienced every
day, without any possibility to ‘escape’ from it (Haladyn, 2023). These are the statements of Dr. Julian Jason Haladyn about his
research on boredom in the film work of this director: far from the gimmicky
habits of Hollywood studios, Ackermann’s films place the viewer directly in
front of the duration. The most famous scene in the film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Figure 10) shows
us a woman peeling potatoes from start to finish, without any cuts in between;
or a Jeanne with an impassive expression making love as part of her routine sex
work. The viewer is thus confronted with duration in its full extent; “and
precisely this question was fundamental during the COVID pandemic” (Haladyn, 2023). It is therefore no mere coincidence that Ackermann’s strategic use of
slowness or boredom became much more significant at that time. A change in
context also suggests a new interpretation, namely that boredom and duration
became twinned evils during the pandemic. Indeed, all the activities Jeanne
engages in in the very long film-it lasts almost four hours-from housework to
sexual work, are part of that enduring boredom that is in the very structure of
the film and that, according to Haladyn (2023), “provided
a point of reference within an otherwise overtly fluid sense of life under
COVID”.
Figure 10. Capture of Haladyn’s presentation of the most famous scene
from Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce,
1080 Bruxelles
9.2. Christian
Parreno (Univerity of San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador). Boredom in the Architecture of Will Alsop
The
omnipresence of boredom is such that we even find it in the very heart of
modern architecture, as Christian Parreno, professor at the University of San
Francisco de Quito, tells us in the presentation of his research Boredom in the Architecture of Will Alsop.
From the mythical Le Corbusier, through Philip Johnson to the origins of the
Vanguard Group, they all share the same source of inspiration: the struggle against boredom, their position against the phenomenon. This is how,
among other things, the meetings of the Vanguard Group arose at the end of the
1960s, in whose activity dedicated to criticizing projects or writing letters
to the press we find nothing more than a resonant shared resistance against the
boredom caused by working in the architectural offices of London. It was Cook
who, in fact, described it that way back in 1999; fifteen years later he would
acknowledge his view of boredom as a tedious proxy for political correctness.
Will Alsop, on the other hand, looked more to its potential positive
implications, insofar as he saw in boredom “a force not only of creation, but
also of enlightenment, a source of knowledge” (Parreno, 2023). This is how the phenomenon at hand acquires almost programmatic
dimensions in the work of an architect who, posthumously, was described as an “architectural
provocateur” (New York Times) or as a creator of “wild and wacky visions”
(The Guardian) (quoted in Parreno, 2023) in the
midst of a world dominated by commercial architecture. Alsop’s approach to
boredom is intuitive and is constituted as an act of rebellion against the
prevailing rationalist and functionalist methods: faced with the obligation to
be doing something at any time and place, he claims the opposite: being able to
sit and do nothing “allows the world to enter your head […] that’s where it all
is” (Alsop, 2012).
9.3. Tathagata
Bhowmik (Case Western Reserve University, US). Endless Scrolling Through Social Media and Boredom - A Tool for
Organizational Control
In line with other previous presentations,
Tathagata Bhowmik discusses the implications of today’s frenetic pace of
information consumption. The most direct consequence derives from a weakening
of the user’s attentional systems, which in turn prevents the user from
focusing and orienting on a specific task to which to assign real meaning. On
this basis, and based on Gidden’s theory of structuring, Bhowmik (2023) verifies
the inevitable interrelation between actions in one space and the result in a
different space: boredom that has been born in a private space is maintained in
organizational spaces. In this context, the lack of cognitive resources to face
a more demanding task becomes a constant that makes it very difficult to get
out of this loop. Bombarded as we are by a constant information overload, we
become “knowledge workers” ironically devoid of the aptitude to extract from
the information we receive a true purpose and full meaning. In line with Goodstein’s
(2023) thesis,
Bhowmik (2023) recognizes
in this contemporary dynamic of noise and redundancy an amplification of
boredom and, to the same extent, the feedback of a loop of exploitation,
control and existential unease.
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