Boredom Increases Impulsiveness

The phenomenon of boredom

Boredom remains a poorly understood phenomenon despite its evident association with dysfunctional behavior and mental health problems. However, little research has been devoted to the topic, and the bulk of studies have almost exclusively been quantitative in design. For this reason, a qualitative, interpretive phenomenological study was carried out, during which ten participants were asked for...

Impulsiveness and cigarette smoking.

OBJECTIVE Varying aspects of impulsive personality have been associated with tobacco use in cross-sectional and prospective studies, including novelty seeking and (low) constraint but most studies have not examined more than one tobacco use phenotype (e.g., any tobacco use versus dependence) or considered more than one variety of impulsiveness simultaneously. METHODS The current study was con...

A Philosophy of Boredom

In Place of Boredom

Boredom, Information-Seeking and Exploration

Any adaptive organism faces the choice between taking actions with known benefits (exploitation), and sampling new actions to check for other, more valuable opportunities available (exploration). The latter involves informationseeking, a drive so fundamental to learning and long-term reward that it can reasonably be considered, through evolution or development, to have acquired its own value, i...