Understanding and Combating Boredom

"Bored to death."  You probably have heard that phrase many, many times.  And you undoubtedly would agree that boredom certainly is a negative emotion.  But how deadly or negative an emotion is it?  Since Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg and Eric R. Igou (2017) carefully investigated boredom, it is fitting that we start with their research,

van Tilburg and Igou sought to determine how boredom compared to the negative emotions of sadness, anger, frustration, fear, disgust, depression, guilt, shame, regret, and disappointment.  They specifically looked at the extent to which boredom differed from the others conceptually and experientially, and  how the experience of boredom differed from person to person.  Their general conclusions made sense.  The investigators reported that boredom is in fact conceptually different from the other negative emotions.  When bored, individuals experience mildly negativity, low arousal, inattention, and a sense of meaninglessness.

As describe thus far, the emotional profile of boredom does not seem to be especially worrisome.  However, boredom is found to correlate positively with other more distressing conditions such as anxiety, anger, risk seeking, gambling, depression, and loneliness.  The positive correlation of course does not mean that boredom necessarily causes the other problems, but it certainly might increase one’s vulnerability to them.

The picture is not totally bleak, however.  Investigators other than van Tilburg and Igou have suggested that boredom sometimes can confer benefits.   First and foremost, like all emotions, boredom has a signal function.  It is obvious to all that anger, for instance, signals that the angry person perceives a significant threat to their person.  Even children know boredom's signal function; they unwittingly express that knowledge when they complain, "I'm bored.  I don't have anything to do."  So, if we recognize that we are bored, we can follow mother's advice and find something satisfying to do.

The experience of "flow" (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997) is the ideal antidote to boredom.  Flow occurs when we engage in activities that are moderately challenging and engrossing.  Passive experiences rarely produce flow.  Most often, flow activities involve a clear goal and method by which we can determine success toward that goal.  Typical flow-inducing pursuits are playing complex games, such as chess, or executing complex behaviors, such as playing a musical instrument or fabricating an object.  Watching television or mindless random Internet surfing are unlikely to confer flow.

When bored then, recognize the signal.  Find some engrossing activity that can elicit flow.  If you currently have no such flow-inducing activity, do yourself a favor and find one.  Don’t permit yourself to be bored to death.  Find a way to be animated and activated with life.

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M.  (1997).  Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday Life.  New York: Harper Collins.

van Tilburg, W. A. T., and iIgou, E., R. (2017).  Boredom begs to differ: Differentiation from other negative emotions.  Emotion,  17, 2, 309-322.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000233.

Emotional Influences on Lifestyle Decisions

You have decided how to conduct your lifestyle and your health will be affected accordingly.  "Wait a minute," you say, “I have made no such decision.” 

But, of course, you have.

There are at least three ways to decide on a healthful or non-healthful lifestyle.  You can make a deliberate, conscious decision about what you should do.  You can fail to make a deliberate, conscious decision, and unconsciously enact health-inducing or health-impairing behavior.  Or you can make a conscious or unconscious default decision by merely behaving in health-relevant ways that are most convenient at any given point in time.

The choice of deliberate, enacted, or default decisions often is determined by your emotions.   The more you understand the connections between decision making and emotions, the better.  So, let’s review what Jennifer S. Lerner, Ye Li, Piercarlo Valdesolo, and Karim Kassam (2015) have to teach us about the issue.

The group points out the well-accepted notion that emotions usually predispose us to a particular action.  For instance, fear often causes us to flee from the source of our fear, and anger often incites us to strike out against its source.  Lerner et al. add that emotions also bias us to view the environment in ways consistent with the emotion.  If we are fearful, we perceive the environment as threatening, and if we are angry we regard the environment as frustrating.  Emotions then encourage us both to perceive the environment and to act within it in a manner than is emotion-consistent.

Several other important researched-based features of decision making and emotion are emphasized that are germane to our discussion.  First, emotions influence decisions in predictable ways.  Second, some of the influences are integral to the emotions and some are incidental.  Third, features specific to a given emotion exerts particular influences.  Fourth, emotions can affect the depth of thought, the content of thought, and/or the content of a given goal. Fifth, it is the interaction among the intellectual and motivational features of a given emotion that determines the extent and nature of that emotion’s influence on decision making.  Sixth, when emotions unconsciously prompt us, if we are aware of that prompt we frequently can use our conscious rationality to modify the emotional affect.

The seventh research-based feature of decision making and emotion warrants separate discussion because it directs us toward helpful strategies.  Number seven suggests that unwanted emotional influences can be combated in several ways.  One way is for us to learn how to reduce emotional intensity.  Another is to ensure that the emotion that does occur provides as little influence as possible.  Finally, we can cultivate a proclivity toward emotions opposite to the problematic ones.  Applying the Learner et al. advice, when you must make a stressful decision and you feel yourself becoming angry, you might take a walk before finalizing that decision (reducing intensity).  You also could accept your anger, realize that the anger will only interfere with your decision, and make a dispassionate list of the pros and cons involved in the decision (anger provides as little influence as possible).  Or, knowing that you are prone to anger, you can learn to see the source of your anger as weak, irrelevant, and not worth getting yourself upset (cultivating feelings opposed to anger).

The bottom line is this: decisions are either deliberate, enacted, or default.  And all three possibilities can be powerfully determined by your emotions.  Be aware of the way you make health-relevant decisions.  Be proactive and conscious with them.  And know that your emotions will be central in how you intentionally or inadvertently structure your lifestyle.

Reference

Lerner, L., Li, Y., Valdesolo, P., & Kassam, K.  (2015).  Emotion and Decision Making.  Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 799-823.  

How to Drive Yourself Crazy

Regardless of your current health, wealth, or intelligence, you will die.  Not a particularly pleasant or reassuring thought, but one that incontestably is true. Dwelling about one's mortality is enough to drive anybody insane.

The tendency to anticipate our own demise is merely one example of what psychologists call prospective forecasting. That is, our natural human proclivity to imagine what the future has in store for us.  Prospective forecasting is the proverbial double-edged sword - great when it predicts the positive, and dreadful when it does the opposite.  Even when imagining circumstances far less dire than death, negative prospective forecasting poisons our current experiences and aspirations.

We all fall victim to negative prospective forecasting at times.  While awaiting the results of a medical blood workup, most people recall some recently experienced minor or major ailment, wondering whether it signals an impending medical crisis. After submitting the competed exam for a professional license, we remember all the "tough questions" that we fear we answered incorrectly, and forget all the ones we answered confidently.

Psychologists assert that "bad" expectations and perceptions generally are stronger than good ones (Baumeister, et al., 2001), meaning that we usually ascribe greater significance to negative feelings and thoughts. Evolution theorists believe that the natural human tendency toward pessimism kept our ancestors alert to potential dangers and, therefore, promoted their survival.  So, we descendants of survivors all inherited that pessimistic mindset.  As the old saying goes, however, "better safe than sorry."

The negative prospective forecasting bias is burdensome enough.  Unfortunately, it is made more onerous due to counterfactual reasoning, another common thinking style.  This is the "what if" aspect of reflection.  After receiving upsetting news regarding your blood work or licensing exam, you ruminate about what you could have done differently to avoid the outcome you just experienced. Had you eaten more sensibly or studied more diligently, you reason, you would not be in your current predicament.

Counterfactual reasoning focuses us on the past and prospective forecasting focuses us on the future. Together they distract us from the present, and it is only in the present that we can act to remedy past deficiencies and to avoid future ones. Almost everyone by now is familiar with "mindfulness," a mental state in which we focus on the present to the exclusion of all else.  As you probably know, mindfulness typically promotes relaxation and clarity of thought.  There are a host of psychological and medical therapeutic modalities that employ mindfulness as a central curative element.

What healthful insights can we glean by integrating the notions of prospective forecasting, counterfactual reasoning, and mindfulness?  First, be aware that your mind frequently is pulled by one or more of the three. and, second, consider whether you are more vulnerable to one or another.  Prospective forecasting, counterfactual reasoning, and mindfulness can have helpful or detrimental effects, depending on how and how often they are employed.   

Because the future is extraordinarily difficult to predict and the past cannot be changed, too much prospective forecasting and counterfactual reasoning usually predisposes us to problems. Handled properly, however, both can be positive forces. Prospective forecasting and counterfactual reasoning can inform us about ways to change our current thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, thus promoting proactive mindfulness. In such cases, the result most likely will be health-inducing when we not only realistically assess past and current weaknesses and strengths, but also act decisively in the present to make best use of the obtained information.  Although we all will die, we have the potential to live better day to day. Rather than driving yourself crazy, drive yourself healthy.

Reference

Baumeister, Roy F.; Bratslavsky, Ellen; Finkenauer, Catrin; Vohs, Kathleen D. (2001).  Bad is stronger than good.  Review of General Psychology, Vol 5(4), December, 323-370.  doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323