Boredom and the Quest for Meaning

Boredom is unpleasant. Crucially, both state and trait boredom are inversely related to experiences of meaning and thus at odds with people’s need for meaning in life. Research on boredom describes various self-regulatory processes through which people cope with this lack of meaning. In reviewing this research, we distinguish between enhancement, escape, and buffering functions. Boredom can initiate a search for sources of meaning in an attempt to enhance a sense of meaningfulness. Boredom has also been shown to elicit self-regulatory strategies that overshadow its existential challenge; thus, they allow people to escape from a sense of meaninglessness. Moreover, recent research documents how sources of meaning suppress boredom, thus demonstrating psychological buffering. We will discuss these meaning-regulation models in light of research on attentional processes as another core component of boredom. Integrating boredom research of different traditions into one that accounts for various self-regulatory processes will aid precision in research and enhance the effectiveness of applications aimed at boredom mitigation.