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There Are Two Types of Boredom
There Are Two Types of Boredom
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Phụ đề (119)
0:00
If you’re anything like me, you probably have a tendency
0:03
to reach for your phone anytime you have more than 30 seconds to kill.
0:06
Be alone with my thoughts?
0:08
No thank you.
0:09
And while staring at your phone all the time isn’t the healthiest activity,
0:13
research shows that the boredom that drives us to do it actually can be beneficial.
0:18
But here’s the weird thing.
0:20
There’s more than one kind of boredom, and not all of them are as good for your brain as others.
0:25
So let’s explore the science of boring, which turns out to be anything but.
0:30
[♪ INTRO]
0:34
Boredom is pretty universal.
0:36
It’s a cross-cultural phenomenon that people have written about going back to the ancient Greeks.
0:40
Despite that, there are still a lot of question marks around it,
0:44
starting with what boredom actually is.
0:46
Like, researchers have gone back and forth over how exactly we should be defining boredom..
0:51
These days, most researchers define boredom as a negative experience that happens when
0:56
you want to be doing something satisfying, but either can’t or aren’t able to do it.
1:01
But that definition doesn’t tell us what causes that experience.
1:05
Like, some people might be able to focus on their math homework,
1:07
but others find it so dull that they’d rather watch paint dry
1:11
Some researchers think that the reason people feel this boredom is that there’s a mismatch between
1:16
how much stimulation is around them, and how much they’re looking for, whether that’s more or less.
1:21
Others think it’s a failure of attention, or that it’s related to emotional unawareness,
1:27
or even that it’s a sign that you’re struggling to find meaning in your life.
1:31
So if you’re bored right now, think on that.
1:33
So we don’t know exactly why boredom happens.
1:36
Do we know how it happens?
1:38
Also no.
1:40
To figure out what’s happening under the neurological hood,
1:43
researchers need to start by making their participants really bored.
1:47
They’ve done this in a lot of different ways, including making people do easy math problems,
1:52
having them play a video game without clear objectives,
1:55
or watching a video of people hanging laundry.
1:58
Then, they use fMRI imaging to see which neural networks are active while
2:03
the participants are sitting there, probably regretting signing up for such a lame study.
2:08
The most consistent finding is that boredom is related to activity in the default mode network.
2:14
The default mode network is a group of brain areas that activate together
2:18
when your brain is wandering or when you’re not doing a specific task.
2:22
It includes areas like the medial prefrontal cortex,
2:25
the posterior cingulate cortex, the angular gyrus, and the precuneus.
2:31
While we may still be unpacking the exact mechanisms of boredom,
2:34
we do know a lot more about its effects on people.
2:37
More specifically, the ways that it can be good, or bad, for you.
2:41
But before we get into the rest of this story,
2:43
even the boring research needs funding, and so do we.
2:48
So here’s a quick ad break!
2:50
And now I get to tell you about Brilliant, a company that shares our love for curiosity,
2:54
learning, and doing it all in engaging ways.
2:57
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3:01
You’ll get to practice in translating points and shapes,
3:04
rotating them, moving diagonally, reflecting, stretching in multiple directions, and more.
3:09
Whether you’re 10 or 110, you can learn with hands-on manipulations
3:13
designed by world-class teachers from MIT, Harvard, and Stanford.
3:17
To learn for free on Brilliant for a full 30 days, go to brilliant.org/scishow,
3:22
scan the QR code onscreen, or click on the link in the description.
3:25
They’re also giving you unlimited daily access
3:28
to everything on Brilliant with 20% off an annual Premium subscription.
3:32
Thank you to Brilliant for supporting this SciShow video.
3:35
Before we get to whether boredom is good for you,
3:37
we should clarify that there are different types of boredom.
3:40
One key distinction is between state boredom and trait boredom.
3:45
State boredom is the experience of feeling bored in the moment.
3:48
If you’ve finished up work and all your friends are busy,
3:51
you have leftovers in the fridge so you don’t need to start dinner,
3:54
and you’ve already finished the newest seasons of all your shows, you’re experiencing state boredom.
3:59
But trait boredom is the innate tendency to feel bored.
4:04
People with high trait boredom may feel bored in a lot of different situations
4:08
that would be interesting to someone else, feel bored more quickly than other people,
4:12
or often feel like there’s nothing for them to be doing.
4:16
So when we’re trying to figure out if boredom is good or bad for us,
4:19
we have to be clear about what kind of boredom we’re talking about.
4:23
A lot of the research out there is actually on trait boredom, not state boredom.
4:28
There’s a growing body of research that suggests that high trait boredom is associated with a whole
4:33
bunch of other issues, including problem gambling, substance abuse, and dropping out of school.
4:39
And it’s associated with anxiety and depression.
4:42
All of this has a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, though.
4:45
Maybe getting bored easily causes people to engage in problematic
4:48
behaviors and causes them to develop anxiety and depression.
4:52
Or maybe it’s that tendency towards addiction-related behaviors or depression,
4:57
that leads to these people becoming increasingly bored with other things in life.
5:02
We just don’t know which comes first.
5:04
So, when we’re talking about trait boredom, it’s hard to say conclusively if it’s bad for you,
5:09
but it’s definitely associated with things that aren’t great.
5:13
There’s less research on state boredom, and what we could find is kind of bonkers.
5:18
Like, in one study, people were alone in a room with nothing to do for fifteen minutes.
5:23
They had no phone, no TV, just a button that,
5:26
if you pressed it, would give them an electric shock.
5:29
To be clear, they didn’t have to push this button.
5:32
They’d still spend the same amount of time in that boring room either way.
5:36
And yet, 67% of male participants and 25%
5:40
of female participants chose to shock themselves at least once.
5:45
Plus, they had to exclude one outlier who chose to shock himself one hundred and ninety times.
5:51
What’s even weirder is that these were participants who had previously said
5:55
they’d be willing to pay actual money to avoid being shocked,
5:59
and they still chose to willingly shock themselves to avoid being bored.
6:03
Yes, even 190-shocks McGee.
6:06
People clearly hate being bored.
6:08
But state boredom does seem to have some benefits, too.
6:11
Some researchers suggest that being bored signals to us that we’re not on the right track.
6:16
There’s something about what we’re doing that isn’t fulfilling or isn’t allowing
6:19
us to achieve our goals, and it prompts us to think about that and adjust course.
6:24
Like, if you find all your classes boring, it could be a sign that you should switch majors,
6:29
or maybe that college isn’t for you right now.
6:32
Some models go even further and suggest that boredom is an evolutionary benefit, because
6:37
it would encourage us to move on from recurring situations that aren’t helping us meet our goals.
6:43
Like, if you’re searching for food over and over again in the same location and don’t ever find it,
6:48
boredom may have evolved as a clue that it’s time to search elsewhere.
6:52
And these course corrections aren’t just good because they make us stop feeling bad.
6:56
Being involved in things that we find meaningful or significant can
6:59
keep our actions in line with our beliefs and encourages us to engage with our community.
7:05
Both things that are important to overall psychological well-being on their own,
7:09
above and beyond you making the icky feelings go away.
7:12
While there’s still a lot to learn about boredom,
7:15
there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that those who are chronically bored
7:19
might want to be on the lookout for other problem behaviors in their lives.
7:23
But if you got bored watching this video?
7:25
It might have been good for you.
7:27
So, you’re welcome.
7:29
[♪ OUTRO]
