Boredom proneness has been linked to various forms of cognitive and affective dysregulation including poor self-control and mind-wandering (MW), as well as depression and aggression. As such, understanding boredom and the associated cognitive and affective components of the experience, represents an important first step in combatting the consequences of boredom for psychological well-being. We surveyed 1928 undergraduate students on measures of boredom proneness, self-control, MW, depression and aggression to investigate how these constructs were related. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that self-control operated as a strong negative predictor of boredom proneness. Finally, when controlling for age and self-control, we observed large decreases in the magnitudes of the relationships between boredom proneness and our other measures of interest. Together, these results imply a strong relationship between boredom proneness and cognitive and affective dysregulation, and show that individual levels of self-control can account for the lion's share of variance in the relationships between boredom, cognition, and affect.

It has been evident for some time that the Boredom Proneness Scale (BPS), a commonly used measure of trait boredom, does not constitute a single scale. Factor analytic studies have identified anything from two to seven factors, prompting Vodanovich and colleagues to propose an alternative two factor, short form version Boredom Proneness Scale–Short Form (BPS-SR). The present study further investigates the factor structure and validity of both the BPS and the BPS-SR. The two-factor solution obtained for the BPS-SR appears to be an artifact of item wording of reverse-scored items. These same items may also have contributed to the earlier complexity and inconsistency of results for the full BPS. An eight-item scale of only consistently worded items (i.e., those not requiring reverse scoring) was developed. This new scale demonstrated unidimensionality and the scale score had good internal consistency and construct validity comparable to the original BPS score.

Boredom is a ubiquitous human experience characterized as a state of wanting but failing to engage with the world. Individuals prone to the experience of boredom demonstrate lower levels of self-control which may be at the heart of their failures to engage in goal-directed, meaningful behaviors. Here we develop the hypothesis that distinct self-regulatory profiles, which in turn differentially influence modes of goal pursuit, are at the heart of boredom proneness. Two specific regulatory modes are addressed: Locomotion, the desire to ‘just do it,’ an action oriented mode of goal-pursuit, and Assessment, the desire to ‘do the right thing,’ an evaluative orientation toward goal pursuit. We present data from a series of seven large samples of undergraduates showing that boredom proneness is negatively correlated with Locomotion, as though getting on with things acts as a prophylactic against boredom. This ‘failure to launch’ that we suggest is prevalent in the highly boredom prone individual, could be due to an inability to appropriately discriminate value (i.e., everything is tarred with the same gray brush), an unwillingness to put in the required effort to engage, or simply a failure to get started. In contrast, boredom proneness was consistently positively correlated with the Assessment mode of self-regulation. We suggest that this association reflects a kind of rumination that hampers satisfying goal pursuit.

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