Boredom proneness is associated with noisy decision-making, not risk-taking

Abstract

Previous research shows that individuals who tend to get bored frequently and intensely—the highly boredom prone—are more likely to engage in risky behaviors. However, these studies are based largely on self-reports. Here we address this gap and suggest that noisy decision-making (DM) is a potential driver for this relationship between boredom proneness and risk-taking. In Study 1, eighty-six participants completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) while EEG was recorded. We found blunted feedback processing with higher boredom proneness, as indexed by reduced feedback-P3 amplitudes. Risk taking, as indexed by the BART, was not higher in the highly boredom prone. In Study 2a ( N = 404) we directly tested the noisy DM hypothesis in an online sample using a binary choice task, and found that with higher boredom proneness, participants were more likely to alternate between choices on a trial-to-trial basis, but were not more likely to choose the risky alternative. These findings were replicated in a new sample (Study 2b), and extended to the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Study 3). In the IGT we found increased choice switching and reduced feedback sensitivity with higher boredom proneness. Once again, higher risk taking as indexed by the IGT was not evident in the highly boredom prone. Overall, our findings suggest that boredom proneness is associated with noisy decision-making (i.e., a tendency to alternate more between choice options regardless of risk level), and not risk-seeking per se. That is, the highly boredom prone are not necessarily attracted to risks, but rather, may be insensitive to risks due to reduced feedback sensitivity.

Do humans prefer cognitive effort over doing nothing?

“…First, our do-nothing option was boring and it might have induced spillover effects of boredom on subsequent choices. Unintentionally inducing boredom may have increased noisy decision-making (Yakobi & Danckert, 2021).…”

Boredom proneness predicts self-assessed decision errors in sports but is unrelated to risk taking in general

“…Tentative support for this assumption comes from research outside the sports domain, where boredom proneness has been linked to engagement in various risk behaviors, such as gambling 24 , drug abuse 19 , and flaunting of COVID-19 restrictions 18 . However, boredom proneness might not directly lead to more risk taking: Going beyond self-report measures of risk taking, Yakobi and Danckert (2021) found no relationship between an objective measure of risk taking and boredom proneness 25 . To explain this finding, the authors propose that boredom proneness may lead to noisy decision making that can appear risky at times but does not necessarily reflect risk preferences.…”

“…Electrophysiological evidence further substantiated these behavioral findings for a reduced feedback sensitivity in boredom-prone people. This indicates that boredom proneness might render people less effective in basing their choices on the reward structure of the task at hand 25 , therefore making self-regulatory decision failures more likely in boredom-prone individuals 26 . Indeed, boredom proneness is consistently linked with poor self-control 9,18,27 26 and disengage 28 .…”

“…Thus, if boredom proneness as a domaingeneral trait indeed increases risk taking, a positive correlation should emerge between boredom proneness and both objective and subjective measures of risk taking, as well as with sport-specific risk taking. If, on the other hand, boredom proneness rather affects self-regulatory decision making on a more general level by making choices noisier 25 , no correlation with an objective measure of risk taking should emerge. Noisier (i.e., poorer) choices should instead manifest themselves in athletes' regret about their sporting choices more generally.…”

A trait-based network perspective on the validation of the French Short Boredom Proneness Scale

“…Several studies in different areas have successfully used the SBPS, for example, in relation with problematic phone usage (Elhai et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2020) or in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (Boylan et al, 2020;. Boredom proneness, as measured by the SBPS, has been shown to positively correlate with constructs such as aggression (Isacescu et al, 2017), sadism (Pfattheicher et al, 2020), depression, anxiety, and stress (Lee & Zelman, 2019), risk-taking (Kılıç et al, 2020), noisy decisionmaking (Yakobi & Danckert, 2021), and spontaneous mind-wandering (Martarelli et al, 2020;Struk et al, 2017), and to negatively correlate with constructs such as self-control (Isacescu & Danckert, 2018;. The SBPS has also been successfully translated into other languages, notably German (Martarelli et al, 2020) and Chinese (Peng et al, 2020), thus supporting the cross-cultural robustness of the one-factorial solution.…”