Photo of a bored man
If the lockdowns and community quarantine are making you bored because you cannot do the usual things you do, then do not despair, for boredom could be good for you, according to a study.
Boredom can motivate people to look for ways of being kind, empathic, and engage in prosocial acts, particularly helping those in need, such as giving blood. Furthermore, it can also promote creativity as you look within you for stimulation.
Blood donation: an act of altruism
In their paper entitled Bored George Helps Others: A Pragmatic Meaning-Regulation hypothesis on Boredom and Prosocial Behavior, Wijnand van Tilburg of the University of Limerick said that bored people feel that their acts are meaningless. So they are inspired to engage in meaningful activities.
If doing kind and generous acts can fulfill this requirement, then boredom can promote prosocial behaviors. Investigating the relationship between boredom and doing prosocial acts is highly novel and can also be counter-intuitive.
According to Van Tilburg, the positive relationship between boredom proneness and aggression, anger, and hostility can be explained by the need for bored people in seeking activities that can arouse them. They are most likely to get high scores on the so-called "dispositional measures of sensation seeking."
On the other hand, if people feel meaningless, they are more likely to engage in acts that they believe will re-establish their sense of meaningfulness. Van Tilburg added that these types of people do not simply engage in distractions that are fun and interesting.
Blood donation
Furthermore, he also said that boredom can be a powerful motivator for people to seek out unpleasant yet meaningful tasks- just like joining in blood donation campaigns - rather than engaging themselves in meaningless yet pleasant behaviors.
Read: New Blood Test for COVID-19 Antibodies Developed
Boredom Sparks Creativity
But blood donation and other kind acts are not just the positive effects of boredom. According to Adrian Savage, an online life coach, being bored turns your mind inwards and encourages reflection because there's nothing else to think.
Creativity sparked by boredom is something done a thousand times before and not just because of having specific problems that are most commonly a known reason by most artists, added Savage.
Boredom, at its core, is a search for neural stimulation that is not satisfied, said Sandi Mann, a psychology lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, in the U.K. If we are not stimulated, our minds will come up with something that will create stimulation.
It was already demonstrated before by many others that boredom can enable creativity and our ability in problem-solving by allowing our minds to wander. The mind does not find any other way to stimulate it, so it has to go your head inwards, according to Mann.
It may surprise you what you could come up with.
Being bored the right way
Mann says that people may mistake relaxation with boredom. With relaxation, people do not try to find stimulation, unlike boredom.
In experiencing real boredom, one chooses an activity that requires little or no concentration, just like walking a familiar route, swimming laps, or merely sitting with eyes closed. Just try to let your mind wander, without music or stimulation to guide it.
Also Read: The Link Between the Brain and Architecture
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