A new study explores a possible connection between boredom and our sense of time. Even though we all experience boredom, the scientific study of boredom is relatively new. In fact, the first journal dedicated to this topic (the Journal of Boredom Studies) published its inaugural issue just last year. One challenge in studying boredom is that it doesn’t fit neatly into the categories of perception or emotion but seems to involve a complex interaction between both. While boredom is certainly task-dependent (you're more likely to feel bored in a waiting room than at an amusement park), it also heavily depends on a person’s mindset and attitude. The same period can be experienced as boring by one person and as a relaxing opportunity to reflect by another.
One of the most intuitive aspects of boredom is that time seems to pass more slowly when we are bored. A 15-minute wait in line might feel like forever if you’re bored, but it can seem to fly by if you're chatting with a friend. A 2020 study by Joanna Witowska and her team found a connection between boredom and how people perceive time. In their study, participants spent 7.5 minutes alone in a closed room without any devices, unaware of how long they would have to wait. After 7.5 minutes, they reported their impressions of the waiting time and answered various questions about their state of mind. The researchers found that the more bored participants reported being, the more they tended to think about time, and the slower time seemed to pass for them (though boredom didn’t directly correlate with participants’ estimates of how much time had passed).
Another study by Corinna Martarelli and colleagues, published in this month’s issue of Cognition and Emotion, aimed to explore a potential causal link between time perception and boredom by testing whether manipulating time perception could lead to changes in boredom. Participants in the VR study experienced three virtual waiting rooms, each with clocks moving at different speeds. They spent exactly four minutes in each room, but in the “fast room” the virtual clock moved 20% faster than normal, in the “slow room” it moved 20% slower than normal, and in the “normal room” it moved at a regular speed. After spending time in each waiting room, participants answered a series of questions, including ones about boredom, mind-wandering, and the flow of time.
The researchers found that the subjective perception of time was closely linked to boredom: higher boredom states were associated with a subjective slowing down of time. However, they didn’t find the expected relationships between the clock speed and time perception or boredom. It seems that simply showing faster or slower clocks may not be a strong enough manipulation to alter time perception and related states. Future studies that wish to investigate this causal link may need to use different approaches to manipulate time perception, such as the availability of internal sensations (like one’s heartbeat and breathing) believed to be involved in how we perceive time.