Researchers working in Ireland and Spain conducted experiments to see whether gratitude can prevent boredom. The results not only confirmed this hypothesis but suggested that gratitude may prevent boredom by making people feel that their lives are more meaningful.

We’ve all experienced boredom at some point — and you know when you’re bored. But for psychologists, boredom is important.

Boredom is a common emotion resulting from a lack of external stimuli, interest, and challenges. It often arises from routine or repetitive tasks, or activities that lack novelty. However, researchers are increasingly finding signs that link boredom to a sense of lack of purpose. Previous studies concluded that it makes people keen to engage in activities that they find more meaningful.

Muireann K. O’Dea from the University of Limerick in Ireland wanted to investigate this more thoroughly. Along with co-authors, she conducted five experiments using Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing marketplace that allows individuals and businesses to outsource their processes and jobs. This platform is often used for psychological experiments as well.

Gratitude versus boredom

The researchers first examined the relationship between gratitude and boredom. The five experiments were tailored thusly:

• Study 1: 81 participants completed an assessment of gratitude and boredom.
• Study 2a: 120 participants completed a different gratitude assessment, the same boredom assessment, and the so-called “Meaning in Life Assessment,” reflecting one’s drive and success in finding meaning in life.
• Study 2b: 230 participants completed the gratitude assessment from Study 1, the other two assessments from Study 2a, and an assessment of positive and negative emotions.
• Study 3: 300 participants tested whether gratitude is associated with being less bored at the moment. This included all the previous assessments plus three new questions that gauged how bored participants were.
• Study 4: 244 participants answered how grateful and bored they feel.

All the findings hint at a connection between boredom and low feelings of gratitude.

“Study 1 revealed that grateful people are less prone to boredom. Studies 2a and 2b demonstrated that grateful people are less prone to boredom, and this relationship is statistically mediated by elevated meaning in life. Study 3 found that dispositional gratitude also predicted less state boredom in response to a behavioral task, via heightened perceptions of meaning in life. In Study 4, experimentally induced gratitude reduced boredom through increased perceptions of meaning in life,” the researchers note.

Potentially useful correlation

Although a causal relationship wasn’t established (researchers only established a correlation), this fits with previous studies on the connection between boredom and a lack of meaning. It just takes things one step further by linking a sense of gratefulness, meaning, and boredom.

“The findings demonstrate gratitude’s role in effectively reducing and preventing boredom by boosting the feeling that life is meaningful,” the researchers conclude. For the findings to be confirmed, more studies on a larger and more diverse sample size would be required.

The study was published in Motivation and Emotion.