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Boredom: Is It Good For You? – Science Vs podcast
They say we need more boredom
WZ: Hi, I'm Wendy Zukerman. This is Science Vs. Today on the show, we're pitting facts against feeling bored. Across the internet, people are embracing being bored.
Raw dogging boredom for one hour.
Rawdogging one hour straight, no phone, no tv, no music, no moving for 1 hour straight
WZ: That's right, they're raw dogging boredom. [1]There's all these videos of people recording themselves sitting on the floor of their bedroom doing basically nothing, in some cases, for hours.[2] And why are they doing this, raw dogging boredom?
The problem is we've created a way of living where you do not need to be bored at all, and the second you feel bored, you grab your phone.
Like people like to say, "Oh, I just, I just can't be bored. I'm the type of person who always has to be doing something." Right? That's justifying the addiction.
WZ: Influencers are saying … we need to push BACK against this addiction … and embrace boredom like a lost art. They say that being bored is actually good for us … that it could inspire us to be more imaginative and creative …
We kind of treat boredom as if it's something to fix. But what if I tell you that boredom is actually the starting point of creativity?
Einstein and Newton got their biggest ideas when they were bored and doing nothing.
WZ: So would we all be Einsteins if we just raw dogged some boredom? Today on the show, the power of being bored. What exactly is going on in our brains when we're bored? And could we really supercharge our minds if we just embraced a bit of boredom??
When it comes to boredom, there's a lot of…
Raw dogging boredom
WZ: And then there's science. Science Vs boredom will be coming up just after the break.
BREAK
Your brain on boredom
WZ: Welcome back. I'm Wendy Zukerman. Today we are digging into the science on boredom, and to tell me all about it, here's producer Michelle Dang.
MD: Hey, Wendy.
WZ: Hello, Michelle! How do you feel about your boredom levels? Are you bored right now?
MD: No, I'm never bored when I'm talking to you. Haha
WZ: Aw.
MD: So when I hear people online talking about this -- I found myself nodding along, cause I dunno I don't really feel like I feel that bored anymore, but I am one of those people who are always picking up my phone to look at something. I dunno, how do you feel? Have you been bored lately?
WZ: Um, I do worry that by constantly shoving things in my brain, you know, whether that's work, mindless scrolling, it just, it sometimes it does feel like you're literally just jamming your brain full of things …just this constant stimulation, and sometimes it really does feel like my brain is just saying, "No, I'm too full right now," and it just wants to go blah, and just be empty, and I don't let it be be bored and empty. So I'm very excited to know what is going on in, in my brain that is that feeling of just be still.
MD: Yeah I wanted to know that too!! So we're going to dig into your brain on boredom … And to start, I talked to a cognitive neuroscientist named Professor James Danckert from the University of Waterloo in Canada.[3]
WZ: Great.
MD: And James and a colleague actually did a study looking exactly at this, the brain on boredom. So let me tell you about what they did. So, they stuck 10 people into an fMRI machine[4] and proceeded to bore the crap out of them.
WZ: which isn't hard in an fMRI. It's a boring space.
MD: That's true, but this is like a little step further, so listen to this.
WZ: OK
JD: So to do that, we had them watch an eight minute video of two guys hanging laundry. It's really quite effective at making people bored.[5]
WZ: Hahahaha
MD: Do you wanna see pictures of what it looked like?
WZ: Oh sure. Oh, oh my God, that video. That, that screenshot of the video of two guys doing laundry, I don't know why, but it looks even more boring than I had imagined. I think 'cause I was picturing the guys outside doing laundry on a sunny day, but actually they're just inside a house. They look so bored.
MD: You're right, it's like a dim beige room. Haha.
WZ: Oh, yeah. I would hate that.
MD: And this was a, like a four-minute clip that was on loop, they got to watch it twice inside the machine. And then they had their brains do other stuff too, for example, they had participants watch an interesting video instead … It was a clip from BBC’s Planet Earth, actually, with beautiful landscapes, music, a sea turtle,[6] all that jazz.
WZ: Yes. Yes. I've seen it. It's, uh, incredibly interesting. Yes.
MD: And then James and his colleague, they looked at all their brains in these different states to see what was going on.
WZ: Mm.
MD: And what James noticed when people were bored were changes in a couple of systems in the brain. So let me start with this particular one that was all lit up.[7] It's known as the
JD: Default mode network. And this is a network of brain areas that is more active when there is no external task for you to do. So people will also call it an off-task network. It's active in things like daydreaming or mind wandering. It's active when you sort of prospectively think about the future.
MD: Have you heard about the default mode network before?
WZ: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting 'cause I guess I associate boredom with thinking of nothing. But you're right, it's more when you've got... When you're just watching guys doing laundry, your mind just wanders into its default state. Yeah
MD: Exactly, here’s James
JD: It just turned out that video was so mind numbingly dull that they disengaged from it and activated this default network.
WZ: And then, what happened to the brains in the group that got to watch that interesting video with the turtles and planet Earth?
MD: Yeah so in that group it looked like the DMN was less active, they didn’t see that same pattern - because there was a bunch of great stuff to focus on in that clip
WZ: Uh huh, that makes sense, so does it matter whether the default mode network is on or off??
MD: Well the people online love to clamour about the DMN … they say it’s a really important system in our brain. And that part is true … we know that the DMN plays a role in our sense of self, it’s active when we self-reflect, when we think about the past or the future, or when we process our emotions. All this stuff happens when we’re just resting too.[8][9]
WZ: So is the default mode network always good when it's activated? 'Cause I feel like sometimes when my mind wanders, it just goes back to these kinda negative thoughts, often revolving around the theme of you're not good enough in some way.
MD: Yeah, so this is the flip side of this! It doesn't make sense to claim that activating the DMN is ALWAYS good, and that we should just be y’know sitting in a room, shutting everything out for hours at a time ... For example, um, overactive DMN can be linked to things like ruminating and negative thoughts.[10][11][12][13]
WZ: Mm hmm
MD: And of course - we KNOW we don’t always think good thoughts … when our mind is wandering
WZ: Yes! Of course. Right. Yeah. You start watching this video about laundry, you get bored. Who knows where your mind is gonna go when it taps into this default mode network. Interesting. What else did James find in this study?
MD: Yeah so while James saw the DMN perk up when people were bored, he also noticed that this other part of the brain showed less activity. It’s called the insular cortex, and it’s part of something called the salience network.
WZ: I associate the insular cortex with understanding what's happening in our own body, feeling pain …
MD: Yeah, yeah. And it also like plays a role in figuring out what's out there, like in our environment versus what, what we're feeling inside, and then what to do with it.[14][15][16] Like James was saying it basically helps us choose what's most important at that moment to pay attention to.
JD: Saying, there's really nothing interesting here for you to look at. Nothing that would, would help you pursue a goal
WZ: Oh, and during boredom, that part of the brain dialed down.[17]
MD: Yeah exactly, so it dialed down, but … it’s also almost lying in wait … for ways to ESCAPE the boredom … because we know from other research, that this part of the brain lights up and gets more active when people are given the opportunity to escape boredom, like when they’re presented something that’s actually interesting for them to do.[18] So James says that this insular cortex ...
JD: This part of your, your, your brain, this network is trying to say, OK, I've just been bored to death. I gotta find something.
MD: And so here's, here's where we're going with this.
WZ: Here's the punchline. Before my insular cortex completely switches off, Michelle, let's get to the punchline
MD: So the idea here is that your brain is signaling you to find, like, whatever you can to escape the monotony of boredom
WZ: OK
MD Because, Wendy, like, our brains do not like being bored. And, and scientists actually define boredom as a, a negative thing, like a negative state of mind.
JD: When we're bored, we want something that matters to us, but we don't want anything that's currently available to us. And so that's why boredom is a sort of, it's a motivating emotion 'cause it's calling you to find that thing that's gonna work. Um, but it's also an agitated sort of restless feeling because clearly if you're bored, you're not satisfying that desire to be engaged.
MD: And y'know some people will go to huge lengths to avoid boredom. Like, there's this famous study, where scientists looked at whether people would rather shock themselves than sit around being bored in a room …
WZ: YES! I have heard of this study!! I never read it, though, what did they actually do?
MD: Yeah it’s pretty fun. The researchers had these people sit in a room, with nothing to do, for 15 minutes … and they had electrodes on their ankles[19] which were connected to a button they could press to activate a shock... And when people tested out the shock, guess what, most of them said the shock sucked and they didn’t like it.
WZ: Yes
MD However. These same people who didn’t like it … 40% of them shocked themselves at least once when they got into the room
WZ: 40% within 15 minutes of being bored, sitting in an empty room, almost half of them shocked themselves, and not out of curiosity, they knew what the shock was like, and they knew what the shock was like, and they didn’t like it …
MD: Right and Wendy, somebody even did it 190 times! [20]
WZ: That I mean surely they liked it that person right?!
MD: Probably
WZ: Okay.
MD: And other studies have since repeated this, showing that many of us would rather shock ourselves … or do something against our own interests, when we’re bored[21][22] … cause I guess boredom just sucks more.
WZ: I mean, people do, we do crazy things when we're bored. I, I re-remember this study from a while ago that asked people to name all the reasons they have sex, and one of them was bored,[23] which isn't crazy, but I mean, I've had friends who sleep with their exes cause they're bored. You know
MD: Oh, no.
WZ: They’ll just text their ex, someone they actively do not like, 'cause they're bored.
MD: Yeah.
WZ: So then the question is, so we know boredom is a state our brain doesn't like, and it will, we will do things that are bad for us in order to escape the boredom. But should we persevere in that bored state … could it give us some benefit…?
MD: Yeah, Wendy, that's my next question. If our brains get bored could that lead us to the land of creativity?
WZ: Exactly
MD: That is coming up after the break.
BREAK
Does boredom push us into creativity?
WZ: Welcome back. Today on the show, we're talking about boredom. Is this a state that we should be aspiring to? Michelle Dang, our producer here at Science Vs, is about to tell us whether being bored can actually inspire creativity. So can it?
MD: Yeah that is the big claim we're hearing from the internet people, that boredom will unlock and push you into creativity.
WZ: Yes
MD: To get some science on this, we need to meet Professor Guihyun Park from Korea University.[24] She's an organizational psychologist, and Guihyun got interested in boredom about a decade ago when she was finding herself stuck in some pretty boring meetings.
GP: It's, it was usually the faculty meetings are really boring. Nothing that interest me and it just passing time. Something like that. Very, boring tone of voice and monotonous. You cannot escape. Like you, you just feel stuck.
WZ: Haha it's true. It's so true.
MD: Yeah. Yeah. And Guihyun would notice something about how she was spending time in these moments. Uh, she was picking up her pen and
GP: Doodling and then writing new ideas. Oh, okay. So planning some new, new things, new research ideas, blah, blah, blah. I can like occupy myself by doing it instead of feeling the torture.
WZ: Oh, yeah. She's able to switch her brain into a productive state rather than kicking herself in the shins under the table
MD: Yeah. So sometimes she'd use that boring time to work out solutions for problems she was having or finding new ways to do an experiment. And she started wondering, like, does this happen to everyone? And particularly, like, if we make people bored, can we spark creativity?
WZ: Mm-hmm.
MD: So what Guihyun did is she got together this big group of students, and to get them bored and see if creativity fell at the other side, she didn't show them a video of dudes doing laundry. She did something a little different. She gave people a HUGE BOWL of beans … these beans were two different colors … and told them to separate the beans out — by color.[25] And of course I'm sure this sounds familiar ... because I asked YOU to do this experiment too
WZ: Yes you did
MD: Yeah i asked you to record yourself doing it, so here’s a bit of that
Pour both beans into the largest bowl. Mix them well together. Start a timer for 30 minutes, sort the beans one at a time by moving all the red beans into your second bowl
Okay, here are my red beans going in.
Chickpeas going in.
Okay, now I'm gonna mix them up.
Time starts. Now
MD: and to make it even worse, Guihyun designed this so that you did it
GP: Just one by one using one hand so that it's, uh, monotonous
MD: So Guihyun did this with over 50 students in a big hall, and here's what happened…
WZ: mm
GP: So, so they, they do engage in one by one, and then after five minute you can, you can feel that the entire room was filled with boredom
MD: like, could you see the boredom on their faces?
GP: Oh, yes. yes, yes. They ‘eughhh’ you know, they were really bored. They, they, become really slow. You can see their actions getting really slow. And then they were not, like, they lost their emotions on the face.
Right. The numbing, numbing kind of face.
MD: Wendy, you, you had that numbing kind of face by the end too, I bet. Here's some tape of you, if you've forgotten it.
*bing* … *bing* …
I forgot the rule about the, just using one hand for a moment, and then I was back to using one hand.
Pew. Now I'm just kind of throwing 'em in, like playing basketball.
Gosh, it feels never ending though, because they're, am I really going to separate them completely?
WZ: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm getting bored just listening back to myself. It's funny, I didn't know, I didn't know if I w- I was bored, but my mind kept wandering. It kept hitting that default state where I started thinking about other things in my life, and then I, but my hand would keep bop, bop, bop
MD: Yeah, so that was the boredom arm … And of course there was a control group too … Guihyun had another group that she DIDN’T want to be bored - she had them make art with the beans, on a white piece of paper for the 30 minutes. So after 30 minutes of either sorting beans, or making bean art … then came the creativity part! Everyone in the experiment had to answer a prompt,[26] which I made you read out loud … WZ Right
Imagine a hypothetical situation in which person A is two hours late for a work meeting. List all of the feasible and justifiable reasons person A could use to account for being late, so that person A would not be perceived negatively by their teammates. There are no right or wrong responses. Please generate as many ideas as possible. Okay. Um, timer timer timer. And five minutes. Let's go.
Um, broken leg. Broken arm. I mean, hell, broken ankle, broken neck. Uh, I think I’m on a run here. This, it feels like cheating though.
Helped older person with the bins, but then they trapped you,
U-T-I-U-T-I!!,yeah, that's bad. Really big fight with partner. You found out your partner cheated on you. You gave birth. Then they should just be happy you came to the meeting at all, right?
Rhinoceros incident when at the zoo because yeah, like a rhinoceros maybe poohed on you again.
MD: Wendy, you came up with a lot of good ideas
WZ: did I do okay? I always feel like I wanna win. Did I win, Michelle?
MD: Hahaha. Compared to the study, I think you went above and beyond with how many you came up with. Thirty-five?
WZ: Thirty-five? What did other people come up with
MD: Oh, yeah, there were some really great responses that they got too.
GP: Oh, alien, uh, alien just visited my house, so I need to deal with him, you know, for, for a couple minutes, and then I sent him home. Or, oh, birds shit on my face, so I have to go back home and then change my whole clothing and stuff.
WZ: I feel like I was on the someone shits on you sort of,
MD: Yeah. Well, isn't it a, a rhino?
WZ: Yeah. I feel like me and that person who said that would have really gelled. For a bird shitting on your face, you don't get two hours of leeway, right? You can clean that off
MD: It's a pretty bad day, though.
WZ: It's true. On the face.
MD: But what were you doing at a zoo before work?
WZ: Hmm, good question. OK but then the question is, right, of this whole experiment is, had I done the creative task, had I instead made an art project out of beans, would I have been even more creative, or did boredom inspire creativity? What did she find?
MD: Yeah. So when Guihyun looked at all the data across the groups, she found that, yes, people in the boredom group come out with more unique and creative responses than the people who are making bean art. And like, just like you, they were also able to come up with a lot more ideas than the art group.[27]
WZ: Interesting.
GP: I found the significant finding that boredom actually can increase the creative performance. I was, like, oh, OK. Hmm. Interesting.
WZ: That is i-interesting 'cause what it f- it did feel like after sorting the beans for half an hour, I-- my brain was really keen to find something interesting
MD Oh
WZ: And then I could grab onto this pro- new project of all the silly excuses I could come up with.
MD: It was like, it was like roaring. It was like, "Let me out of here!”
WZ: It was raw dogging almost. Yeah.
WZ: So boredom can inspire creativity?
MD: Well maybe.. other research into this has been a bit mixed, some studies find boredom boosts creativity, others doesn't and: there, was a, a review that said, quote, "No clearly negative or positive relationship could be pinpointed between boredom and creativity." End quote.[28]
WZ: What a boring result!
MD: But -- we might have an explanation for why it felt like boredom worked for you… and feels helpful to other people … Guihyun did another version of this bean experiment, but this time she also gave them personality tests. And she found that bored people were more likely to be creative … if they ranked higher in certain traits. Things like “need for cognition,” and “openness to experience.”[29][30]
WZ: Need for cognition? Do some people not have a need for cognition??
MD I guess some people, more of a need
Should you try to be more bored?
WZ: Ok I guess I have high need for cognition um ... So where does this leave us with boredom..? Good or bad? Should I try to be more bored?
MD: Well, though Guihyun found some potential benefit for creativity ... overall, it's not clear that BOREDOM is the state you want your mind to be in ... as we talked about, it especially doesn't feel great ... here's James again
JD: I've had people before say to me, I don't mind being bored. I like being bored. You know, bored, boredom's fine. And what you find out when you probe them is that they don't, they're not talking about boredom at all. What they're talking about is relaxation or disconnection. They're talking about sort of disengaging from their, from the thrust and parry of their everyday lives, or they're disengaging from social networks, or they're disengaging from devices or whatever. And they're doing very little. They're not doing much.And they say, yeah, that's fine. I like it. It's like, well, yeah, OK, that's great, but it's not boredom. we don't need more boredom. We just need more intentional engagement
WZ: Or intentional disengagement from the thrust and parry of life.
MD: Yeah. Do you like that?
WZ: I do. I do.
MD: Mm-hmm. So as James says, exactly that, like intentional engagement could be choosing to veg out. It could be choosing to relax.
WZ: Right. And that there is this difference. You want to raw dog disconnection from the thrust and parry. You think we could get that as a hashtag going?
MD: Okay. Hashtag raw dog disconnection.
WZ: Hahaha – apologies for the incredibly 2010 reference…
When you give your brain time to rest
MD: Away from that, I found some science that shows that there IS some benefit to just letting your brain rest. Particularly with memory. So, letting your brain rest can actually help you remember stuff that you learn. So scientists will give people a list of words or a story to remember and then have them rest afterward with nothing to do. Or they'll have them do something mentally engaging, like play a game or scroll social media.
WZ: Mm.
MD: And when they quiz them afterward, they found that the people who were given time to rest after learning actually have better recall.
WZ: Oh that’s cool and feels very relatable
MD: And we think this is because when you learn something, your brain creates a new neural pathway. But when you give your brain a chance to rest, it lets that pathway repeat back and forth over and over again and consolidate that information.[31][32] Even five to 10 minutes of rest can boost your memory in this way.[33][34] [35][36][37]
WZ: Oo that is cool, picturing our brain doing that. It sounds a bit like meditation?
MD: Well… in some of the research they literally just tell people to sit in a chair and relax … which is a bit different to meditation techniques..[38] …
WZ: All right, well, let's give our mi- let's, before we recap the ep, let's give our minds a little, a little bit of rest.
MD: Okay.
WZ: Okay. Are you getting bored?
MD: Not yet.
WZ: Ok me neither. What about now?
MD: I’m good
WZ All right. So here's what I've learned about boredom, Michelle.
MD: Yes, please tell me.
WZ: Boredom is a state that your brain doesn't like And that you don't have to persevere through in order to get benefits. Probably what a lot of us are seeking right now is just stillness, quiet, peace, and
MD: Get off like the hamster wheel.
WZ: Get off the hamster wheel. Raw dog that state of mind.
MD: You meant raw dog disconnection from the thrust and parry.
WZ: Raw dog disconnection from the thrust and parry.
All right. Thanks, Michelle.
MD: Thank you, Wendy.
WZ: That’s Science Vs. If you want to chat with us about the episode, leave a comment, or get in touch with us on Instagram(@Science_Vs) or TikTok (@WendyZuk)!
WZ: Before we get to the citations, we have a special segment … where I answer questions from you, our listeners … here it is!
[AMAZON SEGMENT]
CITATIONS
CREDITS
This episode was produced by Michelle Dang, with help from Meryl Horn, Rose Rimler and Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. Wendy Zukerman is our executive producer. We’re edited by Blythe
Terrell. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, So Wylie, Emma Munger and Peter Leonard.
Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.
[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@ava_klop/video/7626204889995021582?q=rawdog%20boredom&t=1775832233884
https://www.tiktok.com/@carsonfor30/video/7625673214034791711?q=rawdog%20boredom&t=1775832233884
https://www.tiktok.com/@wtfmasynn/video/7578290166603730206?q=rawdog%20boredom&t=1775832233884
[2] https://www.tiktok.com/@monkeyless.app/video/7560293766872026401?q=rawdog%20boredom&t=1775832233884
[4] 2016 Danckert & Merrifield “Data from three participants could not be included in the fMRI analyses for several reasons: motion artefacts in one participant, a second participant fell asleep during scanning and data from a third participant were lost due to technician error. Results are therefore reported on the remaining sample of 10 participants (mean age = 26.0 years, SD = 4.8; 2 female, 8 right-handed).”
[5] 2016 Danckert & Merrifield “In prior work, we created a video intended to induce boredom that portrayed two men hanging laundry to dry, while occasionally asking each other for a clothes pin (Merrifield and Danckert 2014). … An 8-min version of the video was made for this study by looping a shorter 240 s version once (Fig. 1).”
[6] 2016 Danckert & Merrifield “The clip was an excerpt from the British Broadcasting Company’s (BBC) documentary film, Planet Earth (Fothergill et al. 2007), and depicted exotic animals, landscapes and vegetation, with voice commentary and background music.” [Image of sea turtle on next page]
[7] 2016 Danckert & Merrifield “Clusters of correlated activity in the DMN were evident in broadly similar regions across each of the boredom, resting state and Starry Night functional scans (Fig. 2). Spatial patterns and cluster sizes were consistent across the majority of participants. The pattern of activity in the DMN in each scan comprised of three main regions of activation including a large area bilaterally, in the posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus and bilateral activation in the lateral temporal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex” [DMN = default mode network]
[8] 2024 Menon: “The DMN is a collection of distributed and interconnected brain regions3 (Figure 1) that are typically suppressed when an individual is focused on external stimuli; however, in the absence of attention to external stimuli, the DMN switches or “defaults” to internally focused thought processes, such as self-reflection, daydreaming, mind-wandering, recall of personal experiences, and envisioning the future1,2,4. The DMN is also hypothesized to be active during periods of “rest” and quiet wakefulness, allowing us to reflect on our experiences, feelings, and social interactions.”
[9] 2015 Raichle: “To summarize, data from humans suggest that the default mode network instantiates processes that support emotional processing (VMPC), self-referential mental activity (DMPC), and the recollection of prior experiences (posterior elements of the default mode network).” [VMPC = ventral medial prefrontal cortex; DMPC = dorsal medial prefrontal cortex]
[11] 2023 Chou et al. “Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) show increased or decreased DMN activity relative to controls. DMN activity has been linked to a tendency to ruminate in MDD.” This study found: “Individuals at risk for depression may … have an underlying neurocognitive vulnerability to use a brain network typically involved in thinking about oneself to preferentially ruminate about negative, rather than positive, information.”
[12] 2025 Rias et al. Based on studies that used resting state fMRI: “Results from the 16 studies showed that depressed people had both increased and decreased functional connectivity between different regions of the brain during brooding rumination. The connectivity within the DMN was increased, while connectivity between DMN and other areas of brain, including between DMN and TPN (task-positive network) was reduced, when compared with healthy controls.”
[13] 2020 Karapanagiotidis et al. “Our results indicated a significant association between the amount of time an individual spends in two neural states and the experiential reports gained at the end of the scan. One state had features mimicking patterns of neural activity seen during complex tasks e.g.32,33 and was associated with patterns of thoughts focused on future problem solving. A second state highlighted the dominance of the default mode network (DMN)34 and was linked to reports of unintentional intrusive thought about the past. Importantly, this state was also linked to traits associated with negative affect (anxiety, depression and rumination).”
[14] 2017 Gogolla: “Interoception, the perception of bodily states, is a key function of the insular cortex. The insula receives topographically organized afferents from distinct thalamic relay nuclei and integrates information about blood pressure and oxygenation, the motility of the digestive system, the timing and strength of the heartbeat, as well as pain, hunger, nausea, tickle, itch and many more bodily sensations.” … “Indeed, human and animal studies have implicated the insula cortex in processing positive and negative emotions, including anger, sadness, fear and anxiety, disgust, happiness or joy, trust, surprise, as well as social emotions.”
[15] 2024 Menon et al: “The AI plays a critical role in signaling saliency, an essential aspect of cognitive processing and decision-making. This function involves discerning the behavioral relevance of external stimuli, including both appetitive and aversive elements such as thirst, hunger, and pain. Studies have shown that the AI encodes the salience of these stimuli, integrating both their inherent value and any deviations from expected outcomes” [AI = anterior insula]
[16] 2017 Gogolla: “Through its connectivity, the insula is ideally suited to monitor the current environment, as well as the present emotional and bodily states, and, based on experience, to predict how future actions may influence survival and wellbeing. It is thus crucial in determining the valence of internal and external stimuli. Together, these features explain the important roles that the insula serves in several forms of reinforcement learning, emotion control, and decision-making. It has further been suggested that the insula acts as a salience detector that marks the most relevant stimuli for further processing in other large-scale brain networks.”
[17] 2016 Danckert & Merrifield “For the resting state scan, no activity (correlated or anticorrelated) was evident in the anterior insula (Fig. 3). … For both the boring mood induction and the Starry Night task (i.e. sustained attention), anticorrelated activity was seen bilaterally in the anterior insula (Fig. 3). This same region demonstrated correlated activity during the interest mood induction (Fig. 3).”
[18] 2017 Dal Mas & Whittmann : “Imaging results show that decisions to avoid boredom by purchasing a leisure activity are associated with activation of the caudate nucleus and that participants who accepted higher prices to avoid boredom showed higher insula activity when choosing the boring task. These findings support previous findings on an involvement of the insula in boredom and suggest that the anticipation of boredom exerts effects on choice behaviour through the dopaminergic system, leading us to seek out varied and interesting experiences.”
[19] 2014 Wilson et al. (“wilson.sm.pdf” Under Supplementary materials:) “The experimenter then attached two Ag-AgCl shock electrodes to the participant’s ankle, which were connected to an isolated physiological stimulator”
2014 Wilson et al. "It is important to remove from consideration participants who did not find the shocks to be unpleasant. In the main text we thus reported the results for the 42 participants (out of 55) who reported in Part 1 of the study that they would pay not to receive the shock again."
[20] 2014 Wilson et al. “Many participants elected to receive negative stimulation over no stimulation–especially men: 67% of men (12 of 18) gave themselves at least one shock during the thinking period [range = 0 to 4 shocks, mean (M) = 1.47, SD = 1.46, not including one outlier who administered 190 shocks to himself], compared to 25% of women (6 of 24; range = 0 to 9 shocks, M = 1.00, SD = 2.32). Note that these results only include participants who had reported that they would pay to avoid being shocked again.”
[21] To test this explanation, 69 participants watched a monotonous, sad or neutral film fragment, during which they could self-administer electric shocks. Participants in the boredom condition self-administered more shocks and with higher intensity, compared to both the neutral and sadness condition.
[22] During Experiment 1, participants had free access to M&Ms and during Experiment 2 participants could freely self-administer brief electrical shocks. It was found that participants ate more M&Ms when bored but also that they more readily self-administered electrical shocks when bored. It is concluded that eating when bored is not driven by an increased desire for satisfying incentive stimulation, but mainly by the drive to escape monotony.
[25] 2019 Park et al : “Participants in the boredom condition were asked to sort the beans by color for 30 min. Specifically, participants were given a large bowl of beans in two colors (green and red) and an empty bowl. The experimenter then told participants to use only one hand to sort the beans. They were also told to sort the beans one at a time.”
[26] 2019 Park et al : “Participants in the control condition were asked to work on an art project using paper, beans, and glue for 30 min. After performing the bean task, participants were informed that they would be taking part in an idea-generation task for the next 5 min. Specifically, they were asked to imagine a hypothetical situation in which Person A is 2 hours late for a work meeting and to list all of the feasible and justifiable reasons Person A could use to account for being late so that Person A would not be perceived negatively by his teammates. Participants were told there were no right or wrong responses and encouraged to generate as many ideas as possible.”
[27] 2019 Park et al : “Uniqueness of ideas. Following the approach of De Dreu et al. (2008), the creativity of individuals’ ideas was measured using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Not unique at all) to 5 (Extremely unique). Two independent coders were asked to rate the ideas based on uniqueness (rwg = .88; α = .81; ICC1 = .59; ICC2 = .73).”
2019 Park et al : “Individuals in the boredom condition produced a greater number of ideas (M = 15.64, SD=7.57) than individuals in the control condition (M = 12.70, SD = 6.39), t(99) = 2.08, p<.05. Also, individuals in the boredom condition produced ideas that were judged to be more unique (M = 4.06, SD = 1.29) than individuals in the control condition (M = 3.56, SD = 1.24), t(99) = 2.00, p<.05.”
[28] 2024 Zeißig et al.: “The largest cache of empirical evidence was obtained from experimental and quasi-experimental studies (five positive associations, four negative, two contradictory, and three insignificant results). Correlation studies identified three negative, one contradictory, and seven insignificant correlations between boredom and creativity” … “In summary, neither an agonistic nor an antagonistic determinism—that is to say, no clearly negative or positive relationship—could be pinpointed between boredom and creativity from the diverse empirical studies we investigated.”
[29] 2019 Park et al : “In contrast to Study 1, in which participants were told they would not be judged in terms of quality of ideas—and thus only strove to generate as many ideas as possible—Study 3 used a task that focused on the quality of ideas to better reflect actual creative performance in organizations (Zhou & Shalley, 2010). Creative performance in organizations requires improvements in
terms of how things are done and emphasizes generating ideas that are both unique and practical. … Their goal was to come up with creative ideas for an easy, efficient, lightweight, and aesthetic mechanism that dog owners and dog walkers could use to clean up dog excrement while walking their dogs.”
[30] 2019 Park et al : “Specifically, under the boredom condition, individuals with higher levels of openness to experience, learning goal orientation, need for cognition, and internal locus of control were more likely to produce creative ideas”
[31] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31441-0 “Alternative approaches have provided inferential evidence for the replay of previous experience in the human brain during quiet rest and sleep.” “During periods of rest, but also during active task engagement, place cells spontaneously recapitulate past trajectories”
[32] 2025 Weng et al. :https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40087245/ “we conducted this meta-analysis … We used a multilevel random-effects model to reveal a significant effect of wakeful rest on memory consolidation… The effect of wakeful rest was influenced by age, with older adults deriving greater benefits compared with younger adults. Across different outcome measurements, the effect was better reflected by recall than by recognition. Additionally, the duration of wakeful rest, whether the eyes are open or closed, the luminance level, and the body posture do not seem to influence the wakeful rest effect.”
[33] 2025 Weng et al. “The wakeful rest effect was significant across both durations (5–10 min: Hedges’s g = 0.436, 95% CI [0.318, 0.554], Z = 7.238, p < 0.001; 10–30 min: Hedges’s g = 0.419, 95% CI [0.147, 0.690], Z = 3.024, p = 0.002; as shown in Table 5, Fig. 3B).”
[34] 2026 Parra et al. “This random-effects meta-analysis combined 142 effect sizes from 51 studies to evaluate the evidence for the wakeful rest effect and to identify the sources of variation. Meta-regression was also done. As expected, there were larger effects for patient populations than for healthy populations, as well as weaker effects for younger than older adults.”
[35] 2025 Weng et al. “At present, numerous studies have demonstrated that wakeful rest after learning has a positive effect on declarative memory, including memory for words (Craig et al., 2014; Dewar et al., 2014; Varma et al., 2018), stories (Brokaw et al., 2016; Dewar et al., (2012a), and pictures (Craig & Dewar, 2018). Furthermore, this effect remains detectable even after 7 days (Dewar et al., 2012a, 2014). Martini et al. found that healthy young adults recalled more words correctly after 8 min of wakeful rest compared with using social media for 8 min. Dewar et al., (2012a) found that a 10-min wakeful rest after learning stories enabled participants to retain more details compared with playing distraction games, and their memory performance remains superior even after 7 days.”
[36] 2019 Lamp et al. [Letter]: “The sleep science community tells people if they cannot sleep, they should get up and do a relaxing activity or write their thoughts down to get them out of their heads [10] but what if people simply need time to think—to consolidate thoughts, feelings, and actions in a passive, non-judgmental way? We recommend that if an individual cannot sleep that they engage in waking rest. This period of waking rest can be incorporated into one’s life not only during periods of insomnia but also during the day to facilitate mental rejuvenation. Creating time for waking rest may be especially important for our feelings and emotional control, and may help remedy various mental health and sleep problems.”
[37] 2024 Hudachek et al. “A short period of eyes-closed waking rest improves long-term memory for recently learned information, including declarative, spatial, and procedural memory. However, the effect of rest on emotional memory consolidation remains unknown. … These results suggest that the beneficial effect of waking rest on memory extends into the emotional memory domain but depends on individual characteristics such as anxiety.”
[38] https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/meditation-and-mindfulness-effectiveness-and-safety
Some types of meditation involve maintaining mental focus on a particular sensation, such as breathing, a sound, a visual image, or a mantra, which is a repeated word or phrase…. “However, much of the research on these topics has been preliminary or not scientifically rigorous. Because the studies examined many different types of meditation and mindfulness practices, and the effects of those practices are hard to measure, results from the studies have been difficult to analyze and may have been interpreted too optimistically.”