Boredom as an unpleasant emotion with undesirable correlates

Boredom, most generally, is described as an unpleasant and distressing experience [22]. There are two widely used scales to measure general trait boredom: The Boredom Proneness Scale [BPS; 23] and the Boredom Susceptibility Scale [BSS; 24]. Research on the BPS has revealed that boredom proneness has multiple undesirable correlates, including alexithymia [25], alienation [26], anger and aggression [27–29], impulsiveness [28,30–32], loneliness [23], narcissism [33], negative affect [34], neuroticism [28,35,36] procrastination [37,38], and unsociability [31]. In turn, low levels of boredom proneness have been shown to be linked with higher levels of conscientiousness, openness to experience [6], and life satisfaction [23]. High scores on the BSS have been reported to be associated with higher levels of motor impulsivity, sensitivity to reward, gambling, alcohol, and smoking [36,39]. Going beyond such general, context-transcending findings, the present study specifically addresses boredom at school, and even more specifically, student experiences of boredom in the subject of mathematics. We thus assess boredom as a trait construct in a domain-specific way.

While mathematics boredom has been studied in several recent studies addressing, for example, the control- and value-appraisal antecedents of mathematics boredom [9,40], or boredom-achievement links [41], no study to date seems to have explored whether such domain-specific boredom is also linked with person-level behavioral and personality variables. In other words, it remains open to question if those students who report to experience intense boredom in mathematics only show undesirable levels of structs related to the domain of mathematics (e.g., poor study habits), or if they also show problematic behavior patterns beyond this context (e.g., lower sociability). In line with Bronfenbrenner’s [42] ecological systems theory, we suggest that domain-specific boredom and more general behavioral and personal variables inevitably interact with each other. Thus, the first aim of this study was to replicate prior correlational findings as demonstrated using more general instruments for the assessment of boredom in the subject of mathematics.

Boredom due to being over- vs. under-challenged

The idea of boredom being caused by under-challenge has already been brought forward by Csikszentmihalyi in 1975 [43]. In this work, he argued that boredom supposedly arises in situations in which someone’s competencies are higher than the situational opportunities or, in other words, in situations that are under-challenging. However, boredom can also be prompted when task demands are too high and cannot be interpreted in a meaningful way, implying over-challenge [8]. Integrating across both perspectives, Pekrun’s [44,45] control-value theory of achievement emotions proposes that boredom should be linked with either low or high control. In other words, according to this theory, students should experience boredom when they appraise that success is either quite easily or only barely attainable for them [40]. This implies that both low and high achievers may experience high levels of boredom. Over the past years, these theoretical propositions have been addressed by a large body of empirical research which has consistently demonstrated that boredom is, indeed, experienced in both over- and under-challenging situations [21,46–50].

Despite this compelling evidence on the meaning of differentiating between boredom due to being over- vs. under-challenged, what still seems open to question is whether experiencing intense boredom is similarly severe when students are low-achieving and thus likely over-challenged, or when students are high-achieving and thus likely under-challenged. On the one hand, the undesirable correlates of boredom may arise only for poorly performing students, while high performing students may not suffer as much from undesirable correlates of boredom. Such reasoning would be supported by the fact that high academic achievement typically is associated with conscientiousness [51,52] and high self-esteem [53]. Those factors could protect against the potential undesirable correlates of boredom. From another perspective, experiencing intense levels of boredom at school may imply undesirable correlates, irrespective of levels of challenge, and scholastic performance. Such reasoning is supported by Kannich’s [21] study which showed both being over- or under-challenged resulted in a decrease in career aspirations.

The present study

The present study addresses a gap in research on achievement boredom by systematically comparing students who are highly bored and low-achieving–thus, likely over-challenged, and highly bored yet high-achieving–thus, likely under-challenged. As potential undesirable correlates, we took into account both behavioral and personality variables. As achievement boredom has been shown to be highly domain-specific [12] and particularly salient in mathematics [49] we decided to focus on this domain. The present study takes a trait perspective [44], proposing that individuals systematically differ in their tendency to experience boredom.

The choice of constructs addressed in the present study was guided by the aim to address the central negative aspects mentioned in the general boredom proneness literature, inasmuch as they seemed relevant in our context. We thus aimed at replicating prior findings on a broad range of correlates of boredom as demonstrated using more general instruments for the assessment of boredom proneness, while assessing boredom specifically with respect to the subject of mathematics. Previous research has shown that boredom is linked with enhanced negative emotions [29], conduct problems [20,27,31], hyperactivity [54], peer problems [26], and lack of prosocial behavior [31]. Therefore, to explore potential undesirable correlates of boredom, we took all subscales of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire [SDQ, 55] into account. Furthermore, boredom has been shown to be positively linked with negative affect [56], expressive suppression [57], and neuroticism [36] as well as negatively with positive affect [56], cognitive reappraisal [57], and conscientiousness [6]. We therefore additionally considered general affect as measured with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule [PANAS; 58], cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression as measured with the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire [ERQ; 59] and finally, neuroticism and conscientiousness as measured with the Big Five Inventory-2 [BFI-2; 60].

Despite the extensive body of research examining achievement boredom in adolescents, it is still open to question whether experiencing intense boredom is similarly severe when students are low-achieving and when they are high-achieving. Therefore, we formulated the following exploratory research question: Do low-achieving students with high boredom systematically differ in their self-reported behaviors and personality traits from high-achieving students with high boredom? We propose that an answer to this question enhances the scientific understanding of achievement boredom and offers practical implications, especially with respect to potentially dealing differentially with students who are bored due to being over- vs. under-challenged.

Sample

The sample consisted of N = 1.404 secondary school students from 103 classrooms of 25 schools (52% girls [n = 731], 47% boys [n = 661], 1% not indicated [n = 12]) from the Free State of Bavaria, Germany. Students were from all three tracks of the Bavarian three-track general secondary school system, with 47% (n = 662 students) from the upper (Gymnasium), 28% (n = 390) the middle (Realschule), and 25% (n = 349) the lower track (Mittelschule). This distribution across tracks is equivalent with the Bavarian secondary student statistics, with a slight overrepresentation of Gymnasium student population [61]. The students were in the fifth (n = 172), sixth (n = 197), seventh (n = 582), eighth (n = 291), ninth (n = 134), and 10th grade (n = 24) and were 9 to 17 years old, with a mean age of M_age = 12.83 years (SD_age = 1.29). The vast majority of the students (92%, n = 1.287) was born in Germany while 18% of them had at least one foreign-born parent (n_mother = 181, n_father = 177, n_both = 118).

The research was approved by Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich’s Ethics Review Board of the Faculty of Psychology and Education. Participation in the study was voluntary, written informed consent was obtained from all participants, parents or guardians respectively, and no identifiers that could link individual participants to their results were obtained.

Measures

The data reported here were assessed as part of a longer questionnaire which in total consisted of ten pages with open-ended and multiple-choice questions. External trained testing personnel brought the questionnaires to the schools and collected them a few weeks later. The questionnaire was filled out at home by the students and collected, inside sealed envelopes, in class by their mathematics teachers.

Boredom.

Students’ class-related, habitual, trait-like boredom in mathematics was accessed using six items of the course-specific boredom scale of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire—Mathematics [15,AEQ-M, 62]. In the AEQ, students are prompted to “Please indicate how you feel, typically, during math class”; a sample item is “I am so bored that I can’t stay awake” (see Table 1 for the full set of items used in this study in original German, and their English translation). Students responded using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

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Table 1. Boredom items of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire—Mathematics (AEQ-M).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241671.t001

Data analyses

All analyses were conducted using R 3.6.1 [45]. The full analysis code is available from the Open Science Framework database (https://osf.io/zypae). To assess the internal consistency of the scales, the reliability coefficient Cronbach’s alpha (α) was calculated. As outlined in Table 2, AEQ-M boredom, PANAS positive and negative affect, and BFI-2 neuroticism and conscientiousness showed good reliabilities (α between .81 and .86). SDQ hyperactivity and prosocial behavior, ERQ cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression showed borderline-acceptable reliabilities, but SDQ conduct and peer problems showed low reliabilities (α between .47 and .53). However, earlier studies also documented comparably low internal consistencies for those SDQ subscales when using student ratings [69]. Therefore, this was not a peculiarity of our sample. To circumvent biased results due to scale unreliability, we chose to model all variables as latent constructs using the Lavaan 0.6–5 package [70] employing the full information likelihood method [FIML; 71] for treating missing data, and the MLR estimator (maximum likelihood estimation with robust (Huber-White) standard errors and a scaled test statistic that is (asymptotically) equal to the Yuan-Bentler test statistic).

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Table 2. Means, standard deviations, and Cronbach’s alpha for the study scales.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241671.t002

We thus obtained latent correlations between boredom, emotional and behavioral problems, positive and negative affect, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression, as well as neuroticism and conscientiousness based on structural equation modeling (SEM). To identify highly bored students, we obtained latent factor scores for each student for the six items of the AEQ-M boredom scale. In this context, we defined the high boredom group to include all students who scored higher than one standard deviation (SD = 0.7) above the standardized sample mean of zero on the AEQ-M boredom scale (n = 258). To compare across low- vs. high-achievers among these highly bored students, we used the final math grade of the previous school year as an indicator of achievement in math class. In this analysis, students with missing grades (n = 14) were excluded. Grades from 4 to 6 (4 = sufficient, 5 = poor, 6 = insufficient) were coded as 0 = low achievement and grades from 1 to 3 (1 = excellent, 2 = good, 3 = satisfactory) as 1 = high achievement (M = 3, SD = 0.9, Mdn = 4). As a result, there were 125 students in the low achievement group (boredom M = 3.98, SD = .53), and 119 students in the high achievement group (boredom M = 3.80, SD = .42). To account for multiple testing, we used the Bonferroni method to adjust the alpha level to 0.005.

Preliminary analysis

Table 3 shows the latent correlations between students’ mathematics boredom and all other affective and behavioral constructs considered in this study, across the full sample. Boredom correlated significantly with all other constructs assessed. Strong relations were found for conduct problems and hyperactivity (r between .52 and .56), and medium-sized relations were found for emotional symptoms, positive and negative affect, and neuroticism and conscientiousness (r between -.45 and .45). Peer problems and prosocial behavior, as well as cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, showed small-sized links with mathematics boredom (r between -.29 and .13). The overall pattern of relationships was consistent with previous studies on boredom proneness in that higher levels of boredom in mathematics class were associated with higher levels of undesired behavioral and personality variables, and lower levels of desirable behavioral and personality variables.

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Table 3. Behavior and personality: Latent correlations with boredom and comparison between bored low and high achievers.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241671.t003

Group differences between low and high performers

Before comparing latent mean differences between low- and high-achieving students, we tested for measurement invariance of each of the latent constructs addressed in this study, using the SemTools 0.5–2 package [72]. This was to make sure that the latent scores used in the analysis were comparable across both groups. We sequentially tested for equivalence of model form (configural), equivalence of factor loadings (metric), and equivalence of item intercepts or thresholds [scalar; 73]. For comparing latent means across groups, scalar invariance is necessary [74]. We refrained from additionally testing for residual invariance, which is nugatory to the interpretation of latent mean differences [74]. As can be seen from S1 Table, scalar factorial invariance could indeed be accepted for all constructs except SDQ hyperactivity and peer problems. While hyperactivity showed metric invariance, peer problems only showed configural invariance, implying considerably different item functioning of those items for the low- as opposed to high-achieving bored students.

To investigate differences in behavioral and personality variables of highly bored students who are performing poorly vs. well in mathematics, we regressed the dichotomous variable achievement in mathematics (low vs. high) on all other constructs considered in this study, modeled as latent variables. The results (Table 3) revealed no group differences for any of the constructs. It is worth noting that those results proved to be fully robust when entering school type as dummy-coded control variables. In interpreting these results, differential item functioning for hyperactivity and peer problems must be taken into account.

Limitations, suggestions for future research, and implications

By showing that bored low- and high-achievers show similar patterns in behavioral and personality variables, this study addresses a gap in boredom research and contributes to a better understanding of achievement boredom. However, the following limitations should be taken into account when interpreting our results and could be considered as directions for future research.

First of all, the present study relies on the reasoning that the combination of high boredom with good grades in mathematics implies that those students tend to be bored due to being under-challenged, while the combination of high boredom with poor grades implies that they tend to be over-challenged. It is important to note that this is an assumption, and the classification as over- vs. under-challenge may not have been fully valid for each individual student in the two groups. However, we deliberately chose to assess domain-specific boredom and domain-specific achievement separately, to first identify students with very high boredom, and then classify boredom as likely being due to over- vs. under-challenge based on students’ achievement. While this indirect approach to assess over- and under-challenge may be a point of debate, we also deem more direct self-report assessments (e.g., ‘I am bored because it's too easy’) as psychometrically problematic. Items combining reports of boredom with attributions of boredom are double-barreled and thus ambiguous–it is unclear if students who endorse those items do so because they are bored, or because they find the material easy vs. hard, or because they attribute boredom to over- or under-challenge.

Moreover, our study was conducted in math class at secondary schools in Germany. To generalize our findings, future research should consider problematic correlates of intense boredom in high- and low-achievers in other relevant contexts like elementary schools, universities, or the workplace; in domains other than mathematics; and in other cultures.

With almost 20% (n = 256) of the students in our sample indicated to be severely bored in math class, this study suggests again that no student should be left alone to endure the “torments of boredom” [75]. Given that students almost exclusively use avoidance-oriented coping strategies to deal with their boredom [76], boredom should be openly discussed in class, and more promising coping strategies such as cognitive- and behavioral-approach strategies should be addressed [77].

One of the most reported reasons for boredom is low-quality instructional design [78]. An adaptive and individualized learning environment might, therefore, contribute to preventing boredom due to being both over- or under-challenged. Most importantly, teachers, parents, and students should be aware that boredom in school needs to be taken seriously. Boredom can indicate severe problems not just in the sense of a student being lazy, too bright, over-challenged, or under-challenged, but can constitute a debilitating personality trait.