researchers have suggested that boredom is characterized (and perhaps
even defined by) a state of low arousal. Indeed, in some experimental
studies of boredom, it does seem that when people are asked to sit
quietly without doing anything in particular, presumably a trigger for
boredom, their levels of physiological arousal do decrease. But Berlyne,
and recently some others, have suggested that boredom may sometimes
be accompanied by high states of arousal and perhaps even stress.5
In recent research conducted by University of Waterloo cognitive neuroscientist James Danckert in collaboration with his student Colleen Merrifield, participants were brought to the laboratory, hooked up to equipment that measured their heart rates and their skin conductance, and asked to watch some videos. The videos were carefully calibrated to elicit emotional states of one kind or another. In one video, designed to elicit sadness, a heartrending scene from the movie The Champ was shown. Another video, designed to elicit boredom, showed two men hanging laundry on a clothesline. The men simply
passed clothespins back and forth to one another and hung clothes. Not surprisingly, the participants self-reported being saddened by the clip from The Champ and bored (or sometimes confused) by the laundry video. What was more interesting was that the two videos elicited two different patterns of psychophysiological signatures from participants. Compared to sadness, boredom elicited rising heart rates and decreasing levels of skin conductance. Ordinarily, as in other studies using skin conductance measures, one might interpret the lowered values here as suggesting that bored participants were experiencing lowered levels of arousal. However, Merrifield and Danckert included a third important measure in their study. At certain phases of their experimental procedure, they asked participants to contribute saliva samples that were later analyzed for the presence of cortisol, an important stress hormone whose levels in the body marks activity in a brain system known as the HPA or hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenal axis. Remarkably, after a brief 3-minute exposure to a boring video, participants showed increasing levels of salivary cortisol compared with levels seen when they viewed a sad video.6 Chronically high cortisol levels have been associated with a range of human stress-
related ailments, including stroke, heart disease, and diabetes.