About James Danckert
From the University of Waterloo website:
I became interested in boredom when working with people who had suffered traumatic brain injuries – typically from things like car crashes. They reported feeling more bored than before their injury and I believed this to be an organic change in brain function, not a psychological reaction.
We study boredom in a wide range of ways: behavioral tasks like foraging which pit exploration against exploitation, sustained attention tasks that are by design monotonous and dull, and executive control tasks that to some extent will tap into the capacity for self-control.
We use neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI and more recently tDCS and we have an ongoing collaboration with an evolutionary geneticist to explore the genetic basis of boredom – all ultimately to understand the antecedents and mechanisms that give rise to boredom.
Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom
No one likes to be bored. Two leading psychologists explain what causes boredom and how to listen to what it is telling you, so you can live a more engaged life.
We avoid boredom at all costs. It makes us feel restless and agitated. Desperate for something to do, we play games on our phones, retie our shoes, or even count ceiling tiles. And if we escape it this time, eventually it will strike again. But what if we listened to boredom instead of banishing it?
Psychologists James Danckert and John Eastwood contend that boredom isn’t bad for us. It’s just that we do a bad job of heeding its guidance.
When we’re bored, our minds are telling us that whatever we are doing isn’t working—we’re failing to satisfy our basic psychological need to be engaged and effective.
Too many of us respond poorly to boredom. We become prone to accidents, risky activities, loneliness, and ennui, and we waste ever more time on technological distractions. But, Danckert and Eastwood argue, we can let boredom have the opposite effect, motivating the change we need.
The latest research suggests that an adaptive approach to boredom will help us avoid its troubling effects and, through its reminder to become aware and involved, might lead us to live fuller lives.
Out of My Skull combines scientific findings with everyday observations to explain an experience we’d like to ignore, but from which we have a lot to learn. Boredom evolved to help us. It’s time we gave it a chance.
Support this blog by:
- Subscribing to our YouTube Channel.
- Subscribing to our podcast through your favorite podcast app.
- Using our Amazon Affiliate link.