Boredom is such a large part of day-to-day existence. Perhaps because it's common in our lives, scientists have been slow to explore it. John Eastwood is one of the first scholars to take an interest.
One of the most common false views is that "only boring people get bored".
Yet as Eastwood set about exploring the reasons for boredom, he found that there are two distinct types of personality that tend to suffer from the feeling of boredom, and neither are particularly dull themselves.
Boredom often goes among people who are constantly looking for new experiences. For these people, the steady path of life just isn't enough to hold their attention. The second kind of bored people have almost exactly the opposite problem: the world is a fearful place, and so they try not to step outside their comfort zone. While this might offer some comfort, they are not always satisfied with the safety it offers and boredom results.
Emotions should evolve for our benefit. "The very fact that boredom is a daily experience suggests it should be doing something useful," says Heather Lench at Texas A$M University. Feelings like fear help us avoid danger, after all, while sadness might help prevent future mistakes. So, if true, what does boredom achieve?
Reviewing the evidence so far, Lench suspects that it lies behind one of our most important characters—curiosity. Boredom, she says, pushes us to try to seek new goals or explore new ideas which stimulate innovation(激发创新).
Eastwood is less enthusiastic about boredom's benefits, but admits we should be cautious about looking for an immediate escape. "The feeling is so disgusting that people rush to remove it," he says. "I'm not going to join that war on boredom and come up with a cure, because we need to listen to the emotion and ask what it is trying to tell us to do."
