• Question: Why do we get bored?

    Asked by Alex to Connor, Jillian, Lidunka, Sarah, Steven on 18 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Lidunka Vocadlo

      Lidunka Vocadlo answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      @Alex Well I’m not too sure, but I’m guessing people get bored due to lack of concentration and awareness coupled with a desire to be doing something else entirely. Sometimes people get bored when they don’t understand things, so at school, for example, I was often bored in class when I didn’t know what was going on. Indeed today at conferences, if somebody is giving a particularly tricky talk and loses me completely, then I get very bored.

    • Photo: Jillian Scudder

      Jillian Scudder answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      Part of it is that you are not very engaged/interested in what’s in front of you – so then your brain will start thinking about other things that you’ve prioritized as “more important” than what’s in front of you. There can be many reasons for not being engaged (you may already know the material, you may not understand it at all, something about the person in front of you makes you switch off…) but if you can find a way to engage yourself anyways, you might be less bored.

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