We report new evidence on the emotional, demographic, and situational correlates of boredom from a rich experience sample capturing 1.1 million emotional and time-use reports from 3,867 U.S. adults. Subjects report boredom in 2.8% of the 30-min sampling periods, and 63% of participants report experiencing boredom at least once across the 10-day sampling period. We find that boredom is more likely to co-occur with negative, rather than positive, emotions, and is particularly predictive of loneliness, anger, sadness, and worry. Boredom is more prevalent among men, youths, the unmarried, and those of lower income. We find that differences in how such demographic groups spend their time account for up to one third of the observed differences in overall boredom. The importance of situations in predicting boredom is additionally underscored by the high prevalence of boredom in specific situations involving monotonous or difficult tasks (e.g., working, studying) or contexts where one's autonomy might be constrained (e.g., time with coworkers, afternoons, at school). Overall, our findings are consistent with cognitive accounts that cast boredom as emerging from situations in which engagement is difficult, and are less consistent with accounts that exclusively associate boredom with low arousal or with situations lacking in meaning. (PsycINFO Database Record

None of the tasks used to induce boredom have undergone rigorous psychometric validation, which creates potential problems for operational equivalence, comparisons across studies, statistical power, and confounding results. This methodological concern was addressed by testing and comparing the effectiveness of six 5-min. computerized boredom inductions (peg turning, audio, video, signature matching, one-back, and an air traffic control task). The tasks were evaluated using standard criteria for emotion inductions: intensity and discreteness. Intensity, the amount of boredom elicited, was measured using a subset of the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale. Discreteness, the extent to which the task elicited boredom and did not elicit other emotions, was measured using a modification of the Differential Emotion Scale. In both a laboratory setting (Study 1; N = 241) and an online setting with Amazon Mechanical Turk workers (Study 2; N = 416), participants were randomly assigned to one of seven tasks (six boredom tasks or a comparison task, a clip from Planet Earth) before rating their boredom using the MSBS and other emotions using the modified DES. In both studies, each task had significantly higher intensity and discreteness than the comparison task, with moderate to large effect sizes. The peg-turning task outperformed the other tasks in both intensity and discreteness, making it the recommended induction. Identification of reliable and valid boredom inductions and systematic comparison of their relative results should help advance state boredom research.

The Behavioral Life‐Cycle hypothesis (Thaler & Shefrin, ) models consumers as having both impatient “doer” preferences, representing their desire to spend now, and patient “planner” preferences, representing long‐run welfare considerations. The Behavioral Life‐Cycle hypothesis suggests that those with doer preferences may benefit from strategies that constrain their present behavior and promote saving for the future, like automating deposits into savings accounts. We analyze over 4,000 responses from the nationally representative National Financial Well‐Being Survey to (a) describe consumer characteristics associated with the decision to automate savings deposits, and (b) explore whether automation is related to improved financial welfare, especially for impatient consumers. We find that savings automation is positively associated with financial socialization (whether the respondent's family discussed financial matters growing up) and financial skill (the ability to act on financial knowledge). We also find that impatient consumers—relative to those with stronger planner preferences—have fewer liquid savings, lower financial well‐being, less confidence in their ability to raise $2,000, and more difficulty paying bills. However, as predicted, these differences between consumers with doer and planner preferences largely disappear for those who automate savings deposits. We discuss implications of this research for financial planners in helping clients improve financial welfare.

To improve consumers’ financial decisions, many policy makers support financial education programs. However, some eligible consumers do not participate, limiting program effectiveness. The authors examine a home-buying and mortgage education website offered to more than 6,000 prospective home buyers, documenting differences in take-up (i.e., who decides to participate) and duration of use by consumers’ demographic characteristics, objective knowledge, and subjective knowledge. These analyses rely on a unique data match between surveys measuring consumers’ characteristics and clickstream data tracking website use. The results show that older participants and first-time home buyers are more likely to take up the website, but otherwise there is little relationship between observable demographics and take-up. Consistent with enrichment theory, consumers who are more objectively knowledgeable have higher take-up. However, consistent with “feeling of knowing” research, a one-standard-deviation increase in subjective knowledge is associated with approximately a ten-percentage-point decrease in take-up (controlling for other factors). Subjectively knowledgeable consumers also use educational materials for a shorter duration. The findings add to literature on consumer information search and inform policy makers about consumers’ use of online financial education.

This work was supported by the Center for Behavioral Decision Research at Carnegie Mellon University (AC) and the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Foundation for the Humanities and the Social Sciences Program on Science and Proven Experience (WBB). We thank Taya Cohen, Baruch Fischhoff, Melissa Knoll, and participants at the 2015 annual meeting for the Society of Judgment and Decision Making for comments on this research.