In search of meaningfulness: Nostalgia as an antidote to boredom.

Tilburg, Wijnand A.P. van; Igou, Eric R.; Sedikides, Constantine

doi:10.1037/a0030442

Cited by 160 publications

(178 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…Using multidimensional scaling, we could confirm earlier findings on characteristics of boredom, in particular that research of Eastwood and colleagues (2012) and Van Tilburg & Igou (2011Van Tilburg, Igou, & Sedikides, 2013). Arousal (Vodanovich, 2003), valence (e.g., Smith & Ellsworth, 1985) perceived challenge (e.g., Van Tilburg & Igou, 2011) and relevance to moral judgments and behavior are comparably less helpful in distinguishing boredom from other negative emotions.…”

Section: Implications Limitations and Future Directionssupporting

confidence: 86%

“…Its prototypical psychological signature features low arousal (Smith & Ellsworth, 1985;cf. Goetz, Frenzel, Hall, Nett, Pekrun, & Lipnevich, 2014), a lack of perceived meaning and challenge in the activity at hand (Van Tilburg, Igou, & Sedikides, 2013), mind-wandering (Kane, Brown, McVay, Silvia, Myin-Germeys, & Kwapil, 2007), low attention (Eastwood et al, 2012), and the desire to change the current activity or to disengage from it (Van Tilburg & Igou, 2012).…”

Section: From the Fringes Towards The Mainstreammentioning

confidence: 99%

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Boredom begs to differ: Differentiation from other negative emotions.

Tilburg¹,

Igou

2017

Emotion

Self Cite

136

154

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.The authors declare that there are no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. All authors consented to the submission of this manuscript. AbstractBoredom research is booming. Nonetheless, a comprehensive understanding of boredom in relation to other negative emotions is lacking. This ambiguity impedes accurate interpretation of boredom's causes and consequences. To gain more insights into boredom, we examined in detail how it differs from a range of other negative experiences, namely sadness, anger, frustration, fear, disgust, depression, guilt, shame, regret, and disappointment. Our research indicates that the appraisals associated with boredom distinguish it clearly from other negative emotions; conceptually (Study 1), in terms of state experiences (Study 2), and in terms of individual differences in these experiences (Study 3). Our findings suggest that boredom is mild in negative valence, low in arousal, is associated with low perceived challenge, low perceived meaningfulness, and has low relevance to moral judgment and behavior. Boredom also involves low attention given to situations and tasks, and the lack of perceived meaningfulness and attention associated with boredom emerged as particularly distinctive characteristics. The findings underscore the importance of carefully discriminating boredom from other emotions in experimental induction, psychometric assessment, and conceptual discussion.

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Section: Implications Limitations and Future Directionssupporting

confidence: 86%

Section: From the Fringes Towards The Mainstreammentioning

confidence: 99%

Boredom begs to differ: Differentiation from other negative emotions.

Tilburg¹,

Igou

2017

Emotion

Self Cite

136

154

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…"Boredom emotionally register an absence of meaning and leads the actor in question towards meaning," noted the sociologist Barbalet (1999, p. 631). Indeed, the acknowledgement of an existential feature of boredom is shared by many scholars, including Fromm (1972Fromm ( , 1973 and Schopenhauer (1851Schopenhauer ( /2009 Van Tilburg & Igou, 2011a;2011b), and triggers the retrieval of meaningful nostalgic memories (Van Tilburg, Igou, & Sedikides, 2013), attesting to boredom's relevance for regulating (perceived) purposeful engagement. Essentially, boredom serves as selfregulatory cue that breeds commitment to meaningful action, hence fulfilling an important existential function.…”

Section: Can Boredom Help? Increased Prosocial Intentions In Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, people who experience boredom appraise the situation or behavior as particularly devoid of purpose, and they seek for opportunities to re-instigate a sense of meaningful engagement (Van Tilburg & Igou, 2012;Van Tilburg, Igou, & Sedikides, 2013).…”

Section: Can Boredom Help? Increased Prosocial Intentions In Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

Can boredom help? Increased prosocial intentions in response to boredom

Tilburg

Igou

2016

Self and Identity

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Boredom is typically regarded a nuisance. Past research on boredom depicts this common emotion as a correlate of many detrimental psychological and social factors, including addiction, depression, discrimination, and aggression. We present a more nuanced perspective on boredom. Specifically, we propose and test that state boredom serves an important self-regulatory function with the potential to foster positive interpersonal consequences: It signals a lack of purpose in activity and fosters a search for meaningful engagement. We examined whether boredom can subsequently cause prosocial intentions if the corresponding prosocial behavior is seen as purposeful. As predicted, boredom, which is characterized by a search for meaning (Pilot Study), promoted prosocial intentions (Experiment 1), in particular when the corresponding behavior was seen as highly meaningful (Experiment 2). Our novel findings suggest that boredom can have desirable consequences, and recasts this emotion as not merely good or bad but rather as personally and socially functional.

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“…Correlational and experimental studies show that nostalgia repairs negative mood and boosts positive mood ; provides self-worth and self-affirmation (Vess, Arndt, Routledge, Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2012;Wildschut et al, 2006); buffers existential threat, boredom, and boosts perceived meaning in life (Juhl, Routledge, Arndt, Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2010;Routledge et al, 2011;Van Tilburg, Igou, & Sedikides, 2013);…”

Section: Why Nostalgia Merits Cross-cultural Examinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pancultural nostalgia: Prototypical conceptions across cultures.

Hepper¹,

Wildschut

Sedikides

et al. 2014

Emotion

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170

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Nostalgia is a frequently-experienced complex emotion, understood by laypersons in the United Kingdom and United States of America to (1) refer prototypically to fond, selfrelevant, social memories and (2) be more pleasant (e.g., happy, warm) than unpleasant (e.g., sad, regretful). This research examined whether people across cultures conceive of nostalgia in the same way. Students in 18 countries across 5 continents (N = 1704) rated the prototypicality of 35 features of nostalgia. The samples showed high levels of agreement on the rank-order of features. In all countries, participants rated previously-identified central (vs. peripheral) features as more prototypical of nostalgia, and showed greater inter-individual agreement regarding central (vs. peripheral) features. Cluster analyses revealed subtle variation among groups of countries with respect to the strength of these pancultural patterns.All except African countries manifested the same factor structure of nostalgia features. In Japan, a woman drives past her childhood school and exclaims how natsukashii it is. In Ethiopia, a musician sings a Tizita ballad reliving memories of a lost lover. In the USA, a man smiles nostalgically as he listens to an old record that reminds him of his carefree teenage years. And in ancient Greece, the mythical hero Odysseus is galvanized by memories of his family as he struggles to make his way home from war (Homer, trans. 1921). To what extent are these four characters experiencing the same emotion? Is nostalgia universal?Growing evidence indicates that nostalgia is a self-relevant emotion associated with fond memories (Hepper, Ritchie, Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2012; and that it serves psychological functions (Routledge, Wildschut, Sedikides, & Juhl, 2013;. If nostalgia qualifies as an emotion and an adaptive psychological resource, it may be pancultural. The present article begins to address this issue by examining the equivalence of prototypical conceptions of nostalgia across a range of cultures. The Universality of EmotionThe universality of emotion concepts has long attracted scholarly attention. Darwin (1872/1965) proposed that emotions evolved as adaptive responses to social living, and thus some emotions should be universal. In contrast, Harré (1986) argued that emotions are primarily cultural constructions and thus should vary according to the meanings and practices of different cultural settings. Although the issues are textured, two major lines of research have supported the universality view. The first line of research has identified universally recognized facial expressions, focusing on a core set of "basic" emotions (e.g., anger, joy, sadness; Ekman, 1992;Ekman & Friesen, 1971;Russell, 1991a). The second line of research has examined conceptions of emotion words (Fontaine, Scherer, Roesch, & Ellsworth, 2007; Kuppens, Ceulemans, Timmerman, Diener, & Kim-Prieto, 2006; Páez & Vegara, 1995). This lexical literature has established that, across cultures, emotion (and specific emotions) is a fuzzy c...

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In search of meaningfulness: Nostalgia as an antidote to boredom.

Cited by 160 publications

References 75 publications

Boredom begs to differ: Differentiation from other negative emotions.

Boredom begs to differ: Differentiation from other negative emotions.

Can boredom help? Increased prosocial intentions in response to boredom

Pancultural nostalgia: Prototypical conceptions across cultures.

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