How extreme boredom can push people toward aggressive behavior

Boredom might be more than just a fleeting annoyance; it could actually drive people toward aggressive behavior. A new paper suggests that experiencing intense boredom increases the desire for sensation and stimulation, which in turn can lead to both physical aggression and support for military conflict. These findings were published in Personality and Individual Differences.

Psychologists usually define aggression as any behavior explicitly aimed at harming or injuring another living being. Over the decades, researchers have identified biological factors like hormone levels and environmental factors like social rejection that contribute to hostile tendencies.

Recently, some psychologists have begun to explore the role of boredom in aggressive acts. Previous research has linked boredom to everyday sadism, which is the derivation of pleasure from inflicting suffering on others.

It remained unknown whether boredom also drives non-sadistic aggression, which does not require the aggressor to feel pleasure from someone else’s pain. People often experience boredom as an unpleasant emotional state defined by a lack of meaning and an inability to engage with their current environment.

Heng Li, a researcher at Sichuan International Studies University in China, designed a series of studies to test the boundaries of boredom and aggression. Li proposed that boredom acts as a psychological signal prompting people to seek out highly arousing experiences to restore a sense of meaning.

This pursuit of high-arousal experiences is known in psychology as sensation seeking. Because sensation seeking can reduce a person’s inhibitions and narrow their focus to immediate thrills, Li suspected it might push bored individuals toward aggressive actions.

To establish a baseline connection, Li first surveyed 180 Chinese university students and 190 Vietnamese university students. The participants completed standardized questionnaires measuring their general tendency to experience boredom in daily life, as well as their hostile tendencies.

The survey assessed physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, and hostility. By studying both Chinese and Vietnamese populations, the research expanded beyond the Western, industrialized nations that typically dominate psychology samples.

Li found a positive association between the propensity to experience boredom and aggressive traits. In both groups of university students, those who reported feeling bored more often also reported higher levels of trait aggression. The relationship held true across all four subcomponents of hostile behavior.

Because surveys only measure self-reported tendencies, Li conducted a second study to test physical behavior. This experiment involved 124 non-student adults in China.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of two video-watching conditions. In the boredom group, people watched a monotonous 25-minute video of a man repeatedly folding laundry. In the control group, participants watched an engaging 25-minute documentary about a local park.

After watching the videos, participants filled out a questionnaire designed to measure their current desire for sensation seeking. A researcher then escorted them to a separate room with a punching bag and provided boxing gloves.

The researcher told the participants to punch the bag for as long as they wanted, explaining that they would evaluate the punching experience afterward. A concealed camera recorded the activity, and independent raters later evaluated the force and comfort level of the punches.

The results showed that participants in the boredom condition delivered more punches than those in the control group. The bored participants also punched the bag harder, appeared more comfortable doing so, and reported enjoying the activity more.

Statistical analyses revealed that sensation seeking mediated this effect. The tedious laundry video increased participants’ desire for stimulation, which directly predicted their increased physical aggression toward the punching bag.

A final experiment tested whether this mechanism applies to real-world political aggression. Li recruited 277 American adults through an online platform, ensuring a mix of liberal and conservative voters.

As in the previous experiment, participants were randomly assigned to watch either a boring video of a water wall or a more engaging documentary. They then answered questions about their current sensation-seeking desires.

Following the video and sensation-seeking survey, the participants read hypothetical scenarios involving international conflicts. They were asked to imagine themselves as the commander-in-chief and rate their level of support for aggressive military action against Iran.

The scenarios included situations where foreign military entities trained insurgents or blatantly disregarded the international community. Higher agreement on the survey indicated a stronger endorsement of violent military solutions.

Li found that conservatives generally exhibited more support for military strikes than liberals. However, the boredom manipulation increased support for war across the entire political spectrum.

Both liberal and conservative participants who watched the boring water wall video reported higher sensation-seeking scores and greater support for military aggression than those who watched the documentary. Once again, sensation seeking served as the bridge linking the tedious experience to the hostile response.

While the experiments demonstrate that boredom can cause aggressive behavior in laboratory and hypothetical settings, human decision-making relies on many other variables. A person’s baseline level of self-control may alter how they respond to a lack of stimulation.

People with high self-control might resist aggressive impulses even when they feel intensely under-stimulated. Future studies could test whether diminished self-control worsens the aggressive responses seen in bored individuals.

It is also easy to misinterpret these results as proof that boredom inevitably leads to violence. Aggression is just one possible pathway people use to escape an existential void.

Other research shows that people often cope with boredom through positive or neutral behaviors, such as engaging in creative hobbies, physical exercise, or nostalgic daydreaming. Providing people with constructive, high-arousal activities can help channel sensation-seeking urges away from hostility during times of extreme monotony.

The study, “Bored to battle: The relationship between boredom and aggression,” was authored by Heng Li.