Boredom can lead to more extreme political views: study

Boredom puts people on edge - it makes them seek engagements that are challenging and that offer a sense of purpose.

Boredom may be contributing to a widening of political views among voters, according to a new study which suggests that people who are easily restless tended to endorse more extreme political beliefs.

The findings by researchers from King's College London in the UK and University of Limerick in Ireland are based on one experiment and two scientific surveys. In their initial experiment, researchers recruited 97 people from a university campus in Ireland. The participants first indicated their political orientation (whether they considered themselves liberal or conservative) before being randomly assigned to complete either a task deemed to be highly boring or a comparatively less boring task.

Those assigned to the high boredom group transcribed 10 references about concrete mixing, while those assigned to the low boredom group only had to transcribe two of these references. After completing the boring tasks, researchers asked the participants to describe their political orientation once again. However, this time the participants indicated their political orientation on a seven-point scale.

Researchers found that liberals in the low boredom group were more moderate in their political orientation, compared to liberals in the high boredom group. Researchers also conducted a survey of 859 people living in Ireland and found that people who were easily bored tended to endorse more extreme political views. Another survey of 300 people found that being prone to boredom was associated with searching for meaning in life, which was in turn associated with political extremism.

"Boredom puts people on edge - it makes them seek engagements that are challenging, exciting, and that offer a sense of purpose. Political ideologies can aid this existential quest," said Wijnand van Tilburg from King's College. "Boredom motivates people to alter their situation and fosters the engagement in activities that seem more meaningful than those currently at hand," said Tilburg. Researchers suggest that adopting a more extreme political ideology is one way that people re-inject meaningfulness into a boring situation.

"These studies indicate that political views are, in part, based on boredom and the need to counteract these negative, existential experiences with ideologies that seem to provide meaning in life," said Eric Igou from University of Limerick. "The implications of these findings are obvious. Possibly politically radicalised individuals and groups are, at least to some degree, driven by boredom experiences in their everyday lives as an attempt to make life seem more meaningful," said Igou. The findings were published in the European Journal of Social Psychology.