Rethinking Boredom in (Inter)action

• In Event: 4262 - Experience and Evaluation

Abstract

‘Boredom’ is an active research topic for psychologists and philosophers alike. Where the former focus on the cognitive and physiological dimensions of the emotion, the latter focus on the “function” of boredom in an individual’s quest to find meaning and purpose. Yet, despite this overlap in interest, rarely and to any robust degree have these camps engaged with one another. In this article, I seek to bring these two bodies of literature together to illustrate what we gain when we shift the focus on seeing boredom as a regulatory emotion, rather than simply a negative one. To do this, I rely on pragmatism as a theoretical framework to offer a reconceptualization of a common experience, like boredom.

Author

• Cinthya J. Guzman, University of Toronto