New research from Maastricht University, published in the journal Motivation and Emotion, reveals that boredom can significantly influence individuals to engage in non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) behavior, even when positive alternatives are available.

The team conducted experiments with 129 participants, predominantly female university students, to explore the relationship between emotional states and the selection of unpleasant stimuli.

The participants were divided into three groups and assigned to write about topics designed to induce boredom, anger or neutrality. The boredom group repeatedly wrote the word "Abramson", the anger group recounted personal memories of anger and the neutrality group described their commute from home to university.

Sounds boring: the causal effect of boredom on self-administration of aversive stimuli in the presence of a positive alternative - Motivation and Emotion
Previous studies demonstrated that boredom leads to increased self-administration of painful electric stimulation, a proxy for non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). However, in these experimental studies, participants had no behavioral alternatives besides electric stimulation to break the monotony. A first aim in the current experimental study was to examine whether boredom still leads to self-administering aversive stimuli when positive behavioral alternatives are present. This boredom effect was furthermore compared to an anger induction. The second aim was to examine whether history of NSSI and negative urgency (i.e., the tendency to engage in impulsive action in response to negative emotions) positively moderate the link between boredom and self-administered aversive stimuli. In a between-subjects design using college students (N = 129), participants were randomly assigned to one of three emotion induction writing tasks (i.e., boredom, anger, neutral), during which frequency of self-administered positive (chirping birds) and aversive (screaming pig) sounds was measured. The latter was used as a proxy for NSSI behavior. Results showed that boredom led to increased selection of aversive sounds compared to the neutral and anger conditions, despite the presence of a positive alternative (i.e., positive sounds). No difference in frequency of selecting the aversive sounds was observed between the anger and neutral condition. Neither history of NSSI nor negative urgency moderated the effect of condition on self-administered aversive stimuli. The current results tentatively support a causal and specific link between boredom and NSSI, and warrant further examination of the role of boredom in maladaptive behaviors such as NSSI.
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During these tasks, participants could choose to listen to a pleasant sound (birds chirping) or an unpleasant sound (pigs screaming), and the team recorded the frequency of their choices.

The results indicated that participants in the boredom condition chose the unpleasant sound much more often than participants in the other conditions. Interestingly, there was no noticeable difference in the choice of the unpleasant sound between the anger and neutral conditions.

This suggests a specific link between boredom and the propensity to engage with negative stimuli. The study also looked at whether personality traits, such as negative urgency (the tendency to act impulsively under negative emotions), or a history of NSSI could influence this behavior. However, these factors did not seem to moderate the relationship between boredom and the selection of unpleasant stimuli, Psy Post points out.

These results are significant because they demonstrate that the tendency to adopt NSSI behaviors under boredom is not limited to situations in which there are no positive options available. This contradicts previous beliefs that such behaviors were more likely in environments such as prison or clinical settings, where individuals have limited positive choices.

One limitation pointed out by the researchers is the use of aversive sounds as a substitute for physical self-harm, which usually involves pain, a factor not reproduced by unpleasant auditory stimuli. Despite this, the results open up new avenues for understanding how apparently benign emotional states, such as boredom, can trigger harmful actions.