Boredom Kills

During the halcyon days of the Games Preserve (our play retreat center in Eastern Pennsylvania - 1971-81) our slogan was "Boredom kills. Games Preserve you." Pithy. Provocative. And, according to this research report called "Investigating the relationships between boredom proneness, paranoia, and self-consciousness" by Mitchell J. von Gemmingen, Bryce F. Sullivan, and Andrew M. Pomerantz, not necessarily an exaggeration.

They write: "...boredom proneness was the strongest overall predictor of paranoia. Additionally, boredom proneness significantly correlated with private self-consciousness, and self-reflectiveness, but not general self-consciousness nor public self-consciousness...these findings suggest that individuals in an undesired state of boredom may...develop...an obdurate and deleterious style of thinking that may lead to a distancing between themselves from not only friends and family, but reality as well."

Boredom's a dangerous thing. Awareness of that danger led Csikszentmihalyi to choose Beyond Boredom and Anxiety as the title of one of his earliest and most influential reports on his studies of the flow experience. Which is one of the earliest and most influential pieces of research on the development of my understanding of fun.

The abstract of this article is available for free, and can be found in Science Direct.

Thanks to my personally Sacred Son for the link.