Boredom at Work: A Neglected Concept

1993/03/01 by Cynthia D. Fisher · 3 citations
Neuroscience · Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · Engineering · #Mind wandering and attention #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Flow Experience in Various Fields #Boredom #Feeling #Psychology #Social psychology #Task (project management) #Work (physics) #Cognitive psychology #Applied psychology #Management #Engineering

paper · doi:10.1177/001872679304600305

openalex publication_date 1993/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14

Abstract

Nearly everyone experiences episodes of boredom at work from time to time, regardless of the nature of their job. Previous research on industrial monotony is unable to explain boredom on any but the simplest of tasks. A broader view of the causes of boredom, including attributes of the task, environment, person, and person-environment fit, is proposed. Individual choices of response to feelings of boredom are also considered, and a number of research propositions are suggested.

Citations

• The experience of boredom: The role of the self-perception of attention.
• Boredom Proneness--The Development and Correlates of a New Scale
• Boredom in interpersonal encounters: Antecedents and social implications.
• Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior
• Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence.
• Job Conditions and Personality: A Longitudinal Assessment of Their Reciprocal Effects
• Social facilitation: A meta-analysis of 241 studies.
• Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal-Getting
• Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion.
• Towards a model of boredom

Cited by

• Job demands, not resources, predict worsening psychological distress during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic
• The influence of supervisory‐support climate and unemployment rate on part‐time employee retention
• Boredom [wikipedia]