Conceptualizing and Measuring Trait Boredom as a Lack of Agency

Trait boredom suffers from conceptual ambiguity, including a lack of agreed upon definition and theoretical understanding. Existing measures of trait boredom have been shown to lack validity and possess psychometric limitations. The present dissertation sought to address these concerns by proposing and evaluating a theory of trait boredom and validating a new assessment tool. Chapter 1 reviews the literature on trait boredom including its causes, self-report measures, and limitations of its literature. Chapter 2 defines trait boredom as the frequent experience of state boredom resulting from a psychological cause and conceptualizes these psychological causes in terms of ‘agency’. Chapter 3 partitions the variance in TBS scores into state, trait, and error components to assess the stability and thus validity of the scale. It also evaluates the TBS by examining its associations with measures of theoretically related constructs. Results confirmed a six-item unidimensional scale with strong psychometric properties, including adequate internal consistency (ω = .89), interindividual stability (69.04% of variance accounted by a trait factor), and expected associations with related measures. Chapter 4 evaluates the definition of trait boredom by examining how well measures of psychological causes of boredom predict state boredom characteristics. It also assesses the predictive validity of the TBS by examining its associations with state boredom. Results showed that measures of psychological causes generally predicted state boredom characteristics. Given the finding that boredom intensity and distress were separate from boredom frequency and pervasiveness, I propose that trait boredom should be defined by both the quality of boredom experience (i.e., its intensity and distress) and its frequency. The TBS predicted all state boredom characteristics (rs range from .18 to .26). The TBS was associated with almost all psychological causes of boredom as expected; large associations were with volitional causes. It was also associated with maladaptive and ineffectual responses to boredom. Findings demonstrated that the TBS captures my theory of trait boredom as a lack of agency. Chapter 5 summarizes key findings and proposes directions for future research. The present work provides a useful theory of trait boredom and further validity for a strong new measure of trait boredom.