Exploring The Associations Between Trait Boredom And Cannabis Use Habits

Context: Excessive cannabis may lead to significant related problems in a small proportion of those who use. There is growing support for positive associations between trait boredom and both cannabis use and related harms. State Boredom is the aversive experience of wishing but being incapable of participating in fulfilling activity. Trait boredom is the frequency of experiencing state boredom. Recent literature suggests that trait boredom reflects a chronic lack of agency rather than being a component of sensation seeking. Theories of addiction suggest that people who experience aversive affect frequently (i.e., trait boredom as a lack of agency) tend to use for coping motives (i.e., reduce negative affect), and those who are high on sensation seeking tend to use for expansion motives (i.e., heighten mental experience). Hypotheses: I expected trait boredom to positively predict cannabis use and related harms and that these associations would be explained by coping motives. Furthermore, I expected sensation seeking to predict cannabis use and related harms and that these associations would be explained by expansion motives. Exploratory gender specific moderation effects were examined. Methods: Data were collected in a single wave on MTurk. 489 North American participant who had used cannabis in the past month were included. Participants were asked about their motivation to use cannabis, problems related to cannabis-use, sensation seeking, and their cannabis use disorder related symptoms. Results: I observed high collinearity between the cannabis motives (suggesting they were not unique), and the sensation seeking measure had a large portion of missing responses. Therefore, I was unable to examine initially planned mediation models. Instead, simple linear regressions were performed to examine how trait boredom related to cannabis outcomes. In line with the hypothesis, trait boredom was positively associated with cannabis problems and cannabis use disorder symptoms. Moderation analysis showed that men’s CUD-related symptoms were positively affected by boredom but not women’s. Significance: This study found associations between trait boredom as a lack of agency and cannabis outcomes. Future research should investigate the mechanisms of these associations and expand on our understanding of trait boredom in the etiology of excessive cannabis use and harms.