Browsing by Author "Dadzie, Baaba Vanessa"

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    Boredom and the Sense of Agency
    (University of Waterloo, 2025-08-14) Dadzie, Baaba Vanessa
    Previous research has established boredom as an uncomfortable affective experience with a number of cognitive, physiological and behavioural correlates that are more prevalent for those who experience the state more frequently and intensely—the so-called boredom prone. The conundrum of boredom is that the individual fails to engage meaningfully with their environment despite the strong desire to do so. A proposed contributor to the experience of boredom that has had relatively little focus to date, is the sense of agency, the feeling of being an active contributor to one’s outcomes. This thesis explores the notion that agency is critical to the experience of boredom and boredom proneness. In Chapter 2 of this thesis, where boredom is conceptualized within a self-regulatory framework, the sense of agency negatively predicted boredom proneness in two separate samples (N= 283; N=1,358) over and above other known correlates of boredom proneness. In Chapter 3, the possibility that this relation was due to an impoverished capacity to perceive agency external to the self was explored. Results indicated that trait boredom showed no association with the perception of agency external to the self. In contrast, state boredom was negatively associated with perceptual judgements of agency, a relationship that was partially mediated by attentional engagement. Chapter 4 investigated the possibility that the highly boredom prone report a diminished sense of agency because they are less tolerant of disruptions to agency. Both state and trait boredom were significantly associated with metrics in this study indicative of an intolerance to agency disruption. Those high in boredom proneness tended to reset game play more frequently when faced with disruptions to agency and did so earlier than did those low in boredom proneness. This is taken to reflect a lower level of tolerance for disruptions to agency. Finally, Chapter 5 assessed possible cross-cultural influences of the association between boredom and agency given differences in the adherence to individualist and collectivist ideals. Culture showed only a minimal influence on the relation between boredom and agency, indicating that this relation is robust across multiple cultures. These results give meaningful insights into the individual differences that drive boredom proneness and emphasize that a strong sense of agency is imperative in responding to boredom’s signal to re-orient and engage more meaningfully.