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RECENT STUDIES ABOUT BOREDOM DURING FREE TIME espite our best professional ef- forts at providing services, places and educational pro- grams designed to help people use their free time meaningfully, we are still confronted with the perva- sive problem of boredom. We know that when faced with a period of free time, some individuals just cannot seem to identify a leisure activity that is interesting, challenging, or exciting. These people would be likely to de- scribe their free time as boring. It is puzzling that anyone would feel bored during free time. All of our the- ories of the "state of mind" perspective of leisure assume that people seek out leisure activities that make them feel self -determining, competent and opti- .mally involved. Boredom, if it occurs at all, should be a brief motivational state that tells us we need to find something interesting to do. More- over, the common definition of leisure time as the hours of the day during which we are relatively free from con- straint makes leisure boredom even more confusing. Being bored at work, or school, or in other environments in which our choices are limited makes sense. But boredom when we are free to choose what to do? Why? This question has caught the imagi- nation of several researchers, includ- ing Seppo Iso -Ahola, Linda Caldwell, Youngkill Lee, Mounir Ragheb and myself. A number of recent studies Ellen Rissinger is an associate pro- fessor in the Department of Educa- tional Psychology at the University of Nebraska -Lincoln. 3 0 + P& R M A R C H 1 9 9 4 provide an initial glimpse into why people get bored in their free time. For example, Seppo Iso -Ahola and I published a paper in 1987 in which we studied 134 adults from the general population of a large East Coast city. We found that a lot of things didn't seem to make a difference in whether people get bored in free time. Age, income, race, education, employment status and gender were all poor pre- dictors of a person's boredom. The degree to which someone had a strong "work ethic" or "leisure ethic" made little difference, as did common constraints (not enough time, lack of transportation, no one to do things with, and so forth). What did seem to influence whether people grot bored or not. a answer was: the de ee to which people were aware that leisure activities could meet their psychologi- cal needs. Cl7he questionnaire item we used said "I've never really given much thought to whether leisure could be psychologically rewarding.") Best Predictor This is a little confusing, so let's examine the idea further. Our data suggested that a person's answer to this single item was the best predictor of how bored they were in free time. People who were more aware of the po entz or eisure activities to add meaningfully to their lives were less likely to get bored, and people who lacked this awareness were more like- ly to yet bored. This fits nicely with intrinsic motiva- _tion theory. Deci and Ryan, in their 1985 book, state that in order to By Ellen Weissinger become intrinsically motivated, indi- viduals must be aware that their need for intrinsic rewards (like feelings of self-determination and competence) can be satisfied. Viewed from this per- spective, our findings suggest that people who were aware that their intrinsic needs could be met in their leisure activities were less likely to be bored. Linda Caldwell, Deb Bandalos and I got similar results in a group of 474 college students, and Linda and I found essentially the same thing in a sample of 155 adults with permanent spinal cord injuries (Weissinger, Cald- well and Bandalos,1992; Caldwell and Weissinger, in press). Boredom during free time, it seems. may be a result of our ignorance about the potential for our leisure choices to importantly enhance our lives. This sounds simple, but the implications for leisure education are profound. It is possible that one of the most effe - tive things we could do to reduce boredom is to help people understand _at the things they choose to do in their free time can add meanie and r_ic'� i� to themes. Consider the fact that the U.S. pub- lic school system has made concerted efforts in the last three decades to provide career counseling to all stu- dents. These interventions are designed to help young people make wise choices about the eight hours a day they will spend at work. Career counselors have at their disposal a wide array of interest batteries, per- sonality tests and intervention tech- niques that allow them to increase stu dents awareness of the need to make