Exploring the Relation between State and Trait Boredom and Various Measures of Creativity

Abstract

Popular sentiment suggests that boredom ought to lead to creativity despite a lack of research investigating the relationship explicitly. Across two experiments the relation between boredom and creativity was examined via a mood induction and surveys (Experiment 1) and behavioural tasks (Experiments 1 and 2). Results from Experiment 1 indicated that state boredom was in fact associated with poorer performance on the divergent thinking task and that trait boredom proneness was associated with both diminished belief in one’s creative potential and lower levels of engagement of everyday creative pursuits. Results from Experiment 2 again found no relation between state or trait boredom and creativity on a novel creativity task. Clearly, these findings indicate that neither state nor trait boredom promote increased creativity.

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