State boredom but not boredom proneness influences judgements of agency

Abstract

Recent work demonstrated that boredom prone individuals report diminished levels of agency. We examined the possibility that diminished agency was due to differences in judgements of agency external to the self. That is, do the boredom prone lack agency because they do not accurately perceive agency? We had three independent samples watch the classic Heider & Simmel (1944) animation in which geometric shapes are perceived to be agentic. Study 1 showed in two samples (n = 180 and 220) that trait boredom proneness failed to explain any variance in perceptual judgements of agency. Ratings of state boredom did, however, negatively predict judgements of agency. In a second study (n = 155), we replicated this effect between state boredom and agency. Next, we examined whether a disengaged attentional state, characteristic of state boredom, was responsible for this diminished perception of agency. Attentional performance fully mediated the relationship between state boredom and judgements of agency. These results suggest that the lack of agency among the highly boredom prone is unlikely to be due to deficiencies in perceiving agency. In contrast, the relation between state boredom and agency is at least in part due to diminished attention to the events being judged.