Whatever will bore, will bore: The mere anticipation of boredom exacerbates its occurrence in lectures

Academic boredom is ubiquitous, and it leads to a range of adverse learning outcomes. Given that students often make estimates of how boring lectures are, does anticipating a lecture to be boring shape their actual experience of boredom?

The current research investigated whether anticipated boredom intensifies subsequent boredom felt in lectures.

We recruited undergraduate students to participate in three studies.

Study 1 (N = 121) and study 2 (N = 130) were conducted in natural university lecture environments. We found that students who anticipated a lecture to bore them more subsequently felt more bored by it. In study 3 (N = 92), we experimentally manipulated anticipated boredom before participants watched a lecture video. We found that those who were led to anticipate higher levels of boredom felt more bored by the video.

Results converged to indicate that the mere expectation that a lecture will be boring may be sufficient to exacerbate its subsequent occurrence. We discuss these findings in the contexts of affective forecasting and education.