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Published on: September 28, 2018
Spiritual boredom is associated with over- and underchallenge, lack of value, and reduced motivation
Thomas Goetz1, Jonathan Fries2, Lisa Stempfer2
1Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. thomas.goetz@univie.ac.at.
Abstract:
The emotion of boredom has attracted considerable research interest. However, boredom experienced in spiritual contexts (i.e., spiritual boredom) has rarely been investigated. Based on control-value theory (CVT), we investigated the occurrence, antecedents, and motivational effects of spiritual boredom in five different spiritual contexts: yoga, meditation, silence retreats, Catholic sermons, and pilgrimage. For each context, we conducted two independent studies, one including trait and another including state measures. The set of 10 studies included a total sample of N = 1267 adults. We complemented individual study results with an internal meta-analysis. The results showed a mean level of spiritual boredom of = 1.91 on a scale of 1 to 5. In line with CVT, spiritual boredom was positively related to being overchallenged ( = 0.44) in 9 out of the 10 studies and positively related to being underchallenged ( = 0.44) in all studies. Furthermore, as expected, spiritual boredom was negatively related to perceived value in all studies ( = -0.54). Finally, boredom was negatively related to motivation to engage in spiritual practice ( = -0.46) across studies. Directions for future research and practical implications are discussed.
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