Boredom, Technology, and Attention: Individual Differences in Human-in-Loop Systems

Despite being nearly universal, boredom has only recently emerged as a serious topic within human factors psychology, especially in the context of human-in-the-loop (HiL) systems. Once dismissed as trivial, boredom is now recognized as a dynamic emotion marked by disengagement, with real consequences for human performance while monitoring systems in air travel; nuclear power; and healthcare. This study explores the onset of boredom by examining undergraduate participants engaged in boredom inducing natural activities. Participants reported their boredom and typically sought relief through smartphones, mirroring everyday coping behaviors. Results showed a wide variation in boredom onset times, with some participants reporting boredom within 1 minute and others within 17 minutes. Participants’ own metacognitive estimates of boredom proved more reliable than standard boredom measures. Neither trait nor state self-report scales consistently predicted how quickly someone would become bored in real-world situations. This challenges the validity of traditional boredom assessments and highlights the complexity of individual boredom profiles. The findings underline that as automation reduces workload and vigilance demands in critical HiL fields, understanding and measuring boredom becomes increasingly important for preventing error and designing safer systems. Metacognitive assessment may be a pragmatic tool for identifying boredom-prone individuals in applied settings, pending development of more robust objective measures.