Kim Garam, Choi Eunsoo
Center for Digital Humanities & Computational Social Sciences Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea.
School of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea.
Evol Psychol. 2025 Jan-Mar;23(1):14747049241310772. doi: 10.1177/14747049241310772.
Life history theory suggests that in harsh, unpredictable environments, individuals may benefit from adopting a fast life history strategy. This may involve experiencing boredom more frequently and intensely as an adaptive mechanism to seek novel stimuli, potentially increasing the number of sexual partners and offspring. This study explored the relationship between trait boredom-a chronic characteristic of feeling bored-and fast life history strategies. Our findings confirmed a positive association between boredom proneness and fast life history strategies at both individual and country levels. In Study 1, fast life history strategy was positively correlated with boredom proneness and mediated the relationship between perceived childhood support/resources and boredom proneness. In Study 2, we conducted a multi-level analysis using secondary data from 15 countries. The results showed that countries with higher boredom proneness scores showed more indicators of faster life history strategies. These results suggest that trait boredom may be a functional characteristic of fast life history strategists. This study is the first empirical investigation of trait boredom within a life history framework, highlighting trait boredom's functional role from evolutionary and ecological perspectives.
生活史理论表明，在恶劣、不可预测的环境中，个体可能会从采用快速生活史策略中受益。这可能包括更频繁、更强烈地体验无聊，作为一种寻求新刺激的适应性机制，这可能会增加性伴侣和后代的数量。本研究探讨了特质无聊（一种感到无聊的慢性特征）与快速生活史策略之间的关系。我们的研究结果证实了在个体和国家层面上，无聊倾向与快速生活史策略之间存在正相关。在研究1中，快速生活史策略与无聊倾向呈正相关，并介导了感知到的童年支持/资源与无聊倾向之间的关系。在研究2中，我们使用来自15个国家的二手数据进行了多层次分析。结果表明，无聊倾向得分较高的国家表现出更多快速生活史策略的指标。这些结果表明，特质无聊可能是快速生活史策略者的一个功能性特征。本研究是在生活史框架内对特质无聊进行的首次实证研究，从进化和生态角度突出了特质无聊的功能性作用。
