MAC Model of Boredom

What it is

Erin Westgate and Timothy Wilson describe boredom as a signal that attention is not engaged with an activity that matters to the person. In their model a task can be boring because attention cannot settle on it, through too little or too much stimulation, or because it does not feel meaningful, and either problem is enough on its own. Boredom then pushes people toward activities that are interesting, not only pleasant.

In effect

In the article on why we get bored, it explains why the same task can be boring for different reasons, and why fixing one cause may not fix the other.

What it does not say

It is a theoretical model with supporting studies. It does not say all boredom has the same remedy.

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