Academics and boredom proneness

Pages: 213-216
Komila Parthi and Radhika Gupta (Department of Psychology, Punjab University, Chandigarh )

Boredom has been defined as ”a state of weariness or ennui resulting from a lack of engagement with stimuli in the environment” (Vanden-Bos, 2007). Research suggests that students bring a variety of positive and negative emotions to classroom such as pride, enjoyment, anxiety, anger and boredom (Goetz, Frenzel, Hall, & Pekrun, 2007). These emotions interplay with the students emotions to impact their attention and performance. Despite being so important, studies in this field lack in exclusively focusing on academic domains (Goetz, Ludtke, Nett, Keller, & Lipnevich, 2013). In light of this, the present study aims to investigate boredom proneness, academic boredom, and mood awareness across Arts and Commerce students. For this purpose, 120 students were randomly selected from various departments of DAV college, Chandigarh. Of the 120 students, 60 students were from Arts department and 60 were from Commerce department. The data were collected with a set of questionnaires composed of a demographic form and three research instruments: Boredom Proneness Scale (Farmer & Sundberg, 1986); Academic Boredom Scale (Acee et al., 2010); and Mood Awareness Scale (Swinkels et al., 1995). The results indicate significant differences between Commerce and Arts students for boredom proneness, academic boredom and mood labelling. Similarly, significant correlations were observed among the variables under study. Future research suggestions and implications have been discussed.