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In this comment, Chair of Sport Psychology member Wanja Wolff collaborated with Corinna Martarelli (Swiss Distance University Institute) to caution against neglecting the role of boredom and self-control amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Since self-control demands and boredom can both be high in this situation, they argue that adhering to the social distancing guidelines might be particularly challenging to people with high boredom proneness and low self-control, which might in turn lead to non-compliance with social distancing guidelines. The full abstract of the paper can be found below:

“Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by coronavirus (SARS-nCoV2) is currently spreading across the world. In response, different sets of pandemic containment measures have been employed by several countries. The effectiveness of non-pharmacological measures such as home confinement hinges on adherence by the population. While adherence to these social distancing measures appears to be high in general, adherence might be more challenging for some individuals and complying with these measures might become more difficult the longer they last. Here, we suggest that boredom and self-control are two important psychological concepts for understanding the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic containment measures pose to individuals. To maximize adherence to these measures, we propose to consider the specific and combined effects of boredom and self-control demands elicited by this situation on subsequent behavior.”

This contribution highlights how boredom and self-control are likely to jointly affect public health behavior, thereby reiterating the call for more research that analyzes the interdependencies of boredom and self-control in the public health context.

The paper can be accessed here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0512-6  

The bibliographic information of the paper: Martarelli, C., & Wolff, W. (2020). Too bored to bother? Boredom as a potential threat to the efficacy of pandemic containment measures. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 7(28). doi: 10.1057/s41599-020-0512-6