Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T01:56:14.125Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

It's not a bug, it's boredom: Effortful willpower balances exploitation and exploration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2021

Maik Bieleke Open the ORCID record for Maik Bieleke [Opens in a new window]  and
Wanja Wolff Open the ORCID record for Wanja Wolff [Opens in a new window]
Maik Bieleke
Affiliation:
Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, A-1010Vienna, [email protected], https://bildung-psy.univie.ac.at/en/about-us/maik-bieleke/
Wanja Wolff
Affiliation:
Department of Sports Science, University of Konstanz, D-78457Konstanz, [email protected], https://scikon.uni-konstanz.de/persons/profile/wanja.wolff/ Department of Educational Psychology, University of Bern, CH-3012Bern, Switzerland.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The continuous revaluation of rewards lies at the core of Ainslie's account of willpower. Yet, he does not explicate the underlying experiential mechanisms. We draw upon theoretical, neuroscientific, and computational evidence to demonstrate that boredom evokes revaluation. By biasing behavior toward exploration, boredom necessitates effortful willpower to balance it against exploitation, thereby rendering suppression a highly adaptive function of willpower.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 44 , 2021 , e33
Check for updates
Creative Commons
The target article and response article are works of the U.S. Government and are not subject to copyright protection in the United States.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ainslie, G. (2013). Monotonous tasks require self-control because they interfere with endogenous reward. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(6), 679–680. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X13000915.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bench, S. W., & Lench, H. C. (2019). Boredom as a seeking state: Boredom prompts the pursuit of novel (even negative) experiences. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 19(2), 242–254. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000433.Google ScholarPubMed
Bieleke, M., Barton, L., & Wolff, W. (2020). Trajectories of boredom in self-control demanding tasks. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ekqrv.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bieleke, M., Keller, L., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2020). If-then planning. European Review of Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2020.1711627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Domenech, P., & Koechlin, E. (2015). Executive control and decision-making in the prefrontal cortex. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 1, 101–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2014.10.007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eastwood, J. D., Frischen, A., Fenske, M. J., & Smilek, D. (2012). The unengaged mind: Defining boredom in terms of attention. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(5), 482–495. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612456044.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Geana, A., Wilson, R., Daw, N., & Cohen, J. (2016). Boredom, information-seeking and exploration. In Papafragou, A., Grodner, D., Mirman, D. & Trueswell, J. C. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 38th annual conference of the cognitive science society (pp. 1751–1756). Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Gläscher, J., Hampton, A. N., & O'Doherty, J. P. (2009). Determining a role for ventromedial prefrontal cortex in encoding action-based value signals during reward-related decision making. Cerebral Cortex, 19(2), 483–495. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhn098.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gomez-Ramirez, J., & Costa, T. (2017). Boredom begets creativity: A solution to the exploitation–exploration trade-off in predictive coding. Biosystems, 162, 168–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2017.04.006.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hayden, B. Y. (2019). Why has evolution not selected for perfect self-control? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 374(1766), 20180139. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2018.0139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mathiak, K. A., Klasen, M., Zvyagintsev, M., Weber, R., & Mathiak, K. (2013). Neural networks underlying affective states in a multimodal virtual environment: Contributions to boredom. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 820. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, C., & Christoff, K. (2018). Finding consistency in boredom by appreciating its instability. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(9), 744–747. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.07.001.Google ScholarPubMed
Milyavskaya, M., Inzlicht, M., Johnson, T., & Larson, M. J. (2019). Reward sensitivity following boredom and cognitive effort: A high-powered neurophysiological investigation. Neuropsychologia, 123, 159–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.03.033.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shenhav, A., Botvinick, M. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2013). The expected value of control: An integrative theory of anterior cingulate cortex function. Neuron, 79(2), 217–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2013.07.007.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shenhav, A., Musslick, S., Lieder, F., Kool, W., Griffiths, T. L., Cohen, J. D., & Botvinick, M. M. (2017). Toward a rational and mechanistic account of mental effort. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 40, 99–124. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-neuro-072116-031526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westgate, E. C., & Wilson, T. D. (2018). Boring thoughts and bored minds: The MAC model of boredom and cognitive engagement. Psychological Review, 125(5), 689–713. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000097.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, T. D., Reinhard, D. A., Westgate, E. C., Gilbert, D. T., Ellerbeck, N., Hahn, C., … Shaked, A. (2014). Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind. Science (New York, N.Y.), 345(6192), 75–77. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1250830.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wolff, W., & Martarelli, C. S. (2020). Bored into depletion? Toward a tentative integration of perceived self-control exertion and boredom as guiding signals for goal-directed behavior. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(5), 1272–1283. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620921394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar