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Introduction
Boredom might sound like just a passing annoyance, but research shows it can have serious ripple effects—linking to depression, anxiety, self-harm, car accidents, lower grades, and job dissatisfaction.
Psychologists talk about two types of boredom:
- Trait boredom: a person’s general tendency to get bored more easily.
- State boredom: the temporary experience of boredom in a situation.
This study focused on trait boredom—how prone someone is to feeling bored in daily life.
One major theory (the Cognitive Theory of Boredom) suggests that boredom comes from an attention problem: you want to engage, but your brain won’t stay locked onto the task. Imagine trying to read a chapter and realizing you’ve reread the same paragraph five times. Instead of thinking, my attention won’t stick today, it often feels like this book is so boring.
Attention control (steering focus and resisting distractions) and working memory (holding and working with information in the moment) are two mental skills that keep us engaged. They’re also areas where ADHD brains tend to work differently. That’s why the researchers asked: could these differences explain why ADHD and boredom often go hand in hand?
Methods
Participants
The study included 88 college students (average age about 19; most were women). They were divided into two groups:
- ADHD traits group (31 students): These participants showed enough current and childhood ADHD symptoms on screening tools to suggest consistent ADHD traits. Some already had an ADHD diagnosis or used ADHD medication.
- Control group (57 students): These students scored low on ADHD measures and had no diagnosis or ADHD medication history.
Measures
Everyone completed:
- Questionnaires: measuring ADHD symptoms (past and present) and proneness to boredom.
- Computer tasks: six total, split evenly between attention control tasks (like identifying target arrows among distractors, or staying focused during long wait times) and working memory tasks (remembering letters, arrows, or shapes while solving problems).
The tasks weren’t about “right answers” so much as about measuring how the brain balances focus, distraction, and memory under pressure.
Procedure
All measures were completed in a single two-hour lab session. Researchers alternated between computerized tasks and self-report surveys to prevent fatigue.
Results
Group Differences
- Students with ADHD traits scored much higher on boredom proneness than those without ADHD. This was not a small difference—it was very large.
- They also showed lower performance on both attention control and working memory tasks overall, though not every individual test showed a gap.
Correlations
- Higher boredom proneness went along with more ADHD symptoms.
- More boredom was linked with weaker attention control and weaker working memory.
- Certain tasks stood out: sustained attention tasks (long, slow, waiting tasks) and visuospatial memory tasks (holding visual information in mind) were especially tied to boredom.
Mediation Analyses
When the researchers tested whether attention control and working memory explained some of the ADHD–boredom link:
- Attention control explained about 5.8% of the connection.
- Working memory explained about 6.4%.
Both mattered, but neither explained the whole story.
Discussion
This study supports an association between ADHD traits, boredom proneness, attention control, and working memory. It does not show that attention control or working memory is the reason people with ADHD become bored. In the mediation analyses, attention control explained about 5.8% and working memory about 6.4% of the ADHD–boredom relationship, leaving most of the association unexplained.
The Cognitive Theory of Boredom offers one possible framework: difficulty sustaining attention to an activity may contribute to boredom. The authors also discuss default-mode-network research as a possible broader mechanism. Those brain-network ideas were not directly tested in this study and should be treated as contextual theory rather than a finding from these 88 participants.
Limitations
- The study had a small, mostly female college student sample. Results may not apply to all ages or genders.
- ADHD was screened through questionnaires rather than full clinical interviews.
- Smaller effects might have been missed because of the limited sample size.
Practical interpretation
This study did not test interventions, so practical strategies should not be presented as outcomes of the experiment. A more defensible use of the findings is to treat boredom as information worth exploring rather than as a character judgment.
Possible questions include:
- Is sustained attention especially difficult in this task?
- Is working memory overloaded?
- Is the activity repetitive, unclear, too complex, or low in feedback?
- Would a shorter work period, clearer steps, added meaning, movement, company, or a break improve access?
Those are hypotheses to test, not prescriptions derived from this one study. Newer research also suggests boredom in ADHD is unlikely to have a single explanation.
Key Takeaways
- The elevated-ADHD-trait group reported more boredom proneness in this sample. The study used symptom screening rather than a clinically diagnosed ADHD group for all participants.
- Attention control and working memory explained only a small portion of the association. They are relevant candidates, not a complete mechanism.
- Boredom should not be reduced to laziness or lack of caring. It is a state that can be shaped by the task, the environment, attention, memory, motivation, meaning, and other factors.
- The study did not test boredom interventions. Practical supports should be individualized and evaluated rather than treated as proven by this experiment.
For the current synthesis of ADHD and boredom research, including the 2025 Seiler information-processing study and the 2026 meta-analytic review:
No access
Reference
Orban, S. A., Blessing, J. S., Sandone, M. K., Conness, B., & Santer, J. (2025). Why are individuals with ADHD more prone to boredom? Examining attention control and working memory as mediators of boredom in young adults with ADHD traits. Journal of Attention Disorders. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/10870547251356723