In search of boredom: beyond a functional account.

Boredom has been characterized as a crisis of meaning, a failure of attention, and a call to action. Yet as a self-regulatory signal writ-large, we are still left with the question of what makes any given boredom episode meaningless, disengaging, or a prompt to act. We propose that boredom is an affective signal that we have deviated from an optimal ('Goldilocks') zone of cognitive engagement.

Boredom in art.

In the light of recent findings on the nature of boredom, I argue that boredom is a potentially useful emotion in art reception and show how the Distancing-Embracing model can be applied to boredom.