New research reveals which professions and hobbies are perceived as boring, yielding some new – and anything but boring – insights.

These insights can be found in the magazine Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and based on five experiments in which a total of more than 500 people participated (online). For example, these subjects were presented with information about an imaginary person (such as: ‘A person is described as having little imagination and creativity’) and were then asked to indicate on a scale of 1 to 7 how boring they found this person based on the description. . In addition, based on those descriptions, they also had to indicate how competent and warm the described persons seemed and to what extent they were willing to associate with those persons. “We investigated which professions, hobbies, or other traits are perceived as stereotypically boring, and how people react to those kinds of professions, hobbies, or traits,” said researcher Wijnand van Tilburg, who is affiliated with the study. University of Essex at Scientias.nl from.

Boring professions and hobbies

The research thus provides insight into what people see as stereotypically boring professions. Data processing is clearly number one, followed by accountancy. But a job at the tax office or an insurance office is usually seen as boring, just like cleaning work and banking. “Stereotypical boring hobbies and interests include birdwatching, sleeping for a long time, religion, and watching television,” says Van Tilburg. “Furthermore, people think that stereotypically boring people talk too much or too little, and actually have nothing to say.” The research also shows that people have the idea that boring people prefer to avoid the big cities and are usually found in smaller towns and villages.

incompetent

“People who were described as having stereotypically boring professions, hobbies or other traits were seen as unpleasant to deal with and incompetent,” Van Tilburg continues. And the latter in particular surprised the researchers a bit. “Because stereotypes of groups that are not seen as social are usually characterized as competent. We ourselves had expected that stereotypically boring individuals (eg accountants) would be seen as competent, but that turns out not to be the case. So far there doesn’t seem to be any benefit to being perceived as stereotypically boring.”

The survey also reveals which occupations are considered particularly exciting. At one: performing arts, followed by science, journalism, health care and education. The fact that science appears in this list has, incidentally, surprised Van Tilburg a bit. “Working with data and mathematics are seen as stereotypically boring. But on the other hand, scientists are not seen as stereotypically boring, while that group works a lot with data and mathematics.”

The research Not only does it provide greater insight into which professions, hobbies, or other traits are perceived as stereotypically boring (or very exciting), but also reveals how people respond to others with stereotypically boring professions, hobbies, or traits. And that’s not so pretty. “We discovered that people preferred to avoid these stereotypical individuals,” says Van Tilburg. And that goes quite far, according to one of the experiments. In that experiment, some of the subjects were asked to what extent they wanted to be compensated for interacting with various imaginary persons described in detail by the researchers. And the more boring the persons described were, the higher the compensation that the subjects considered fair. For example, for dealing with stereotypically boring people, the subjects thought a minimum allowance of 35 British pounds (about 42 euros) per day was very reasonable. It shows, the researchers write in their study, “that keeping a stereotypically boring person company is psychologically precious.” Now it is usually the case that one of course does not get paid to associate with others. And that’s why people quickly choose to avoid others who are boring in their eyes. “That’s a bit of a shame,” says Van Tilburg. “Because that means those with stereotyped boring traits are going to have a hard time changing the stereotype.”

Effects

The research therefore suggests that people with stereotyped boring characteristics can experience this for quite a long time. “The fact that people choose to avoid them can lead to social exclusion and more loneliness, which can then have a very negative impact on the lives (of people with stereotypical boring characteristics, ed.).” The fact that people with stereotypically boring qualities are also seen as cold and incompetent, of course, doesn’t help either. And as I said, changing that stigma is difficult when others avoid you because of that stigma.

There is hope

For the accountant who likes to sleep in before going birdwatching, things don’t look exactly rosy. But Van Tilburg does have a tip. “Do not give up. There are bound to be traits or interests that these people have that are seen as less boring or not boring at all.” Displaying it can help. In addition, there are undoubtedly people who have very different ideas about what is stereotypically boring. “Our research shows what is considered stereotypically boring, but these are, of course, averages. I’m sure there are people who see specific stereotypical boring traits as not boring at all.” In addition, it is important to emphasize that only British and American subjects participated in the study. Whether other cultures share the same ideas about what constitutes boring professions, hobbies, and traits remains to be seen. In addition, it is not inconceivable that the stereotypes are subject to the ravages of time and therefore – prompted for example by social and technological changes – gradually change. As an example, the researchers cite work in IT – which is now seen as mediocrely boring, but with both coding and gaming becoming more mainstream, could easily be seen as a lot more exciting in a few years.

Future research should show under which circumstances stereotypes about dullness play a role. In addition, the findings can also be used to gain more insight into social groups, says Van Tilburg. “We know from previous research that boredom has an important psychological function: it makes us think about what we are doing and gives us an incentive to try other things. Knowing who is perceived as stereotypically boring means we can better understand and predict how social groups will change, and how people will shape their social circle.”