Bored to stay bored: state boredom increases social comparison

This research aimed to examine a theoretical model that state boredom leads to a motivation to seek meaningfulness, which promotes the engagement of social comparison. We conducted six studies to test our hypothesis. Study 1a, Study 1b, and Study 2 found that state boredom increased social comparison preference. Study 3 promoted ecological validity by adopting actual social comparison information-seeking behavior. Meanwhile, an alternative explanation that state boredom increased information preference regardless of content was ruled out. Study 4 verified motivation to seek meaningfulness as the psychological mechanism underlying the effect and found that people with different self-construals differed in the amount of increase in the sense of meaningfulness obtained from social comparison. Study 5 adopted a moderation-of-process design to further verify the mediating role of motivation to seek meaningfulness. In conclusion, our findings reveal the impact of state boredom on social comparison and its underlying mechanisms, which contributes to the further understanding of state boredom.