What is boredom?
In conventional usage, boredom, ennui, or tedium is an emotion characterized by uninterest in one's surrounding, often caused by a lack of distractions or occupations. Although, "There is no universally accepted definition of boredom. But whatever it is, researchers argue, it is not simply another name for depression or apathy. It seems to be a specific mental state that people find unpleasant—a lack of stimulation that leaves them craving relief, with a host of behavioral, medical and social consequences." According to BBC News, boredom "...can be a dangerous and disruptive state of mind that damages your health"; yet research "...suggest[s] that without boredom we couldn't achieve our creative feats."
In Experience Without Qualities: Boredom and Modernity, Elizabeth Goodstein traces the modern discourse on boredom through literary, philosophical, and sociological texts to find that as "a discursively articulated phenomenon...boredom is at once objective and subjective, emotion and intellectualization—not just a response to the modern world, but also a historically constituted strategy for coping with its discontents." In both conceptions, boredom has to do fundamentally with an experience of time—such as experiencing the slowness of time—and problems of meaning.
Boredom is a condition characterized by perception of one's environment as dull, tedious, and lacking in stimulation. This can result from leisure and a lack of aesthetic interests. Labor and art may be alienated and passive, or immersed in tedium. There is an inherent anxiety in boredom; people will expend considerable effort to prevent or remedy it, yet in many circumstances, it is accepted as suffering to be endured. Common passive ways to escape boredom are to sleep or to think creative thoughts (daydream). Typical active solutions consist in an intentional activity of some sort, often something new, as familiarity and repetition lead to the tedious.
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What is ignorance?
Ignorance is a lack of knowledge, information and understanding. Deliberate ignorance is a culturally-induced phenomenon, the study of which is called agnotology.
The word "ignorant" is an adjective that describes a person in the state of being unaware, or even cognitive dissonance and other cognitive relation, and can describe individuals who are unaware of important information or facts. Ignorance can appear in three different types: factual ignorance (absence of knowledge of some fact), object ignorance (unacquaintance with some object), and technical ignorance (absence of knowledge of how to do something).
Ignorance can have negative effects on individuals and societies, but can also benefit them by creating within them the desire to know more. For example, ignorance within science opens the opportunity to seek knowledge and make discoveries by asking new questions. Though this can only take place if the individual possesses a curious mind. Studies suggest that adults with an adequate education who perform enriching and challenging jobs are happier, and more in control of their environment. The confidence that adults obtain through the sense of control that education provides allows those adults to go for more leadership positions and seek for power throughout their lives.
In 1984, author Thomas Pynchon observed: We are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance. Ignorance is not just a blank space on a person's mental map. It has contours and coherence, and for all I know rules of operation as well. So as a corollary to writing about what we know, maybe we should add getting familiar with our ignorance, and the possibilities therein for ruining a good story.
Another effect of ignorance is characterized by the Dunning-Kruger effect, named after the scientists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. This theory centralizes the behavior of subjects regarding their intellectual capabilities and social behaviors. The limited information or competence of people who possess the Dunning-Kruger translates into a feeling of intellectual superiority.
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Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that functions both as a hormone and a neurotransmitter. It appears to play an important role in linking social interactions with feelings of pleasure. It plays a central role in parental bonding, friendships, and romantic interactions, as well as in sexuality. Oxytocin production also increases when performing caregiving tasks. Because oxytocin plays an important role in the attachment between caregiver and child, it is sometimes referred to as the “cuddle hormone.” While oxytocin strengthens altruism and bonding within one’s own group (ingroup), it can promote aggressive behavior toward other groups (outgroup), especially when those groups are perceived as threatening.
In its natural form, it also plays a role in maternal bonding and milk production. Production and secretion of oxytocin is controlled by a positive feedback mechanism, where its initial release stimulates production and release of further oxytocin. For example, when oxytocin is released during a contraction of the uterus at the start of childbirth, this stimulates production and release of more oxytocin and an increase in the intensity and frequency of contractions. This process compounds in intensity and frequency and continues until the triggering activity ceases. A similar process takes place during lactation and during sexual activity.
Sexual arousal increases oxytocin levels. During a female orgasm, large amounts of oxytocin are released, with higher levels released as the orgasm is experienced as more intense. The oxytocin that is released plays an important role in facilitating the transport of sperm cells through the vagina, with the aim of promoting conception. Semen itself also contains oxytocin.
At higher levels, there is greater resilience against stress and addiction, and the body returns to a state of calm more quickly. Anxiety is suppressed more easily.
What is curiosity?
Curiosity (from Latin cūriōsitās, from cūriōsus "careful, diligent, curious", akin to cura "care") is a quality related to inquisitive thinking, such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident in humans and other animals. Curiosity helps human development, from which derives the process of learning and desire to acquire knowledge and skill. The term curiosity can also denote the behavior, characteristic, or emotion of being curious, in regard to the desire to gain knowledge or information. Curiosity as a behavior and emotion is the driving force behind human development, such as progress in science, language, and industry.
Curiosity can be considered to be an evolutionary adaptation based on an organism's ability to learn. Certain curious animals (namely, corvids, octopuses, dolphins, elephants, rats, etc.) will pursue information in order to adapt to their surrounding and learn how things work. This behavior is termed neophilia, the love of new things. For animals, a fear of the unknown or the new, neophobia, is much more common, especially later in life.
Many species display curiosity including apes, cats, and rodents. It is common in human beings at all ages from infancy through adulthood. Research has shown that curiosity is not a fixed attribute amongst humans but rather can be nurtured and developed.
Early definitions of curiosity call it a motivated desire for information. This motivational desire has been said to stem from a passion or an appetite for knowledge, information, and understanding.
Traditional ideas of curiosity have expanded to consider the difference between perceptual curiosity, as the innate exploratory behavior that is present in all animals, and epistemic curiosity, as the desire for knowledge that is specifically attributed to humans.
Daniel Berlyne recognized three classes of variables playing a role in evoking curiosity: psychophysical variables, ecological variables, and collative variables. Psychophysical variables correspond to physical intensity, ecological variables to motivational significance and task relevance. Collative variables involve a comparison between different stimuli or features, which may be actually perceived or which may be recalled from memory. Berlyne mentioned four collative variables: novelty, complexity, uncertainty, and conflict (though he suggested that all collative variables probably involve conflict). Additionally, he considered three variables supplementary to novelty: change, surprisingness, and incongruity. Finally, curiosity may not only be aroused by the perception of some stimulus associated with the aforementioned variables ("specific exploration"), but also by a lack of stimulation, out of "boredom" ("diversive exploration").
