Men study electric shocks against boredom

Many men prefer electric shocks rather than getting bored

07/04/2014

Many people do not like being alone with their thoughts. Especially men are bored quickly doing nothing, as US scientists recently found out. As part of their study, they showed that men would rather miss light electric shocks than do nothing at all.

Electric shocks when doing nothing becomes too uncomfortable
In times of smartphones, social media, and other multimedia achievements, people spend less and less time simply chasing their thoughts and doing nothing. Most people now find it uncomfortable to be alone with their thoughts. „In fact, many of the subjects, especially the men, decided to put on a mild electric shock instead of being excluded from external sensory stimuli“, The researchers report to Timothy Wilson from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in the journal „Science“ in terms of their study results.

As part of their study, a group of college students were asked to spend six to fifteen minutes in a drab room with nothing to do except hang on to their thoughts. Asked by researchers how they felt, participants reported having difficulty concentrating. Half of the students also said they did not enjoy this experience.

In another experiment, the scientists gave some subjects the opportunity to get a mild electric shock while doing nothing. Twelve out of 18 men found the situation so unpleasant that they were actually shocking. For the women, it was six out of 24.

„Most people seem to prefer to do something instead of doing nothing, even if that 'something' is negative“, so the conclusion of the researchers.