Money & society · 2025
Can having more power make it easier to escape a boring interaction?
This chapter argues that it can: people with more power may be better able to prevent, avoid, or cope with boring interactions than people in less powerful positions. This is a theoretical account of social interactions, not a finding tested in a described study sample.
Details
The chapter treats boredom as a social emotion shaped through interactions between people, rather than only as an individual's feeling. From this perspective, boredom can involve withdrawing attention and involvement from an interaction.
Its central argument about power is that people in higher social positions have more room to avoid or manage boring exchanges. The chapter also suggests that imposing boredom on people in subordinate positions may help maintain control by reducing their sense that they can act and encouraging passivity.
These are conceptual claims. The abstract provides no participant sample, measured comparison, or results establishing whether unequal power causes boredom or how widely this explanation applies.
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