I found her via Peter McGraw's podcast episode with her (solid transcript in that link, although both of their voices are lovely so I give the audio a 10/10)....she studies boredom, interest, and why some thoughts are more engaging than others. ... Much of her research has been on the conditions under which people enjoy or do not enjoy their own thoughts. She has extended that work to the larger question of why people become bored, developing a new model of boredom that explains what boredom is, why we experience it, and what happens when we do. As part of this, she is investigating our desire for a life full of interesting, perspective-changing experiences - or a “psychologically rich” life.
This is her recent paper A Psychologically Rich Life: Beyond Happiness and Meaning (pdf) I've only skimmed it yet but it looks... well, rich.
A couple interesting bits from the interview:the abstract wrote:Psychological science has typically conceptualized a good life in terms of either hedonic or eudaimonic
well-being. We propose that psychological richness is another, neglected aspect of what people consider a
good life. Unlike happy or meaningful lives, psychologically rich lives are best characterized by a variety of
interesting and perspective-changing experiences. We present empirical evidence that happiness, meaning,
and psychological richness are related but distinct and desirable aspects of a good life, with unique causes
and correlates. In doing so, we show that a nontrivial number of people around the world report they would
choose a psychologically rich life at the expense of a happy or meaningful life, and that approximately a
third say that undoing their life’s biggest regret would have made their lives psychologically richer.
Furthermore, we propose that the predictors of a psychologically rich life are different from those of a happy
life or a meaningful life, and report evidence suggesting that people leading psychologically rich lives tend
to be more curious, think more holistically, and lean more politically liberal. Together, this work moves us
beyond the dichotomy of hedonic versus eudaimonic well-being, and lays the foundation for the study of
psychological richness as another dimension of a good life.
Let’s pause. You said that a happy life or a meaningful life may be a boring life. Let’s help people understand that.
It’s a somewhat provocative thing to say, but when you look at what, for instance, predicts happiness in life, it’s mostly stability. Those are things like having a core group of friends or family, having enough money, or having this stable, secure lifestyle, which is enjoyable but can also be repetitive or monotonous. The same thing goes for meaning that the kinds of things that facilitate a meaningful life being embedded in a community and having the same routines all the time. These are all things that are good for meaning and you want for meaning, but they’re also things that we know can lead to boredom.
I’m sure you’re familiar with this idea, especially in the natural sciences and biology of this trade-off between exploration and exploitation. It’s that if you find something good in life, essentially, you want to stick to it and make the best out of it because if you strike out for something new, there’s no guarantee there’s going to be something as good or better out there. You want to stick to what’s been rewarding in the past because you know that it will probably be enjoyable, rewarding, and meaningful in the future.
That’s what is often called this exploitation strategy, but the downside is that after a while, it turns into Groundhog Day and you start wondering about what else is out there. That’s this exploration phase that you can strike out and try something new. There’s a risk in that because it won’t be monotonous and it will be different. Hopefully, it will be psychologically rich, but it also has the potential to go terribly.