Boredom and Happiness on Freconomics Radio

According to scarce capacity theory, adding something more interesting to do should make the task even less engaging. In one manipulation, for instance, they thought they could make the peg turning task less boring by telling participants that there was an altruistic angle. This all makes george lowenstein wonder if his scarce capacity theory really does help explain boredom. It might, he told us, it's just that he and his colleagues haven't been able to prove it yet....