Effects Of Boredom On Aggressive Behavior Among College Students And The Mediating Effect Of Self-control

Boredom is a negative emotion widely existed among university students.Students tend to exhibit a lack of motivation towards their study and campus life,many of them get used to skipping classes or get obsessed with internet and video games,some even demonstrate aggressive behaviors.Previous studies on aggressive behaviors mostly relies on questionnaire and focused on the trait boredom and explicit aggression.Very few studies focused on the trait boredom on implicit aggression,and the impact of the state boredom on implicit and explicit aggression.Therefore,based on the previous researches,this study,applying experimental methods,digs into the impact of trait boredom and state boredom on implicit aggression and explicit aggression,and the mechanism of state boredom’s impact on explicit aggressive behaviors.Study 1 demonstrates two experiments to measure trait boredom and state boredom impact on implicit aggression and explicit aggression.Experiment 1a has a2（trait boredom: high vs low）x 2（state boredom: high vs low）between-subjects design and utilized competitive reaction time task to measure the implicit aggressive behaviors of subjects.The experiment shows that state boredom has significant impact on explicit aggressive behavior while trait boredom doesn’t have significant impact on explicit aggressive behavior,and there is no significant interaction between trait boredom and state boredom.Experiment 1b has a 2（trait boredom: high vs low）x 2（state boredom: high vs low）between-subjects design and utilized implicit word stem completion test to measure the implicit aggression level of subjects.The experiment shows that either state boredom or trait boredom has no significant impact on implicit aggressive behavior,and there is no significant interaction between trait boredom and state boredom.Study 2 applies a single factor between-subjects experiment design to explore the mechanism of how state boredom influencing explicit aggressive behavior.The results show that state boredom,self-control,and explicit aggressive behavior have significant correlation between each pairs,and that self-control has mediating effect on state boredom and explicit aggressive behavior.In summary,this study draws following conclusions based on experiment results stated above: high state boredom individuals show higher level of explicit aggressive behavior than low state boredom individuals;high or low level of state boredom has no significant difference in affecting implicit aggressive behavior;high or low level of trait boredom has no significant difference in affecting either implicit or explicit aggressive behavior;state boredom,self-control,and explicit aggressive behavior have significant correlation between each pairs,and self-control has mediating effect on state boredom and explicit aggressive behavior.