Boredom

 one of the questions that intrigued me

is the extent of human psychology what

happens when we experience our normal

emotions like anger and anxiety to the

extreme

but

specifically today we're gonna explore

boredom and why understanding it is

really important and to understand that

we need to understand monotony let's say

there's a snail minding his own business

you picked him up and you shake him the

snail would obviously withdraw into its

shell but what's interesting is that if

you were to shake it enough times it

would eventually fail to react even a

bird would be startled when perched on

top of a rustling branch but when they

experienced the same thing over and over

again they would eventually be immune to

it even rats when put in a maze would

find other ways to get to their food and

wouldn't rely on the same route every

single time and the behaviors of these

animals are no different from us this is

why during world war ii research was

done for the royal air force to figure

out why anti-submarine patrol radar

operators sometimes missed detecting

u-boats the reason why is because these

operators were frequently working alone

staring at the radar screen for hours on

end which the study found that their

efficiency started to decline within

half an hour as a result radar operators

duty were shortened but we're not just

gonna stop there we're going to see what

happens when we're cut off from all of

our senses when literally nothing is

happening in other words

the ultimate monotony

the experiment we'll be talking about

today is by psychologist hebb in 1951 at

mcgill university the subjects were male

college students paid 20 a day to

participate and all they had to do was

lay on a comfortable bed in a lighted

cubicle 24 hours a day for as long as

they cared to stay with timeout only for

meals and going to the toilet to inhibit

their senses they had to wear plastic

visors cotton gloves and cardboard cuffs

that extended beyond their fingertips

their pillow which is a u-shaped foam

rubber pillow doubles as the inhibitor

of their auditory perception add to this

is also a continuous hum of air

conditioning equipment which masked

small sounds they collected their data

simply by interviewing them after their

isolation so what happened when they

were in isolation at first the subjects

tended to think about their studies the

experiment about their personal problem

then they would reminisce about past

incidents their families and their

friends to pass the time some tried to

remember in detail the films they had

seen others thought about traveling from

one familiar place to another and would

try to imagine all the events of the

journey some counted numbers steadily

into the thousands but it was after this

is when things started to become scary

when they ran out of the mental capacity

to literally think after a certain point

the subjects would reach a state in

which it took too much effort to

concentrate and they became content to

let the mind drift as one subject put it

others said my mind just became full of

sounds and colors and i couldn't control

it i just ran out of things to think of

i couldn't think of anything to think

about several subjects experienced blank

periods when they did not seem to be

thinking at all

eventually many of them began to see

images one participant kept seeing a

vision of a rock under the shade of a

tree another couldn't seem to get rid of

pictures of

babies several participants appeared to

be dreaming when awake their

hallucinations would start very simple

in the beginning like seeing spots lines

or simple geometrical designs then the

vision became more complex with abstract

patterns repeated like a design on

wallpaper or recognizable figures such

as rows of little yellow men with black

caps on and their mouths open the

subjects were at first surprised and

amused by this and they actually looked

forward to seeing what was going to

happen and found that the pictures

alleviated their boredom but after a

while the pictures became disturbing

they became so vivid that they

interfered with their sleep they could

even scan the scene as if they were

looking at real pictures they cannot

control what they see so they kept

seeing the same picture no matter how

hard they tried to change them the

subjects complained that their eyes

became too tired from focusing on the

pictures since the experiment wasn't

focusing on only one but all of the

human senses their hallucinations

weren't confined to only seeing some

participants said they heard people

talking one man repeatedly heard a music

box playing and another saw the sun

rising over a church and heard a choir

singing in full stereophonic sound and

this is when things started to get

really spooky because some of them

reported that for several days after the

experiment they were afraid that they

were going to see ghosts

why because things kept on escalating

from seeing hearing and then to actually

feeling

they reported that they felt as if

another body were lying beside them in

one case their bodies overlapped partly

occupying the same space some reported

feelings of out-of-body experience where

my mind seemed to be a ball of cotton

wool floating above my body or something

seemed to be sucking my mind out through

my eyes after emerging from isolation

the participants reported that things

looked curved near things looked large

and far things looked small when

examining their brainwaves slow waves

which are normally present in sleep

started to appear when they are awake

after a period of isolation as for the

outward behavioral changes they were

restless they were desperate for

stimulation they tried to distract

themselves by whistling singing or

reciting poetry they even attempted to

make a conversation with the

experimenters

okay we've come to the end of this

experiment and the question that's left

that needs to be answered is what does

this all mean it means that the brain

ceases to function in adequate way and

abnormalities of behavior develop that a

change in the sensory environment seems

essential for human beings this is

especially important for people who work

at jobs that are monotonous and has the

potential to be life-threatening like

truck drivers after many hours on the

road they may begin to see apparitions

such as animals running across the road

that was

not actually there which frequently

caused accidents if you want to watch a

video that is far more terrifying than

just being bored and is related to our

capacity as a human being

then i suggest that you watch this video