Relationship quality typically declines after the , and boredom is one candidate explanation. If that is right, then doing something new together should work better than doing something pleasant and familiar. Aron and colleagues tested it five ways, including three laboratory experiments where the activity lasted seven minutes.
A one, and quickly. In all three experiments, couples showed greater increases in experienced relationship quality from before to after a seven minute novel and arousing task than after a more mundane one. A no-activity control showed the gain came from the novel and arousing task itself, and the same effect appeared in ratings of videotaped discussions.
The proposal under test is that shared participation in novel and arousing activities affects experienced relationship quality. Aron, Norman, Aron, McKenna and Heyman came at it five separate ways, which is what makes the paper hard to dismiss: a newspaper questionnaire, a door-to-door survey, and three laboratory experiments.
The two field studies found the predicted correlations between reported shared exciting activities and relationship satisfaction, and found them mediated, as predicted, by . That establishes the pattern outside a laboratory but cannot show direction.
The experiments supply the direction. In all three, couples showed greater increases in experienced relationship quality from before to after participating together in a seven minute novel and arousing task than after a more mundane one. Comparison with a no-activity control showed the effect was due to the novel and arousing task. The same effect appeared on ratings of videotaped discussions recorded before and after.
Then the control nobody can skip in this area: all results remained after controlling for relationship . The authors place the findings against general questions of boredom and excitement in relationships, and against the typical early decline in relationship quality once the honeymoon period ends.
wat. Not a nicer evening. A stranger one. Seven minutes of it moved the needle, and doing nothing did not.
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Seven minutes of something strange shifted a measure of relationship quality. That makes boredom a mechanism with a lever on it rather than a mood to wait out.
How do we know?
Five studies: a newspaper questionnaire, a door-to-door survey, and three laboratory experiments in which couples completed either a novel and arousing task, a mundane task, or nothing, with relationship quality measured before and after.
What is still unknown
The experiments measure quality immediately before and after a brief task, so nothing here shows the gain persisting. The questionnaire and survey halves are correlational.
Learn something?
Where to next
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Would you shock yourself rather than sit and think?boredom
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