New research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology has found a link between boredom and political extremism. According to the study, boredom puts people on edge: It makes them seek engagements that are challenging, exciting, and that offer a sense of purpose. Political ideologies can aid this existential quest. The researchers’ previous study found that boring activities can trigger a sense of meaninglessness in people, along with a corresponding desire to “reinject meaningfulness in their lives.” Boredom motivates people to alter their situation and fosters the engagement in activities that seem more meaningful than those currently at hand, according to researchers. Their research suggests that adopting a more extreme political ideology is one way that people reinject meaningfulness into a boring situation. The study’s findings were based on one experiment and two scientific surveys. http://www.psypost.org/2016/06/study-finds-boredom-leads-political-extremism-43583 Paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2205/abstract
OTOH, many people as they age can eventually abut some shade of political extremism or approach being construed as belonging to an immoderate stripe by just remaining "boring" or conformist to the original era or standards they grew up in. That is, one can either inch relation-wise toward an edge of the ideo-social spectrum by staying put (as the changing tectonic plate of the majority grinds / moves by); or actively, deliberately seek whatever options are currently in vogue extremist-wise as the article suggests. The "mainstream" is usually going to be slowly mobile itself in terms of its values / norms (and not necessarily always in the direction of progressively experimenting upon the population with new trends -- there can be retro impulses back to what's historically "tried and known" in terms of effects). So the bored individual on an "existential quest" is just straying from a herd that's already in mutable motion, trying to get to the dystopian hell of a particular obsession a lot sooner than the rest. Whereas Aunt Jem and Uncle Hugh are becoming un-hip or despised radicals in their own way by watching the overall parade march by in their rocking chairs on the front porch.
