Boredom and Intelligence: Is Getting Bored Easily a Sign of a High IQ?
Boredom intelligence research finds no sign that getting bored easily means a high IQ: the link with ability is near zero, and boredom tracks low self-control.
Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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Getting bored easily is not a sign of high intelligence. In the largest direct test, a study of 2,849 German third graders, the link between general cognitive ability and classroom boredom was almost negligible once achievement and family background were controlled, while the tendency to get bored often correlates about -.5 with self-control and -.13 to -.23 with self-reported university grades.
There is a grain of truth behind the popular claim. Bright students can be bored by lessons that move too slowly for them, but that is a feature of the situation, and struggling students get bored too. This page covers what boredom intelligence research actually measures, why under-challenge and over-challenge both produce boredom, how boredom relates to attention and ADHD, and the confounds that keep the myth alive.
What the research actually shows
Psychologists separate two things. "State boredom" is the feeling in a given moment, such as during a dull lecture. "Boredom proneness" is a stable trait: how often and how intensely a person tends to feel bored across situations. Most "sign of intelligence" claims are really about the trait.
• Cognitive ability and classroom boredom: Golle and colleagues (2022) measured general cognitive ability and boredom in 2,849 third graders from 188 classrooms. The association between ability and boredom was almost negligible after controlling for achievement, gender, age and family background. Interest showed a clearer pattern: children with very low and very high interest in a subject both reported more boredom than children with average interest.
• Boredom proneness and self-control: Isacescu, Struk and Danckert (2017) surveyed 1,928 undergraduates. Self-control was a strong negative predictor of boredom proneness, and it accounted for most of the links between boredom and mind-wandering, depression and aggression. The study did not measure intelligence, so it cannot be used as evidence either way on IQ.
• Boredom proneness and grades: in 8,182 undergraduates across seven semesters, Mugon, Boylan and Danckert (2020) found that boredom proneness correlated between -.46 and -.53 with self-control and between -.13 and -.23 with self-reported grade point average in six of the seven terms. Boredom proneness predicted lower grades even after self-control was accounted for.
• Boredom and achievement in general: a meta-analysis of 66 samples with 28,410 students found an average correlation of -.25 between boredom in learning and academic performance (Camacho-Morles et al., 2021).
None of these findings show that people who are bored more often are smarter. Grades are not IQ scores, so the student studies are indirect evidence, but none of them point toward boredom as a marker of high ability. The fair summary is that trait boredom has little to do with reasoning ability and a lot to do with self-regulation.
Why bright students do get bored
The popular claim survives because there is a real situation behind it. A student who has already mastered material, or who learns it quickly, can find repetition tedious.
Westgate and Wilson's (2018) "MAC model" helps explain why. It describes boredom as a signal that attention is not engaging with an activity a person values. Attention can fail in two directions: an activity can demand too little of a person's mental resources or too much. A lesson pitched badly for the individual produces boredom either way.
• Under-challenge and over-challenge: Schwartze and colleagues (2024) studied 1,407 German secondary students in mathematics. Of the four groups they identified, two reported high boredom. One group (21% of students) combined high boredom with high test scores, which fits under-challenge. The other (13%) combined high boredom with low scores, which fits being overwhelmed.
• Gifted students' own reports: Gallagher, Harradine and Coleman (1997) asked 871 academically gifted students in North Carolina about their classes. Most felt challenged in gifted and mathematics classes, but only about half said the same of science, language arts and social studies. The complaints were slow pace and repetition of material they had already mastered.
• A test of the gifted-boredom hypothesis: Preckel, Götz and Frenzel (2010) compared 186 Austrian ninth graders in gifted and regular classes. They found no evidence that gifted students in regular classes were more bored, though students in the two settings gave different reasons for their boredom.
So under-challenge can make able students bored, and the effect depends on how well teaching fits each student. Our article on child giftedness covers how schools identify and serve students working well above grade level.
Boredom, attention and ADHD
Boredom proneness overlaps heavily with attention problems. Malkovsky and colleagues (2012) found that highly boredom-prone people performed worse on sustained-attention tasks and reported more symptoms of adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and depression. They also distinguished two styles: an apathetic boredom, linked with attention lapses, and an agitated boredom, in which people seek engagement but fail to find it satisfying, linked with more ADHD symptoms.
This matters for the intelligence question because ADHD and high ability can occur together, and a bright child who is restless and bored may have either, both or neither. Our page on IQ and ADHD explains how the two are assessed. If boredom is constant, interferes with school or work, or comes with low mood, a family doctor or psychologist is the right person to assess what is going on.
Where the myth comes from, and what confounds it
Several things make "bored easily, so must be smart" feel more plausible than the evidence allows.
• Selective memory of gifted cases: stories of bright children bored at school are vivid and real. The children who are bored because work is too hard are less often described that way, although Schwartze and colleagues found them to be a sizable group.
• Mixing up boredom and curiosity: a curious person may lose interest in a topic quickly and move on to the next one. Restlessness and curiosity are different traits, and our article on IQ and curiosity covers how curiosity relates to intelligence.
• Self-report: boredom is almost always measured by asking people, so results depend partly on how willing someone is to describe themselves as bored.
• Achievement as the hidden variable: in Golle's study the raw link between ability and boredom shrank to almost nothing once achievement was controlled. Pekrun and colleagues (2010) found that students' sense of control over a subject and the value they placed on it predicted lower boredom, which may explain why ability adds little once achievement is known.
• Negative feelings travel together: in the paper that introduced the Boredom Proneness Scale, Farmer and Sundberg (1986) found that boredom proneness went with more depression, hopelessness and loneliness. That cluster is a poor fit for the idea of boredom as a mark of a superior mind.
Frequently asked questions
Is getting bored easily a sign of intelligence?
No. Studies that measure cognitive ability directly find almost no link with boredom once achievement is controlled, and boredom proneness goes with lower self-control and slightly lower grades.
Is boredom a sign of low intelligence?
No. The link with ability is close to zero in both directions. Boredom reflects how well an activity fits a person's skills and interests, and very able and struggling students can both be bored.
Why are gifted children often bored in school?
When lessons repeat material a child has already mastered, under-challenge can produce boredom. Surveys of gifted students point to slow pace and repetition, though one controlled comparison found gifted students in regular classes were no more bored than those in gifted classes.
Is boredom linked to ADHD?
Yes. Highly boredom-prone people show weaker sustained attention and report more ADHD symptoms, and the two are worth assessing separately in a bored, restless child.
Do smart people get bored less often?
There is no good evidence either way from direct IQ studies. People with better self-control tend to report less boredom, which is a different trait from intelligence.
The takeaway
The boredom intelligence link is close to zero. Trait boredom is better predicted by low self-control and by a poor fit between a task and a person's skills or interests, and it tends to go with slightly worse academic results. Bright students can be bored by lessons that move too slowly, but students who are overwhelmed are bored too, and neither kind of boredom reveals someone's IQ. If you want a measure of your reasoning ability that does not depend on how you feel in class, an online IQ test built by psychometricians gives you a standardised score to work from.
References
1. Golle, J., Flaig, M., Jaggy, A.-K., & Göllner, R. (2022). Who's bored in school? Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 25(5), 1125-1149. [doi.org/10.1007/s11618-022-01132-w](. doi.org
2. Isacescu, J., Struk, A. A., & Danckert, J. (2017). Cognitive and affective predictors of boredom proneness. Cognition and Emotion, 31(8), 1741-1748. [doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2016.1259995](. doi.org
3. Mugon, J., Boylan, J., & Danckert, J. (2020). Boredom proneness and self-control as unique risk factors in achievement settings. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(23), 9116. [doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17239116](. doi.org
4. Camacho-Morles, J., Slemp, G. R., Pekrun, R., Loderer, K., Hou, H., & Oades, L. G. (2021). Activity achievement emotions and academic performance: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 33(3), 1051-1095. [doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09585-3](. doi.org
5. Westgate, E. C., & Wilson, T. D. (2018). Boring thoughts and bored minds: The MAC model of boredom and cognitive engagement. Psychological Review, 125(5), 689-713. [doi.org/10.1037/rev0000097](. doi.org
6. Schwartze, M. M., Frenzel, A. C., Goetz, T., Lohbeck, A., Bednorz, D., Kleine, M., & Pekrun, R. (2024). Boredom due to being over- or under-challenged in mathematics: A latent profile analysis. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(3), 947-958. [doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12695](. doi.org
7. Gallagher, J., Harradine, C. C., & Coleman, M. R. (1997). Challenge or boredom? Gifted students' views on their schooling. Roeper Review, 19(3), 132-136. [doi.org/10.1080/02783199709553808](. doi.org
8. Preckel, F., Götz, T., & Frenzel, A. (2010). Ability grouping of gifted students: Effects on academic self-concept and boredom. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(3), 451-472. [doi.org/10.1348/000709909X480716](. doi.org
9. Malkovsky, E., Merrifield, C., Goldberg, Y., & Danckert, J. (2012). Exploring the relationship between boredom and sustained attention. Experimental Brain Research, 221(1), 59-67. [doi.org/10.1007/s00221-012-3147-z](. doi.org
10. Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Daniels, L. M., Stupnisky, R. H., & Perry, R. P. (2010). Boredom in achievement settings: Exploring control-value antecedents and performance outcomes of a neglected emotion. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(3), 531-549. [doi.org/10.1037/a0019243](. doi.org
11. Farmer, R., & Sundberg, N. D. (1986). Boredom proneness: The development and correlates of a new scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 50(1), 4-17. [doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa5001_2](. doi.org
Hero image: Grey cat yawning, by Asique Alam, CC0. Via Wikimedia Commons.
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