Although many of us are likely trying our best to be interesting, boring people are seemingly everywhere. Maybe it's the person who never finishes a story properly, or someone who just can't stop filling you in on their bird-watching 'adventures'.
A new paper has investigated what makes people appear boring, and how this impacts our perceptions in relation to boring people. To do this, researchers asked over 500 people in five different studies to rank the most stereotypically boring characteristics, hobbies, and jobs.
When asked about the characteristics of stereotypical bores, people nominated attributes like having no interests, no sense of humor, being unopinionated, or a bit of a complainer."The more typical the features of stereotypical boringness described a person, the more the person was perceived as boring,""Furthermore, and important for the social consequences of such perception, stereotypical boringness affected perceptions of interpersonal warmth and competence.
Even worse, in the last study, when asked how much they'd need to be financially compensated for spending time with a 'stereotypical bore' described in a vignette, participants nominated significant sums of money compared to vignettes of less boring people.