Momentary anxiety, enjoyment, and boredom are strongly coupled within persons, including an unexpected positive enjoyment–boredom coupling¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q2 · i2 medium
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2031: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q2 i2 Higher-than-usual anxiety coincided with lower enjoyment (rwithin ≈ −0.41) and lower boredom (rwithin ≈ −0.28), while higher enjoyment coincided with higher boredom (rwithin ≈ +0.61). → Wang 2026

Evidence¶

Wang 2026¶

Wang, P., Ganushchak, L., Welie, C., & van Steensel, R. (2026). Learning proximal cyclic sighing buffers anxiety across learning moments and boredom across days. npj Science of Learning. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-026-00446-2

q2 · i2 · causal · r2

Multivariate multilevel model of pooled EMA data (n = 84) controlling for time-of-day and contextual factors, extracting within-person residual correlations among the three emotions. The printed within-person effect sizes are rwithin ≈ −0.41 (anxiety–enjoyment), rwithin ≈ −0.28 (anxiety–boredom), and rwithin ≈ +0.61 (enjoyment–boredom), the last described as unexpected; the article calls the emotions "an interdependent system".

"higher-than-usual anxiety coincided with lower enjoyment (rwithin ≈ −0.41) and lower boredom (rwithin ≈ −0.28). Somewhat unexpectedly, higher-than-usual enjoyment coincided with higher boredom (rwithin ≈ +0.61)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• During breathwork, heart-rate coupling to anxiety and enjoyment weakened, and this altered affect–physiology coupling persisted into the post-intervention phase — related
• Within-domain emotion structure only partially matches the valence–activation model: anger relates more strongly to boredom than to anxiety, and enjoyment–boredom and anger–boredom correlations are conspicuously strong — reports the opposite