Boredom and rule breaking during COVID-19

State boredom presents a conundrum: When bored, we want to engage with something, but we don’t want whatever is currently available. This is exacerbated when external factors impose restrictions on what we can engage in, which is precisely the scenario we are currently facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. We surveyed 924 participants to examine the relation between boredom proneness and responses to social isolation. We provide novel evidence that highly boredom prone people have been more likely to break the rules of social isolation (e.g., fewer hours spent in social isolation, poor adherence to social distancing as evidenced by the increased likelihood of holding a social gathering and coming into proximity with more people than recommended). We further demonstrated that boredom proneness substantially mediates the association between self-control and rule-breaking. These results indicate that boredom proneness is a critical factor to consider when encouraging adherence to social isolation.