A theory in social psychology suggests that people are 'cognitive misers'. It suggests that most people are lazy to employ much mental effort, and hence rely on automatic processing to make their decisions/attributions.
For example, a stranger trips and falls. You think 'He is clumsy!' , because you are lazy to process situational factors (e.g. Someone stuck out their foot to trip him)
I think i am something resembling the opposite of a cognitive miser, whatever that is called. I have a constant need to challenge my mind, to exert some sort of mental effort. Whether be it playing starcraft, words with friends.
In fact, my theory is that everyone is like this. Well, many people at least. When you don't exert any mental effort, you build up a cognitive surplus, and there is some sort of uneasiness in you. Dissonance, so to speak.
People expand this surplus in a variety of ways, sometimes subconsciously. Do you listen to music when traveling? That's one example already. Listening to music occupies your brain and taps away at that cognitive surplus.
(actually this idea of cognitive surplus is not my theory, i learnt it in My CNM mod last sem)
Proof that this cognitive surplus exists? There seems to be a limit. In the past I used to play UnblockMe on my iPod touch. Now, with words with friends, I stopped playing that, because I just didnt gave sufficient cognitive surplus to expand on another puzzle game.
When you say "I'm bored " , you're actually saying 'my cognitive surplus is building up, I need to expand it!"
And this whole blog post was written on my iPhone on my journey home because I had to expand my cognitive surplus. :)
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I have already mentioned this, but I'll say it again. I'm currently also writing for realfass, and their blog link is simple http://realfass.blogspot.com. Unless it's a personal blog entry, I should be posting my stuff there for now. So check them out! They have a great Twitter feed too, you can follow them @realfass even if you are not an FASS student. Www.twitter.com/realfass
