ABSTRACT
The work of S. S. Schachter and his colleagues has indicated that Ss "label" their feelings partly in terms of the cognitions available to them. The common notion of the boredom/time relationship, that time passes slowly when one is bored, suggests that Ss in the 10-minute condition will be relatively bored by the task, while Ss in the 30-minute condition will be relatively interested. The S was told that the experiment would be on the physiology of moods and that it would last, all told, about an hour. Upon arrival at the psychology laboratory, Ss were given the task of writing brief stories about each of a series of TAT pictures while a polygraph ostensibly recorded galvanic skin response. The results of the reported experiment extend Schachter's notion about cognitive labeling of emotions to the state of boredom and show that this state may be influenced by altering Ss' cognitions about the rate at which time seems to be passing.
