Cubist

In the collection of swag from the NC Science Blogging Conference was the December/January issue of Scientific American Mind, which has an article on boredom.

Bored?

In that article, they mention a 1989 research experiment conducted by James Laird and Robin Damrad-Frye, which suggested that people were more likely to feel bored if there were some sort of mild distraction in the background, such as a television playing quietly in an adjoining room.

I would hypothesize that that working in a cubicle farm, where one is exposed to a constant barrage of noise from nearby conversations, telephone calls, beeps and clicks may result in a similar effect.

Has anyone seen any more recent research that might have looked at this?