9 Ways the Most Boring People Will Bore You

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2024-11-21 16:00:06

Posted September 28, 2014 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

I wonder if there is anyone who has ever not worried about being boring—maybe only people so full of themselves that it never occurs to them that they could be anything but fascinating to those around them. Or maybe people who really are fascinating, and just don't know it.

What we don't need to wonder about is what makes people come across as boring. There is actually systematic research on that—not a lot, but enough to provide the first set of answers.

In a series of studies, social psychologist Mark Leary and three colleagues found that we can bore other people either by what we have to say or how we say it: Content and style both matter. They also found that we are probably right to fret about whether other people might be judging us as boring, because if they are, they are likely to be judging us harshly on many other qualities as well.