(FORTUNE Magazine) – ''Instantly procure us a copy of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986, Vol. 51, No. 5, 968-975,'' stentoriously demanded Keeping Up's senior policy analyst the other day, ''as this learned journal is rumored on the street to have published an article called 'Boredom in Interpersonal Encounters: Antecedents and Social Implications,' which is said to demonstrate yet again that the social science establishment will always come up with something new to exegetize just when you think the absolutely last issue confronting mankind has finally been identified, researched, and translated into public policy. Do not ever forget that all those Great Society programs go back to academic scriveners discovering problems Abe Lincoln never noticed.'' It turns out that boredom is not exactly a new field of study. Indeed when you get to the end of the JPSP article, authored by four Wake Forest academics, you find citations for 35 other boring articles. But what is the authors' own point? They have several. First, ''the behaviors that bore people easily appear to be those that do not hold others' attention easily.'' Wait, that is just the first point. A second is that boredom could result from ''either the content or style of another's actions.'' Third, they found that people do not like being bored and sometimes go so far as to ''denigrate those who bore them.'' The policy implications emerged only at the very end of the article, where it says that ''individuals who are viewed as chronically boring are at a distinct disadvantage . . . and may experience dysfunctional consequences.'' But what can society do for the dysfunctionals? That is the question. The answer must await ''research on possible treatment for . . . excessively boring persons.'' Whoever they are. We name no names.