These words suggest a lack of participation in an activity or a lack of sympathy for it. Uninvolved is the most neutral in tone. It suggests an attitude of standing apart from an activity as well as from its benefits or consequences: preferring to remain uninvolved in the share-pushing scheme; seeking jurors uninvolved in the fraud case. One may have strong feelings about an activity but choose to be uninvolved because of fear or other pressures. Unconcerned stresses lack of interest or sympathy: those citizens totally unconcerned by the adverse trade balance. The word may even suggest carefree abandon: blithely unconcerned about the piling up of his debts.

Indifferent and unmoved are intensifications of unconcerned, suggesting a complete lack of feeling. Indifferent might especially apply to an uncaring attitude about the outcome of something when faced with two or more alternatives: equally indifferent to every entrée on the menu. It can refer also to a lack of response to an emotional appeal: indifferent to his passionate advances. Unmoved is an intensification of this last sense of indifferent , referring particularly to a situation designed specifically to elicit a given reaction: a maudlin play that left me completely unmoved . The word suggests, too, a refusal to perform a recommended action: a pep talk on enlisting that left the men unmoved .

Apathetic and bored suggest even more resistance to arousal than unmoved . Apathetic suggests a general lethargy or dullness of feeling in a person or a group: teenagers wakening from an apathetic acceptance of injustice and prejudice. Bored is more narrowly specific in meaning, suggesting an unmoved response to a particular event; the word does not necessarily imply the inactivity of apathetic : bored and restless children; members of the audience so bored by the tedious play that many left before the first-act curtain.