Why being bored is stimulating — and useful, too This most common of emotions is tuming out to be more interesting than we thought A We all know how it feels - its impossible to keep your mind on anything, time stretches out, and all the things you could do seem equally unlikely to make you fee! better. But defining boredom so that it can be studied in the lab has proved dificult. For a star, it can include a lot of other mental states, such as frustration, apathy, depression and indifference. There isn’t even agreement over whether boredom is always a low-energy, flat kind of emotion or whether feeling agitated and restless counts as boredom, too. In his book, Boredom: A Lively History, Peter Toohey at the University of Calgary, Canada, compares it to disgust ~ an emotion that motivates us to stay away from certain situations. ‘If disgust protects humans {rom infection, boredom may protect them from “infectious” social situations,’ he suggests, B__By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinc types: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic. These can be plotted on ‘wo axes — one running left to right, which measures low to high arousal, and the Cother from top to bottom, which measures how positive or negative the feeling is. Intriguingly, Goetz has found that while people experience all kinds of boredom, they tend to specialise in one. Of the five types, the most damaging is ‘reactant’ boredom with its explosive combination of high arousal and negative emotion. The ‘most useful is what Goetz calls ‘indifferent’ boredom: someone isn't engaged in anything satisfying but stil feels relaxed and calm. However, it remains to be seen whether there are any character traits that predict the kind of boredom each of us ‘might be prone to. © Psychologist Sandi Mann at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, goes further. ‘All emotions are there for a reason, including boredom,’ she says. Mann has found that being bored makes us more creative. We're all afraid of being bored but in actual fact it can lead to all kinds of amazing things,’ she says. In experiments Published last year, Mann found that people who had been made to feel bored by ‘copying numbers out of the phone book for 15 minutes came up with more creative ideas about how to use a polystyrene cup than a control group. Mann concluded. that a passive, boring activity is best for creativity because it allows the mind to wander. In fact, she goes so far as to suggest that we should seek out more. boredom in our lives. D__ Psychologist John Eastwood at York University in Toronto, Canada, isn't convinced. “If you are in a state of mind-wandering you are not bored,’ he says. in my view, by definition boredom is an undesirable state.’ That doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't adaptive, he adds. ‘Pain is adaptive - if we didn't have physical pain, bad things would happen to us. Does that mean that we should actively cause ain? No, But even if boredom has evolved to help us survive, it can still be toxicif allowed to fester.’ For Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is a failure to put our ‘attention system’ into gear. This causes an inability to focus on anything Which makes time seem to go painfully slowly. What's more, your efforts to improve the situation can end up making you feel worse. ‘People try to connect with the world and if they are not successful there's that frustration and irritability,’ he says. Perhaps most worryingly, says Eastwood, repeatedly failing to engage attention can lead to a state where we don't know what to do any more, and no longer care. Eastwood's team is now trying to explore why the attention system fails, I's early days but they think that at least some of it comes down to personality. Boredom proneness has been linked with a variety of traits. People who are motivated by pleasure seem to suffer particularly badly. Other personality traits, such as curiosity, are associated with a high boredom threshold. More evidence that boredom has jetrimental effects comes from studies of people who are more or less prone to boredom. It seems those who bore easily face poorer prospects in education, their career and even life in general. But of course, boredom itself cannot kill ~ it's the things we do to deal with it that may put us in danger. What can we do to alleviate it before it comes to that? Goetz’s group has one suggestion, Working with teenagers, they found that those who ‘approach’ a boring situation in other words, se that i's boring and get stuck in anyway ~ report less boredom than those who tty to avoid it by using snacks, TV or social media for distraction, Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles ‘might even be a new source of boredom. ‘in modem human society there is a lot of ‘overstimulation but stil a lot of problems finding meaning,’ she says. So instead of ‘seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we should leave our phones alone, land use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more ‘meaningful way,Questions 14-19 Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. White the correct number, i-vill, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet. 14 15 16 47 18 19 List of Headings ‘The productive outcomes that may result from boredom What teachers can do to prevent boredom ‘Anew explanation and a new cure for boredom Problems with a scientific approach to boredom potential danger arising from boredom Creating a system of classification for feelings of boredom vil Age groups most affected by boredom Vili Identifying those most affected by boredom Paragraph A Paragraph B Paragraph © Paragraph D Paragraph E Paragraph FQuestions 20-23 ‘Look atthe following people (Questions 20-23) and th list of ideas below, ‘Match each person withthe comect idea, A-E. White the comect iter, AxE, in boxes 20-23 on your answor sheet 20 Peter Toohey 21 Thomas Goetz 22 John Eastwood 23. Francoise Wemelselder [ Unto one Te way woe ay ny encourage ord Onn sor otberadomia wre tan the oes Level of treo maya nth are Tio cope wth borden can reso regu ofc, Bere may ezoage us oe an upaat experience mooa> Questions 24-26 ‘Complete the summary bolo. ‘Choose ONE WORD ONLY ftom the passage for each answer ‘Whit your answors inboxes 24-26 on your answer sheet Responses to boredom For John Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is that people cannot 24 + due to falure in what he cals the ‘atontion system, and as a result they become frustrated and iniable. His team suggests that those for whom Mose is an important aim in life may have problems in coping with boredom, whereas those who have the characteristic of 26. ——cen ‘generally cope with it Hu ome Bs BE wr ge wy Bh S80 RSS