在给雅思学员授课的过程中，剑桥雅思 13 Test 1 Passage 3 这篇关于 boredom（无聊）的文章，总能引发大家的深度思考。
我们总觉得无聊是负面情绪，孩子坐不住、学不进去，想尽办法逃避学习的枯燥，却陷入越逃避越无聊的循环。而这篇权威雅思阅读，恰恰揭开了无聊与学习、专注力的底层关系，也点破了当下孩子学习低效的核心原因。
今天把这篇阅读的完整原文 + 精准中文翻译分享给大家，无论是雅思备考精读，还是读懂孩子学习的痛点，都值得细细品读。
Why being bored is stimulating – and useful, too
为什么无聊能激发灵感，还大有用处
This most common of emotions is turning out to be more interesting than we thought
这种最普遍的情绪，远比我们想象的更有意思
A 段
原文：We all know how it feels – it’s impossible to keep your mind on anything, time stretches out, and all the things you could do seem equally unlikely to make you feel better. But defining boredom so that it can be studied in the lab has proved difficult. For a start, 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 from infection, boredom may protect them from “infectious” social situations,’ he suggests.
中文翻译：我们都懂这种感受：根本没法集中注意力，时间被无限拉长，所有能做的事都好像没法让自己好受一点。但要给 “无聊” 下一个能用于实验室研究的定义，却被证明十分困难。首先，无聊会裹挟着许多其他心理状态，比如挫败感、冷漠、抑郁和无动于衷。学界甚至无法达成共识：无聊是否永远是一种低能量、平淡的情绪，或是焦躁不安的状态是否也属于无聊。加拿大卡尔加里大学的彼得・图希在其著作《无聊：鲜活的历史》中，将无聊比作 “厌恶”—— 一种驱使我们远离特定处境的情绪。他提出：“如果厌恶能保护人类免受感染，那么无聊或许能保护我们远离‘具有传染性’的社交环境。”
B 段
原文：By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct types: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic. These can be plotted on two axes – one running left to right, which measures low to high arousal, and the other 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 still 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.
中文翻译：德国康斯坦茨大学的托马斯・戈茨及其团队，通过调研人们的无聊体验，近期划分出了五种截然不同的无聊类型：冷漠型、校准型、探索型、反抗型和无动于衷型。这些类型可以在两个坐标轴上呈现：横轴从左到右衡量唤醒度的高低，纵轴从上到下衡量情绪的正负。有趣的是，戈茨发现，尽管人们会经历各类无聊，但往往会对某一种 “情有独钟”。在五种类型中，最具破坏性的是 “反抗型” 无聊 —— 它是高唤醒度与负面情绪的爆炸性结合；而最有益的则是戈茨所说的 “冷漠型” 无聊：即便没有做任何能带来满足感的事，人依然能保持放松与平静。不过，是否存在特定性格特质，能预判我们每个人容易陷入哪种无聊，还有待进一步研究。
C 段
原文：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.
中文翻译：英国中央兰开夏大学的心理学家桑迪・曼更进一步。她表示：“所有情绪的存在都有其意义，包括无聊。” 曼的研究发现，无聊能提升我们的创造力。她说：“我们都害怕无聊，但事实上，它能催生无数奇妙的事物。” 在去年发表的实验中，曼发现：让一组人抄 15 分钟电话簿号码来制造无聊感，他们针对 “如何使用聚苯乙烯杯” 提出的创意想法，远多于对照组。曼得出结论：被动、枯燥的活动最能激发创造力，因为它能让思绪自由漫游。事实上，她甚至提出：我们应该在生活中主动寻求更多无聊。
D 段
原文：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 pain? 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 to do any more, and no longer care.
中文翻译：加拿大多伦多约克大学的心理学家约翰・伊斯特伍德对此并不认同。他说：“当你思绪漫游时，你并没有感到无聊。在我看来，从定义上，无聊就是一种不受欢迎的状态。” 他补充道，这并不意味着无聊不具有适应性：“疼痛是有适应性的 —— 如果我们没有生理痛感，就会遭遇危险。但这难道意味着我们要主动制造疼痛吗？当然不。即便无聊是为了帮助我们生存而演化出的情绪，若任由其滋生，它依然会产生毒害。” 在伊斯特伍德看来，无聊的核心特征是 “注意力系统失灵”：这会让人无法专注于任何事，时间也因此变得无比难熬。更糟的是，你试图改善处境的努力，反而会让自己更难受。他说：“人们试图与世界建立连接，若失败，就会产生挫败感与易怒情绪。” 伊斯特伍德表示，最令人担忧的是：反复无法集中注意力，会让人陷入 “不知所措、彻底麻木” 的状态。
E 段
原文：Eastwood’s team is now trying to explore why the attention system fails. It’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 detrimental 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, see that it’s boring and get stuck in anyway – report less boredom than those who try to avoid it by using snacks, TV or daydreaming to escape.
中文翻译：伊斯特伍德的团队正致力于探究注意力系统失灵的原因。目前研究尚处于初期，但他们认为，至少部分原因与性格有关：易无聊感与多种性格特质相关。以享乐为动力的人，受无聊困扰的程度尤其严重；而好奇心等特质，则与 “高无聊阈值”（不易感到无聊）相关。更多关于无聊负面影响的证据，来自对不同易无聊程度人群的研究：那些容易感到无聊的人，在学业、职业乃至整个人生中，往往面临更差的发展前景。但当然，无聊本身并不会致命 —— 真正将我们置于危险的，是我们应对无聊的方式。那么，在情况恶化前，我们该如何缓解无聊？戈茨的团队给出了一个建议：在针对青少年的研究中，他们发现，那些 “主动直面” 无聊处境的人（即明知事情无聊，仍坚持完成），比用零食、电视、走神来逃避的人，感受到的无聊要少得多。
F 段
原文：Researchers at the University of Michigan carried out an experiment in 2014 comparing two groups of students. The first group was assigned to perform repetitive tasks with no distraction, while the second group was allowed to use their smartphones during the tasks. The smartphone group reported higher levels of boredom, even though they were doing the same tasks. The researchers concluded that the constant availability of entertainment on phones makes us more sensitive to boredom, meaning we find even the most mundane tasks more tedious than we used to.
中文翻译：密歇根大学的研究人员在 2014 年开展了一项实验，将学生分为两组：第一组需在无干扰的情况下完成重复性任务，第二组则可以在任务期间使用智能手机。结果显示，即便做的是完全相同的任务，使用手机的组报告的无聊程度更高。研究人员得出结论：手机上随时可得的娱乐，让我们对无聊变得更加敏感 —— 这意味着，哪怕是最平淡的任务，我们也会觉得比过去更枯燥乏味。
✍️ 写在最后
读完这篇雅思阅读，相信不管是备考的同学，还是关心孩子学习的家长，都深有感触。
我们总在躲避无聊，用手机、零食、碎片化娱乐填补每一刻空闲，却让自己失去了专注的能力；孩子无法忍受学习的枯燥，本质上是失去了和无聊共处的能力。
逃避无聊，只会陷入无限循环；而直面无聊，才能沉下心学习、思考，收获真正的成长。
这篇关于 “无聊” 的文章，也藏着学习最朴素的道理：好的学习从不是时刻充满快感，而是学会接纳枯燥，在平淡中坚持。
💬 互动讨论你是如何面对无聊的？你家孩子会用什么方式逃避学习的枯燥？读完这篇文章，你有哪些不一样的见解？欢迎在留言区交流分享～
