Boredom has, paradoxically, become quite interesting to academics lately. In early May, London’s Boring Conference celebrated seven years of delighting in dullness. At this event, people flocked to talks about weather, traffic jams, and vending-machine sounds, among other sleep-inducing topics.

        What, exactly, is everybody studying? One widely accepted psychological definition of boredom is “the distasteful experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity.” But how can you quantify a person’s boredom level and compare it with someone else’s? In 1986, psychologists introduced the Boredom Proneness Scale, designed to measure an individual’s overall tendency to feel bored. By contrast, the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, developed in 2008, measures a person’s feelings of boredom in a given situation.

        Boredom has been linked to behavior issues including inattentive driving, mindless snacking, excessive drinking, and addictive gambling. In fact, many of us would choose pain over boredom. One team of psychologists discovered that two-thirds of men and a quarter of women would rather self-administer electric shocks than sit alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. Researching this phenomenon, another team asked volunteers to watch boring, sad, or neutral films, during which they could self-administer electric shocks. The bored volunteers shocked themselves more and harder than the sad or neutral ones did.

        But boredom isn’t all bad. By encouraging self-reflection and daydreaming, it can spur creativity. An early study gave participants abundant time to complete problem-solving and word-association exercises. Once all the obvious answers were exhausted, participants gave more and more inventive answers to combat boredom. A British study took these findings one step further, asking subjects to complete a creative challenge (coming up with a list of alternative uses for a household item). One group of subjects did a boring activity first, while the others went straight to the creative task. Those whose boredom pumps had been primed were more productive.

        In our always-connected world, boredom may be a hard-to-define state, but it is a fertile one. Watch paint dry or water boil, or at least put away your smartphone for a while, and you might unlock your next big idea.

解析：A。根据题目中的experience boredom和accepted psychological definition可定位至原文第二段第二句。该句提到，人们所广泛接受的关于“无聊”的心理学定义是“想要参加能带来满足感的活动却无能为力，由此产生的一种不愉快的体验”。A项与此内容相符，其中don’t have the chance对应原文第二段第二句中的being unable，do what they want对应该句中的engage in satisfying activity，故正确答案为A。

错项排除：原文中未提及有关学习资料的内容，而且B项有“被强迫做自己不喜欢的事情”的含义，与原文中“想要参加能带来满足感的活动却无能为力”这一定义不符，故排除B项。C项中的“经历不愉快的事情（experience something unpleasant）”不等同于原文定义中的“因不能参加能带来满足感的活动而产生的一种不愉快的体验（the distasteful experience）”，故排除。D项利用原文中出现的engage in和activity设置干扰，但“进行常规活动”不符合原文中关于“无聊”的定义，故排除D项。