Emotions is Turning Out to be More Interesting than We thought Reading Answers

Mar 16, 2024

This Most Common of Emotions is Turning out to be more Interesting than we thought Reading Answers.This Most Common of Emotions is Turning out to be more Interesting than we thought Reading Answers is an academic reading answers topic. This Most Common of Emotions is Turning out to be more Interesting than we thought Reading Answers have a total of 14 IELTS questions in total. This topic has 6 questions in which we have to fill up the black choosing appropriate paragraphs. The rest of the questions are to choose the correct choice from the given options.

Candidates should read the IELTS Reading passage thoroughly to recognize synonyms, identify keywords, and answer the questions below. IELTS Reading practice papers, which feature topics such as This Most Common of Emotions is Turning out to be more Interesting than we thought Reading Answers. Candidates can use IELTS reading practice questions and answers to enhance their performance in the reading section.

Check: Get 10 Free IELTS Sample Papers
Check: Register for IELTS Coaching - Join for Free Trial Class Now

Section 1

Read the Passage to Answer the Following Questions

This Most Common of Emotions is Turning Out to be More Interesting than We Though

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.
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.
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.
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 are 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 anymore, and no longer care.
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 come 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 any way - report less boredom than those who try to avoid it by using snacks, 1v or sociai media for distraction.
Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom. 'In modern human society there is a lot of overstimulation but still a lot of problems finding meaning, ' she says. So instead of seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we should leave our phones alone, and use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more meaningful way.

Section 2

Solution and Explanation

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-viii.

List of Headings

The productive outcomes that may result from boredom
What teachers can do to prevent boredom
A new explanation and a new cure for boredom
Problems with a scientific approach to boredom
A potential danger arising from boredom
Creating a system of classification for feelings of boredom
Age groups most affected by boredom
Identifying those most affected by boredom

Paragraph A

Answer: iv
Supporting statement:“........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. .........”
Keywords:proved, difficult
Keyword Location: para A, line 1
Explanation: Para A tells the difficulties in defining boredom and the disagreement over its nature and components, indicating problems with a scientific approach to boredom.

Paragraph B

Answer: vi
Supporting statement:“.........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........”
Keywords:identified, apathetic
Keyword Location: para B, line 1
Explanation: Para B introduces Thomas Goetz's classification of different types of boredom, indicating the creation of a system of classification for feelings of boredom.

Paragraph C

Answer: i
Supporting statement:“........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..........”
Keywords: emotions, bored
Keyword Location: para C, line 1
Explanation: Para C discusses the potential productive outcomes of boredom, suggesting that it can lead to increased creativity.

Paragraph D

Answer: v
Supporting statement:“........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.' .........”
Keywords: convinced, view
Keyword Location: para D, line 2
Explanation: Para D highlights the potential danger arising from boredom, such as frustration, irritability, and a sense of not knowing what to do anymore.

Paragraph E

Answer: viii
Supporting statement:“........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 come down to personality. Boredom proneness has been linked with a variety of traits. .........”
Keywords: personality, linked
Keyword Location: para E, line 1
Explanation: Para E mentions about John Eastwood's exploration of personality traits . Related to boredom proneness and its detrimental effects on individuals.

Paragraph F

Answer: iii
Supporting statement:“........Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom. .........”
Keywords:over, source
Keyword Location: para F, line 1
Explanation: Para F tells on how modern lifestyles might contribute to boredom and suggests using boredom as motivation for meaningful engagement with the world.

Questions 20-23

Look at the following people (Questions 20-23) and the list of ideas below.

Match each person with the correct idea, A-E.

Peter Toohey

Answer: E
Supporting statement:“........ 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..........”
Keywords: situations, infectious
Keyword Location: para A, line 8
Explanation: Peter Toohey suggests that boredom may serve a protective function similar to disgust, motivating individuals to avoid certain situations

Thomas Goetz

Answer: B
Supporting statement:“.......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..........”
Keywords:identfied, apathetic
Keyword Location: para B, line 1
Explanation: Thomas Goetz and his team classify different types of boredom based on arousal levels and emotional valence, suggesting that one type of boredom is worse than others.

John Eastwood

Answer: D
Supporting statement:“........People try to connect with the world and if they are not successful there are 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 anymore, and no longer care..........”
Keywords: repeatedly, anymore
Keyword Location: para D, line 10
Explanation: John Eastwood argues that boredom leads to frustration and irritability, and trying to cope with it can increase its negative effects

Francoise Wemelsfelder

Answer: A
Supporting statement:“........Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom. 'In modern human society there is a lot of overstimulation but still a lot of problems finding meaning.........”
Keywords: lifestyles, society
Keyword Location: para F, line 1
Explanation: Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our modern lifestyle may contribute to boredom, suggesting that the way we live today may encourage boredom.

List of Ideas

The way we live today may encourage boredom.
One sort of boredom is worse than all the others.
Levels of boredom may fall in the future.
Trying to cope with boredom can increase its negative effects.
Boredom may encourage us to avoid an unpleasant experience.

Questions 24-26

Choose ONE WORD ONLY for each answer.

Responses to boredom

For John Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is that people cannot (24)......, due to a failure in what he calls the 'attention system', and as a result they become

Answer: FOCUS
Supporting statement:“........This causes an inability to focus on anything, which makes time seem to go painfully slowly. .........”
Keywords: makes, painfully
Keyword Location: para D, line 8
Explanation: John Eastwood mentions that boredom involves a failure to focus or concentrate on anything, leading to frustration and irritability.

frustrated and irritable. His team suggests that those for whom (25)...... is an Alto- important aim in life may have problems in coping with boredom, whereas those who

Answer: PLEASURE
Supporting statement:“.........People who are motivated by pleasure seem to suffer particularly badly. Other personality traits, such as curiosity, are associated with a high boredom threshold........”
Keywords: badly, threshold
Keyword Location: para E, line 3
Explanation: Those who are motivated by pleasure may have more difficulty coping with boredom, according to Eastwood's team.

have the characteristic of (26)...... an generally cope with it.

Answer: CURIOSITY
Supporting statement:“........ 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.........”
Keywords:boredom, prone
Keyword Location: para E, line 6
Explanation: Curiosity is associated with a high boredom threshold, indicating that individuals with a curious nature generally cope better with boredom.

IELTS Reading Related Articles