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：B。根据题干中的boredom isn’t all bad可定位至原文第四段开头。该段提到，无聊可以激发人们的创造力（spur creativity）。B项内容与此相符，且该段后半部分提到的英国研究证实了这一观点，故为正确答案。

错项排除：原文中虽然提到了stimulate的近义词spur（推动；激励），但没有提及有关于记忆（memorization）的内容，故排除A项。C项利用原文中提到的exhausted设置干扰，但这个词在此处表示的是“所有显而易见的答案都被用尽”，而不表示身体的“筋疲力尽”，原文中也没有提到有关于放松的内容，故排除C项。D项中的facilitate independent learning在原文中未提及，故排除。