How to tell if you’re living with ‘quiet stress’

The term “quiet stress” is gathering pace among experts. According to them, it’s an often     1     form of the more widely known version, which is characterized by visible     2    : swearing, shouting, and anger.

“We quiet    3     our stress within: we don’t speak up about how we actually feel, because of which we become inactive. We stay in unhappy relationships and     4     jobs. We feel overwhelmed, yet ignore important tasks. Quiet stress creates a form of emotional paralysis (麻痹) that keeps us    5     in unhappy situations,” says Jillian Lavender, who runs the London Meditation Centre.

Cary Cooper, a professor of psychology and health at the University of Manchester, compares the effects of quiet stress to shrapnel(散弹):“You can learn to     6     your stress responses, but eventually the stress will emerge: as well as an immune system that stops working well, you may withdraw socially, isolate yourself and begin to engage in unhealthy     7     drinking too much. Despite getting a bad reputation over the years, expressing anger of frustration is far healthier than smiling     8     while feeling quietly stressed.

A recent study from Stanford University in the US backs this theory up. The researchers found that seeing stress as a helpful part of dealing with life’s challenges, rather than as something to be avoided, was associated with better health,     9    wellbeing and productivity at work.

“Stress isn’t always harmful,” said Kelly McGonigal, a business school lecturer at Stanford who worked on the study. “Once you     10     that going through stress makes you better at it, it can be easier to face each new challenge.”

The ability of the herd mentality(从众心理)to increase people’s chances of liking or believing something may help explain a wide variety of phenomena. Aral (A managerial economist at the Massachusetts institute of technology) says, from housing     1     to gold prices and from political polls to restaurant reviews, the     2     that other people like something has a powerful ability to make people like it themselves.

The new study     3     how simple it would be for companies to control reviews of their products by simply adding a few positive     4     of their own early reviews in the process, Aral adds.

It found that effects were strongest when stories were about politics, business and cultures than for fun or lifestyle pieces. In situations where there are more     5     news reviews, you have to be a little more cautious about interpreting likes and dislikes.

“Think twice before you trust, how many likes something has,” he adds. “That’s something you have to     6     with a grain of salt (持怀疑态度).” And it’s a situation many online users     7     on a daily basis.

Aral recently went onYelp.com to review a restaurant with a plan to give it three out of five stars, but when he got to the     8    , he was shown how other people describe the same place and those reviews include someone with five stars. Seeing those positive reviews made him think twice about his own     9     average opinion.

“A woman     10     how great it is, how great her great prices are and how the lemon sauce is so great,” he says. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea to say some rating right before you make your own.”

Money is the root of all evil and new study claims there may be some truth behind the saying. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, US,    1    on February 27 that rich people are more likely to do    2    things, such as lie or cheat, than poorer people. The scientists did a series of eight experiments. They    3    their findings online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They carried out the first two experiments from the sidewalk near Berkeley. They noted that drivers of newer and more expensive cars were more likely to cut off other cars and pedestrians at crosswalks. Nearly 45 percent of people driving expensive cars    4    a pedestrian compared with only 30 percent of people driving more    5    cars.

In another experiment, a group of college students was asked if they would do unethical(不道德的) things in various everyday situations and    6    included taking printer paper from work and not telling a salesperson when he or she gave back more    7    . Students from higher-class families were more likely to act dishonestly.

According to the scientists, rich people often think money can get them out of trouble. This makes them less afraid to take risks. It also means they care less about other people’s feelings.

Finally, it    8    makes them greedier. “Higher wealth status seems to make you want even more, and that increased want leads you to bend the rules or break the rules to serve your self-interest,” said Paul Piff, lead scientist of the study.

Piff pointed out that the findings don’t mean that all rich people are untrustworthy or all poor people    9    . He said the experiments were to show how people living in different social situations express their    10    and instincts in different ways.

Attitudes toward new technologies often fall along generational lines. That is, generally, younger people tend to     1     older people on the front end of a technological shift.

It is not always the case, though. When you look at attitudes toward driverless cars, there doesn't seem to be a clear     2     divide. The public overall is split on whether they'd like to use a driverless car. In a study last year, of all people surveyed, 48 percent said they wanted to ride in one, while 50 percent did not.

The fact that attitudes toward self-driving cars appear to be so     3     across generations suggests how transformative the shift to driverless cars could be. Not everyone wants a driverless car now-and no one can get one vet-but among those who are open to them, every age group is     4     engaged.

Actually, this isn't surprising. Whereas older generations are sometimes reluctant to adopt new technologies, driverless cars     5     real value to these age groups, especially to those with     6     mobility or difficulty driving on their own.

This is especially interesting when you consider that younger people are generally more interested in travel-related     7     than older ones.

When it comes to driverless cars, differences in attitude are more     8     based on factors not related to age. College graduates, for example, are particularly interested in driverless cars compared with those who have less education：59 percent of college graduates said they would like to use a driverless car compared with 38 percent of those with a high-school diploma or less.

Where a person lives     9     too. More people who lived in cities and suburbs said they wanted to try driverless cars than those who lived in rural areas.

While there's reason to believe that interest in self-driving cars is going up across the board, a person's age will have little to do with how self-driving cars can become     10    . Once driverless cars are actually available for sale, the early adopters will be the people who can afford to buy them.