People often plan to receive medical exam but don’t, resulting in increasing health care cost. A surprising number of citizens mean to complete tax forms in time but forget to, pushing them to pay unnecessary fines. Many families miss the government deadline to complete financial aid forms, losing out on aid available for child care.
How can policymakers help people follow through on important tasks? They use carrots and sticks: bonuses, late fees, or regulations. These methods can be clumsy, and often aren’t effective for the situation at hand. Reminding people to form simple plans. however, provides a low-cost, simple, and powerful tool.
Evidence is growing that providing prompts (提示) , which push people at key times to think through how and when they will follow through, make people more likely to act on tasks of importance. In one early randomized (随机的) study on vaccination (预防接种) rates, for example, a team of social psychologists showed that 28% of Oxford University seniors got the shot after being encouraged to review their weekly schedules and to select a possible time to stop by the health center. They were also given a list of times when shots were available and a map showing the health center’s location. Only 3% of the seniors got the shot when simply informed about how effective the shots were.
People who make a plan gain an advantage from their psychological forces. Specifically, they can overcome the tendency to put off as well as the tendency to be overly optimistic about the time it will take to accomplish a task.
People mistakenly believe that their strong intentions are enough to push them to perform desired behaviors. These psychological research results stress the need for policy decisions that encourage plan making and improve social welfare.
1. What phenomenon is described in paragraph 1?| A．Heavy stress of daily chores. | B．Short of task management skills. |
| C．Disappointment of over-confidence. | D．Failure to achieve original plans. |
| A．People need to think deeply before they act. |
| B．Specific reminders help people accomplish plans. |
| C．Awareness of task importance matters in planning. |
| D．Seniors need encouragement to have vaccination shots. |
| A．They are realistic in the time required | B．They are optimistic about the results. |
| C．They are confident to overcome difficulties | D．They are careful with task arrangements. |
| A．Medical staff. | B．Government officials. |
| C．Ordinary people. | D．Social psychologists. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Was it probable that Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai and Western hero King Arthur meet and fight against each other? Yes. In a game called King of Glory (王者荣耀), created by Chinese company Tencent, King of Glory has been one of the most popular MOBA games in China since 2017.
About one in every seven Chinese people plays the game, and 55 million of them play it every day. The game is easy for beginners. Social media like QQ and WeChat have also helped the game’s community grow. New players can be invited to play the game by their WeChat contacts, with some seeing it as a good way to keep in touch with old friends and make new ones.
The game has more than 60 characters to unlock and play as you progress, each with their own special style and abilities. The characters cover different times and countries. Some are real historical characters, like Li Bai. Some are not. Players use them to fight against each other or team up to fight. The winners can reach higher ranks.
However, some people think King of Glory gives the students incorrect information about events and people in history. For example, the poet Li Bai is described as a killer; Jing Ke, the man who tried to kill the first emperor of China, is a girl in the game. But more people worry about children playing the game too much and spending too much money on it. Most of the players are below the age of 19. It’s reported that a 17-year-old boy had a stroke (中风) after playing the game for 40 hours.
To change the situation, Tencent added a time limit feature to the game to prevent kids from playing too much. From July 4, 2017, children under 12 years old can play the game for only one hour a day, while users between 12 and 18 get two hours. Those who try to play beyond the time limit will be locked out of the game.
1. What can we learn about King of Glory?| A．It is the most popular online game in the world. | B．It offers 60 characters for players to choose from. |
| C．All of the characters are real historical characters. | D．Players fight against each other or team up to fight. |
| A．In a picture book. | B．In a travel guidebook. |
| C．In a storybook. | D．In a newspaper. |
| A．Only young people play the game. |
| B．Many people don’t think the game is so good. |
| C．Children are addicted to (沉迷于) playing the game. |
| D．The game gives children false information about history. |
| A．King of Glory: a good way to make friends | B．King of Glory: popular around the world |
| C．King of Glory: popular but arguably | D．King of Glory: created by Tencent |
【推荐2】Research spanning several decades demonstrates that you are more likely to think the information that is repeated to be true than the information you hear only once. You usually assume that if people put in effort to repeat a statement, this reflects the truth of the statement. This tendency-also called the truth effect-is a bias (偏见) that can lead you to draw incorrect conclusions.
To what degree are people aware of the truth effect? This question was addressed in a paper in the journal Cognition early this year.
In the critical study in this paper, participants did two sessions. In one session, they read about a hypothetical (虚构的) study in which they were exposed to some statements and then were asked whether both statements they had heard before as well as these new statements were true. They were asked to predict the proportion (比例) of each statement that would be judged as true. They did this both as a prediction of other people’s performance as well as a prediction of how they would do in this study.
At another session a few days later, participants actually performed this study, reading a set of 20 statements in the hypothetical study again and then judging the truth of altogether 40 statements, half of which were from the hypothetical study and the other half of which were new.
This study did replicate the well known truth effect. People were more likely to judge statements they had seen before as true than statements that were new. Two interesting findings emerged from the prediction. First, participants tended to underestimate the size of the truth effect for everyone. T hat is, while they did expect some difference in judgments between the statements seen before and those that were new, they thought this difference would be smaller than it actually was. Second, participants more significantly underpredicted the truth effect for themselves compared to that for other people.
This study is particularly important in light of the amount of misinformation present in social media. Many people have the power to influence public opinion about important matters. Flooding social media feeds with misinformation will lead people to believe this information is true just because it is stated. Recognizing that we are all susceptible to this influence of repeated information should lead us to mistrust our intuition (直觉) about what is true and to look up important information prior to using it to make important judgments and decisions.
1. In the first paragraph, the author intends to ______.| A．clarify a misconception | B．present a phenomenon |
| C．challenge a statement | D．confirm a theory |
| A．Impacts of the truth effect require further studies. |
| B．Making predictions before judgments is significant. |
| C．People have hardly any awareness of the truth effect. |
| D．People tend to believe they can make wiser judgments. |
| A．Critical. | B．Subject. | C．Opposed. | D．Adapted. |
【推荐3】Much like a smartphone, your body will go to sleep when there are no new inputs. When you are on a bus, your senses will give you the same repetitive inputs. The streets will flow by, the engine adds constant white noise, you’re seated and not moving, and the smell... well you hope the smell doesn’t change.
Any repetitive input going to your brain will eventually be ignored and your brain will start going into a low energy state. The fact that you fall asleep quickly when closing your eyes on a bus is because you were already on the bus for a while and got used to all the repetitive sensory data.
When you go to bed, you have a lot of new changes. You are lying down, you wear different clothes, you feel the pressure of your covers, you go from bright to dark, noisy to quiet. All of these are new sensory inputs that your brain needs to get used to before going to sleep.
A laboratory experiment to investigate the effects of whole-body vibration (震动) on seated human alertness and sleepiness was carried out. Vibration was applied to the volunteers sitting on the vehicle seat on the vibration platform. Volunteers for this investigation included 18 young male and healthy university students. None of the volunteers had a history of neck pain, diseases of the cervical spine or musculoskeletal disorders. Seated volunteers were exposed to a Gaussian random vibration, with 1–15 Hz frequency bandwidth at 0.2 ms−2 r.m.s., for 20-minutes.
The results suggest that exposure to vibration even for 20-minutes can cause significant sleepiness. The data clearly show that exposure to vibration has considerable influence on subjective sleepiness levels, and more importantly, human reaction times and decrease of attention.
Drowsy driving has been reported to account for approximately 20% of accidents worldwide. In Australia, 16.6% of total road deaths were caused by sleep-related accidents in 1998 alone. It is well established that sleepiness caused by extended hours of driving has considerable influence on driver performance, therefore, compromising transportation safety.
These findings need to be further proved particularly in relation to driving behavior. This line of research can then assist in the development of practical and relevant guidelines for limitation of vibration exposure in the automotive industry, in an effort to reduce the burden of road accidents. That’s something for both car manufacturers and road safety experts to think about.
1. According to the passage, why do we fall asleep quickly on the bus?| A．Because we meet a lot of new changes. |
| B．Because the surroundings become quiet. |
| C．Because we get used to the repetitive sensory data. |
| D．Because our senses give us different kinds of inputs. |
| A．To investigate people’s sleeping hours and situation. |
| B．To research whether vibration can affect people’s health. |
| C．To study the relationship between inputs and people’s attention. |
| D．To find out how shaking affects people’s sleepiness in the vehicle. |
| A．Sleepy driving is the main cause of road accidents. |
| B．The research has helped to reduce the burden of road accidents. |
| C．The findings of the experiment have been recognized by road safety experts. |
| D．The research results can give some implications to the automobile production. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. |
| C．Disappointed. | D．Indifferent. |
【推荐1】A customer stands on the other side of the counter at my work, eyeing the menu. “The food here is so caloric,” she complains, and then looks at me. “You don’t eat here, do you? It certainly doesn’t look like it.” My face turned red.
I’m not quite used to how others see me. Since June 2018, I’ve lost almost 50 pounds. When I made the choice to change my body physically, everyone around me told me that I would be happier: Skinny meant pretty, and pretty meant happy and satisfied. After looking through dozens of before-and-after changes on Instagram and other social media, I was more eager to make myself smaller, to better fit into the world. But none of that happened. I didn’t feel more whole, or more peaceful. More than anything, I felt lied to.
Human health is unbelievably complex, and there’s so much more to our well-being than caloric balance. For several months, I often felt very tired and got angry easily, convinced that my body was a machine and I had to hard-wire it to look as physically perfect as possible. But at the end of the day, I realized that saying no to my body’s natural desire only left me feeling upset.
Our world is filled with losing weight. Nearly every time I listen to the radio, I hear some ads criticizing empty promises of giving you a better body, achieved only by this gym membership/ this prepackaged Keto shake/ this waist trainer. These all live by the same message: That food is dangerous, and the less we eat, the better off we are. In extreme cases, this message can lead to eating disorders, which will affect over 30 million people in their lifetimes, according to the Body Image Therapy Center.
These ideas could not be further from the truth. We eat food for a reason: It gives us energy, it keeps our body functioning, and it makes us human. I urge everybody to adopt a diet based on sustainability (可持续发展), to eat for energy, based on what makes us happy. We all deserve healthy relationships with food and mindful eating is the best place to start.
1. How did the author feel when hearing the customer’s words?| A．Quite proud. |
| B．A bit angry. |
| C．Rather guilty. |
| D．A little embarrassed. |
| A．She was laughed at by others. |
| B．She got encouragement from her family. |
| C．She was attracted by pictures on the Internet. |
| D．She got tired easily when being overweight. |
| A．It made her disbelieve others. |
| B．It did harm to her well-being. |
| C．It helped lift her confidence a bit. |
| D．It taught her about determination. |
| A．They are far from creative. |
| B．They hurt human’s relationships with food. |
| C．They cause many people to do too much exercise. |
| D．They mislead some youths into having wrong ideas of beauty. |
【推荐2】Thanks to in-depth reporting by The Wall Street Journal, we now know that Facebook has long been aware its product Instagram has harmful effects on the mental health of many adolescent users. Young girls, in particular, struggle with their body image thanks to a constant stream of photos and videos showing beautiful bodies that users don’t think they can attain.
While the information the journal covered is essential and instructive, it does not tell the whole story. Deep down, this is not an Instagram problem; it’s a people problem. Understanding that distinction can make the difference between a failed attempt to contain a teen’s interest in an addictive app and successfully addressing the underlying problem leading to mental distress caused by Instagram.
Critics were quick to shame Facebook for sitting on the data and not releasing it to researchers or academics who asked for it. Others criticize the social media giant for not using the research to create a safer experience for its teen users. The anger, while understandable, is misplaced.
While I’m reluctant to defend Facebook, I’m not sure it’s reasonable to blame the company for refusing to give data that would hurt its business. Have you ever binge-watched a Netflix series? I assure you it wasn’t a healthy endeavor. You were inactive, likely did nothing productive, mindlessly snacked and didn’t go outside for fresh air. It is an objectively harmful use of time to stare at a TV or laptop for a full weekend. Should we respond by shaming Netflix for not alerting us to how damaging an addictive product can be?
While it’s reasonable to say Instagram makes esteem issues worse, it is almost impossible to believe it causes them in the first place. You create your own experiences on social media. For the most part, you choose which accounts to follow and engage. If you’re already vulnerable to insecurities and self-sabotage (自损) — as many teens are — you will find accounts to obsess over. And this isn’t a new phenomenon.
Before social media, there were similar issues fueling self-esteem issues. Whether the target be magazines, movies or television shows depicting difficult-to-attain bodies, there has been a relatively steady chorus of experts noting the damage new media could cause young viewers.
Self-esteem issues have an underlying cause — one that’s independent of social media use. Instagram merely enhances those feelings because it provides infinitely more access to triggers than older forms of media. It’s more worthwhile to address those underlying factors rather than to attack Facebook.
1. What does the author think of the criticisms against Instagram?| A．They address the mental pain caused by Instagram. |
| B．They are not directed at the fundamental problem. |
| C．They are only based on the data released by Facebook. |
| D．They are effective in changing teens’ interest in addictive apps. |
| A．To defend why Facebook is to blame. |
| B．To show Netflix does more harm to teens. |
| C．To suggest the critics’ remarks are not to the point. |
| D．To compare the criticisms against it and Facebook. |
| A．People have a tendency to feel insecure online. |
| B．People are keen on making up their self-profile. |
| C．It is human nature to get addicted to social media. |
| D．Users decide on their experiences on social media. |
| A．The fierce criticism faced by Facebook. |
| B．The harmful impact of Instagram on teenagers. |
| C．The alarming online habits of teenagers worldwide. |
| D．The root of mental sufferings caused by Instagram. |
【推荐3】We spend a third of our adult lives working and another big part preparing for our careers. Historically, work was rarely seen as a source of meaning and purpose. During the vast majority of our 300, 000-year human evolution(进化), work was in fact pretty simple. We worked to eat and avoid being eaten. Meaning and purpose came from somewhere else, like spirituality, art, religion, or science.
The idea that we are meant to find meaning at work or to find work meaningful-is a rather modern, if not postmodern, invention. Only one hundred years ago it would have been frequent to see a worker who returned from a typical workday at a factory complain to their folks that they didn’t earn much or they were worn out and rare to see that they complain they didn’t experience a sense of purpose.
Similarly, the idea that we ought to bring our “whole self” to work is a pretty novel and recent form of career advice. Its origins can be traced to William Kahn who invented the concept of employee engagement 30 years ago. His point was that employees differ in the degree to which they identify with their work role. Some see work as merely a job and clock in and out every day, without bringing their whole self to work. Work is just not a core aspect of their identity, and their concept of themselves is built on other social categories like mother, husband, American, Christian, captain of the local soccer team, etc.
Others, however, have very low psychological distance with their work role, seeing it as essentially intertwined(交融的) with who they are. They don’t just come to work, they are fully devoted to their careers and have a spiritual type of connection with their jobs. They are, it seems, almost possessed by work and are the type of workaholics(工作狂) most companies long for.
1. Why did we spend much of our adult lives working?| A．To prepare for future careers. | B．To find the water sources. |
| C．To help us evolve. | D．To make us survive. |
| A．To help us find meaning at work. | B．To prove that the idea was modern. |
| C．To show us the bad old days. | D．To complain about the experience. |
| A．Employees have different understandings about their work role. |
| B．Every employee must bring their whole self to work. |
| C．To be devoted to work is a pretty novel idea. |
| D．Workers’ core identity is built on art categories. |
| A．Those who see work as a job. |
| B．Those who identify with their work role. |
| C．Those who are fully devoted to their work. |
| D．Those who possess experience. |
