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The International Day of Happiness, which falls on March 20 every year, reminds people of the importance of happiness.     1    

According to Martin Seligman, a US psychology professor, happiness is about doing things that are engaging and meaningful.     2     “Meaningful” means using our strengths to help others or to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

Psychologist Dan Baker says our purpose doesn’t have to be huge. For example, a 17-year-old’s purpose might be to get into their preferred college.     3    

After understanding what happiness is, you might wonder what affects our happiness.

    4     According to Sonja Lyubomirsky, a US psychology professor, about 50 percent of our happiness comes from genes (基因), 40 percent from our intentions (意图), and 10 percent from our circumstances (境况).

Life circumstances like getting a new car or a promotion don’t lead to long-lasting happiness because we get used to them. To keep feeling happy, we need to control how we act and think.

    5     When we were kids, we felt happy when we got attention and things from our family and friends. As we get older, we realize that caring for others is important, and being selfless brings fulfillment (满足).

Most of us have gone away from “mad men” in the street, only to find that they are in fact using a bluetooth headset. Now a new study done in University of Pennsylvania shows that muttering “key, key, key” can actually help normal people find the things they lost. Saying a word helps focus the mind on something people are looking for and it works more effectively than seeing a written description. Repeating the word over and over again helps even more.

It is suggested that children speaking to themselves while doing step-by-step tasks, like tying shoelaces, can help guide their behavior and let them focus on the job in hand. However, scientists were not sure if speaking aloud when completing tasks could help adults in the same way, especially when looking for special objects. Prof. Gary Lupan and Prof. Daniel Swingley, writing for the Quanerly Joumal of Experimental Psychology, believe the next time you lose your keys, muttering “keys, keys, keys” while looking for them could in fact help you find them. Encouraged by viewing people muttering to themselves as they try to find things like peanut butter in a supermarket, researchers conducted two experiments to see if this actually worked.

In the first experiment, participants were shown 20 pictures of various objects and were asked to find a certain one, with some seeing a note telling them what they were looking for. These participants were then asked to search for the items again while saying the word to themselves, with results showing that saying it aloud helped people find the object more quickly. The second experiment saw participants doing a virtual shopping task, where they were shown photographs of items commonly found on supermarket shelves. They were asked to find all instances of a particular item, so if they were asked for apples, they had to find all the bags of apples as quickly as possible.

Researchers from University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Pennsylvania, both in the US, found there was an advantage in saying the name of the product aloud when they were searching for something familiar.

【推荐1】If you look around your city, you might spot girls wearing hanfu in subways or people wearing T-shirts with Chinese characters on the streets. There is a new trend (趋势) called guochao or “China-chic”. “China-chic” means the rise of China’s native fashion (时尚) trends.

Before 2018, big-name foreign companies played a main part in the world market. However, during the 2018 New York Fashion Week, Chinese sportswear brand Li-Ning changed things up. It introduced its Wu Dao collection. The collection not only had a fashionable look, but also included elements (元素) of traditional Chinese culture. It immediately caught people’s eyes at home and abroad.

Soon, Chinese native brands have become more and more popular all over China. For example, White Rabbit, whose sweet candies bring back childhood memories for many people, began to sell other products, like milk tea and ice cream. By doing so, it won the heart of young people. “We want White Rabbit to be a brand that young people want to share,” said Shen Qinfeng, the company’s manager.

In 2021, some Western brands refused to buy Xinjiang cotton. To show cultural confidence, millions of Chinese refused to buy these Western brands and turned to Chinese native brands that support Xinjiang cotton, like Li-Ning and Anta.

No matter how the guochao trend develops, there is one thing that won’t change — Chinese people’s growing confidence in national culture.

【推荐2】British researchers at Cardiff University were surprised to find that both men and women were thought to look better by covering the lower half of their faces. They also discovered that a face with a disposable surgical mask (外科口罩) was likely to be the most attractive (吸引人的).

Dr. Michael Lewis, a psychologist (心理学家) and a researcher in faces, said the research found that surgical masks reduced attractiveness because they had something to do with disease or illness before COVID-19 broke out.

“We want to test whether this has changed since face coverings became everywhere. We also wonder whether the type of masks do any good,” he said. “Our study suggests faces are thought most attractive when they are covered by surgical masks. This may be because we are used to healthcare workers who are wearing blue masks and now we connect these with nurses and doctors.”

The first part of the research was carried out in February, 2021. At that time, the British people had become used to wearing masks in most public places. In the research, 43 women were asked to give a score of 1 to 10 the attractiveness of images of men’s faces without a mask, covered with a cloth mask, a blue surgical mask, and with a black book covering the area a facemask would hide. They said that those who were wearing a cloth mask were more attractive than the ones with no masks. But the surgical mask—which was just a normal, disposable kind—made the wearer look even better.

“COVID-19 has changed our way in how we think of the mask wearers. When we see someone wearing a mask, we no longer think ‘that person has a disease and I need to stay away’,” Lewis said. “It is possible that masks make people more attractive because they pay more attention to the wearers’ eyes.”

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