1 . Back in the 1960s, a Harvard graduate student made a great discovery about human anger. At age 34, Jean Briggs was allowed to live in an Inuit community where many Inuit families lived a traditional life.
Briggs quickly realized something unusual was going on in these families.“They never got angry with me, and even showing a bit of anger was considered weak and childlike,” Briggs said. For example, once when someone knocked a hot pot of tea across the igloo (冰屋), damaging the ice floor, no one changed their look. “Too bad,” the person just said calmly and went to refill the teapot.
Briggs wrote up her observations (观察记录) in her book, Never in Anger. But she was left with questions: How do Inuit parents teach their children this ability? How do the Inuit turn irritable (易怒的) babies into cool-headed adults?
After reading Briggs' book, in early December I came to the Arctic town of Iqaluit, Canada, which is an Inuit town, in search of parenting wisdom, especially when it comes to teaching children to control their feelings. Right off the plane, I started collecting data (数据).
I sat with the elders in their 80s and 90s. I talked with moms. And I attended a local parenting class. All the moms mentioned one golden rule: Don't shout or yell at small children, for it is a tradition among the Inuit to see yelling at a small child as shameful.
The elders I spoke with said colonization (殖民) over the past century is harming the tradition, so the community is working hard to keep their parenting methods. Goota Jaw, who teaches the parenting class at Nunavut Arctic College, is in the front line of this effort. “Shouting is not how we teach our children,” Jaw said. “It is just teaching them to run away.”
“When we shout at a child, we' re training the child to shout,” said author Laura Markham. “Parents who control their own anger are helping their children learn to do the same.”
1. What did Briggs find about the Inuit?A.They often behaved like children. |
B.They began to lead a modern lifestyle. |
C.They developed a habit of drinking tea. |
D.They were quite able to control their anger. |
A.To study how Briggs wrote Never in Anger. |
B.To attend a class about the history of the Inuit. |
C.To find out how the Inuit raise cool-headed kids. |
D.To collect data on education in Inuit communities. |
A.Their parenting style is being harmed. |
B.Colonization will make the Inuit disappear. |
C.Inuit parents become too kind to their kids. |
D.Parenting classes are attracting fewer parents. |
A.Kids follow the example of parents. |
B.Teaching kids to be angry is necessary. |
C.Parents often learn parenting from their kids. |
D.It is sometimes OK to speak to kids seriously. |
2 . Sometimes your parents might ask you to write thank-you notes to people but you might not want to do it. However, writing thank-you notes can not only make you feel good but also make the person getting the note feel good.
Amit Kumar is a professor at the University of Texas. He worked with Nicholas Epley to do experiments to see why people hesitate to send thank-you notes. They also studied the reactions of people who received the notes.
Kumar and Epley asked students in business classes to write a letter of thanks to another person. And then they asked both the writers and the receivers how the letter made them feel.
As a result, they found that writing the letter was a good experience for the writers. It improved their mood right afterward though the writers only thought the letter would be embarrassing for someone who got a letter of thanks. However, that was not the case.
The writer worried about what to say and how to say it. However, Kumar says, the receivers did not care much about whether writers got the words right. Those who got letters felt really good.And they didn’t really feel embarrassed at all.
“When you are a receiver, you focus on the warmth,” Kumar says. The receivers considered the feelings on the letters while the writers only tried their best to make sure their writing was correct.
In general, most people don’t always realize that thank-you notes make others feel good. If they knew, things might change. “They would do it more often,” Kumar says.
Kumar thinks that this study is a good reminder. It shows that small things can have an effect. Writing a thank-you note is a simple thing. Still, it can make a big difference. We feel good when we do nice things for others.
1. What’s the purpose of Kumar and Epley’s experiment?A.To advise us to thank our parents. |
B.To see thank-you notes’ influence. |
C.To get children close to their parents. |
D.To prove letters are the best to show our thanks. |
A.Their writing skills. | B.Receivers’ feelings. |
C.Receivers’ warmth. | D.Their proper words. |
A.They enjoyed being thanked | B.They feel shame and sad. |
C.They didn’t care about the notes. | D.They hate writers’ mistaken ideas. |
A.Be generous to others. | B.Be willing to do nice things. |
C.Pay attention to small things. | D.Write thank-you notes frequently. |
Are your children getting on your last nerve? Did a coworker's comment rub you the wrong way? There's no need to plug the steam coming out of your ears. In fact, science now gives you full permission to release those emotions; you might actually be happier for it. If that seems counter—intuitive(违反直觉的), hear us out. A new study suggests that people tend to be happier if they can feel and express emotions as they want. That goes for unpleasant emotions like anger and hatred, too.
An international team of researchers recruited 2,300 university students from the United States, Brazil, China, Germany, Ghana, Israel, Poland, and Singapore. They then asked the participants to tell them which emotions they desired and which ones they actually felt, and then compared those responses to how the participants rated their overall happiness or life satisfaction.
The results showed an interesting trend. While participants wanted to experience more pleasant emotions, they reported higher life satisfaction if the emotions they experienced matched those they desired. More surprising still, 11 percent of people wanted to feel less of positive emotions, such as love and empathy, and 10 percent of people wanted to feel more negative emotions, such as hatred and anger.
At first glance, these result might seem confusing. But there's a simple explanation, according to the study's authors. Happiness is "more than simply feeling pleasure and avoiding pain," they write. It is also learning to release negative emotions when you feel them, instead of ignoring them or bottling them up.
"If you feel emotions you want to feel, even if they're unpleasant, then you're better off," lead researcher Dr Maya Tamir from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem told the BBC News website. 71
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She thought, "On the day of our 30th anniversary, I want to eat this rosy part of the bun. I
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It's not diamonds and flowers that can give us happiness in daily life,