2 . A study by a team of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) psychologists has found a link between extraverts (外向的人) and their word choices. The finding highlights the need for stronger linguistic indicators to be developed for use in online personality prediction tools, which are being rapidly adopted by companies to improve digital marketing strategies.

Today, marketing companies use predictive algorithms (算法) to help them forecast what consumers want based on their online behaviors. For example, an extravert consumer might be attracted to marketing messages that match their personality, and retail brands could then choose to target such consumers by using more extraverted and creative language to advertise their products. However, personality prediction tools available today that are used by marketing firms are not entirely accurate due to a lack of theoretically sound designs. This may lead to a weakness affecting the performance of the machine learning algorithms. This begs the question—how should we create robust and accurate personality predictions?

The study found a correlation between extraverts and their tendency to use certain categories of words. The results showed a small strength of relationship between extraversion and the use of “positive emotion words” and “social process words.”

Positive emotion words are defined as words that describe a pleasant emotional state, such as “love”, ”happy”, or “blessed”, or that indicate positivity or optimism, such as “beautiful” or “nice”. Social process words include words containing personal pronouns except “I”, and words showing social intentions, such as “meet”, “share” and “talk”.

Moving forward, the NTU research team will investigate the relationship between extraversion and other word categories. They hope their work will provide clarity on the types of words that can help guide the development of more accurate machine learning tools for personality prediction.

How often do you say “thank you” to someone? Expressing we respect the persons we are grateful to can make our relationship     1     (strong) than before.

Expressing gratitude shows we care for the person who receives the gratitude. When we say “thank you” to another, we often respond with     2     (appreciate) for this good deed. Gratitude allows the two sides of the relationship to respond to goodness,     3     deepens the relationship in the end.

In addition to serving as a response to a good deed, it is clear that sharing in feelings of kindness in our relationship     4     (real) makes it more important to both parties.

Expressing gratitude     5     (celebrate) the positive in our relationship, bringing both sides closer together. Gratitude can be a starting point to discovering the positive aspects of our connections. Celebration of good moments—by means of a social media post     6     a hand-written thank-you note—can help bring both sides closer together.

Expressing gratitude makes us feel happy,     7     (satisfy), and builds the way for future acts of kindness in the relationship. Our relationship is the biggest predictor of happiness and health. So,     8     gratitude can strengthen our relationship, why not combine both sides     9     (gain) a more satisfying life? In fact, just     10     (consider) the gratefulness we feel towards others daily can be a strong start to improving our relationship.

6 . Building Your Children’s Social Skills

Parents should help build their children’s social skills, which will affect their relationships now and in the future. To start with, tell them that learning social skills is as important as mastering a language or riding a bicycle.

1. Set an example

    1     The way you interact with others teaches your child how to act. For example, if you want help, you should say, “Excuse me, would you mind helping me...?”

2. Encourage sharing and taking turns

The foundation to almost all pre-school relationships is sharing and taking turns.    2    Children who experience problems relating to other children often have not learned to share or take turns. However, if parents encourage their children to share toys and other things with other children, they will get along well with them, not just now but all their lives.

3. Practice social skills

Practice social skills with your child through interaction.    3    For instance, not interrupting people when they are talking is a way of behaving that children should learn from early on.

4. Give them opportunities to play

    4    For instance, take your child to a play group which includes other children of his or her age. As your child grows older, resist the temptation to butt in (介入); in other words, let your child form peer relationships by himself or herself.

5.     5    

Guide your child how to deal with an issue as a response to problems with social skills. When your child reports a problem with another child to you, ask questions about possible reasons for the other child’s behavior. By understanding why a peer acts in a certain way, your child can come up with ways to respond.

8 . In the days before air conditioning, a wife and her husband were visiting her parents in a small town. As they were relaxing one day, the wife’s father suggested that they all drive to Abilene for dinner. The son-in-law dreaded the hot drive to a town 53 miles away, but said OK to avoid being a rude guest. The wife and mother-in-law both said it sounded good, so they went off.

Having the not very good food and returning home hot and sweaty, the mother-in-law said they would never have taken the terrible trip if it had been up to her. The son-in-law said that he chose to agree because the others wanted to go. Finally, the father-in-law said he only suggested it because he thought the younger couple might be bored at home.

This story happened to Jerry B. Harvey who later became a university professor. In 1974 he told it in an article entitled, “The Abilene Paradox (悖论): The Management of Agreement”, which shows that sometimes a consensus (一致) of opinion may not lead to achieving the desired result. The Abilene paradox sounds like groupthink. But in fact, groupthink members are voting according to their conscience (是非感) while Abilene “paradoxers” are not.

Going along to get along arises from a desire to avoid conflict and unwillingness to be seen as the “spoiler” who criticizes ideas and plans that others favor. The choice to go against one’s conscience to please the group produces cognitive dissonance (认识失调), and could involve personal risk to relationships or career or both.

The only way for either groupthink or the Abilene paradox in planning or decision-making situations is to avoid agreeing publicly with something you disagree with privately. You can’t control what others in the group do, but at least you can speak up, “I’ll go if everyone else wants to, but I’d be just happy to stay here and relax”.

9 . A study published by Whillans and her colleagues found that 48 percent of college freshmen in their second term at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver believed that their friends had made more friends than they had since school began. Thirty-one percent felt the opposite.

“Since social activities, like eating or studying with others, tend to happen in cafes and libraries where they are easily seen, students might overestimate (高估) how much their friends are socializing because they don’t see them eating and studying alone,” says Frances Chen, the study’s senior author and a professor in the UBC psychology department.

A second, smaller study they published at the same time shows that feeling left out made the students pretty unhappy. “This was surprising”, Whillans says, “because many high-achieving people—the ones most likely going to college—believe they’re better equipped than their peers (同龄人) to handle challenges. But when peers appear to be doing better socially, that can contribute to feelings that there’s something wrong with us.”

While this study did not look specially at the influence of social media, other studies have shown that the way people use social tools to present only the good side makes others feel lonely and separated. “Social media always gives us the idea that other people are more social than us,” Whillans says. “We often fail to communicate when we fail, and that might be bad for us and also for our social network.” In the new study, first-year students in the sample of more than 1,000 students reported having 3.63 close friends on average at UBC, but they believed their friends had 4. 15 close friends.