2 . As a young child, I was painfully shy. I’d watch other children play in the park, wishing I could join them, but I was too scared to approach. Eventually, my mother would come to the rescue. She’d ask the other kids if I could play, too. Today, I feel comfortable giving public lectures in large halls and having conversations in small groups, but I still tend to avoid situations in which I’m expected to spend time with a roomful of strangers.

There could be many reasons. For one thing, I might be carrying some childhood fear of rejection. But beyond that possibility, one likely element is that I tend to underestimate how much people like me after I meet them, as most of us do.

A new research paper reports that the common concern that new people may not like us, or that they may not enjoy our company, is largely unfounded.

Erica Boothby of Cornell University and her colleagues conducted a series of studies to find out what our conversation partners really think of us. In doing so, they discovered a new cognitive illusion (认知错觉) they call “the liking gap”: our failure to realize how much strangers appreciate our company after a bit of conversation.

The researchers observed the gap in a variety of situations: strangers getting acquainted in the research laboratory, first-year college students getting to know their dormitory mates over the course of many months, and community members meeting fellow participants in personal development workshops. In each circumstance, people consistently underestimated how much others liked them. For much of the academic year, as dormitory mates got to know each other and even started to develop enduring friendships, the liking gap persisted.

The data also revealed some of the potential reasons for the illusion: we are often more severe with ourselves than with others, and our inner critic prevents us from appreciating how positively other people evaluate us. Not knowing what our conversation partners really think of us, we use our own thoughts as a proxy (代理人). This is a mistake, because our thoughts tend to be more negative than reality.

4 . You’ve reached that special time — you are getting ready to leave your job and move on to the next step in your career. But the end of an employment relationship is not necessarily the end of the relationship — with either the leader or the company.     1    

I learned this relatively early in my career. At first, I was concerned I might lose my relationship with my now former boss, as I truly liked him.    2    My boss enthusiastically stayed in touch with me, and I helped him onboard my replacement and consulted on other projects. And now, more than 2 decades since I left, we are still in communication and friends.

That isn’t to say it always goes like this. When I left another role, in spite of my desire to maintain communication, my former supervisor seemed indifferent and the relationship ended. Sometimes your boss was a nightmare and you want to end the relationship.     3     You don’t owe the bad bosses anything. That’s exactly what I did when I was fired from a freelance role after I asked to be paid for my completed work!

But for the good bosses and organizations, the ones that invested in your talent and celebrated your achievements, things are different.     4     The breakup can become a breakthrough.

    5     Especially when you have a truly delightful and respectful boss, you may feel guilt, sadness, or regret. But your overall responsibility is to yourself and your career — not to one organization. And given the right circumstances, it is almost always possible — and usually beneficial — to leave gracefully.

5 . When romantic partners argue over things like finances, jealousy, or other interpersonal issues, they tend to employ their current feelings as fuel for a heated argument. But thinking about the future helps overcome relationship conflicts, according to a University of Waterloo study just published online in Social Psychological and Personality Science. Alex Huynh, a doctoral candidate in psychology is the lead author of the study, which he published with Igor Grossmann from the University of Waterloo, and Daniel Yang from Yale University.

Previous research has shown that third-perspective reasoning can be a positive strategy for reconciliation (调解) of interpersonal struggles. Huynh and his collaborators investigated whether similar benefit can be induced by simply thinking about the future. Study participants were instructed to reflect on a recent conflict with a romantic partner or a close friend. One group of participants were then asked to describe how they would feel about the conflict one year in the future, while another group was asked to describe how they feel in the present.

The team examined participants’ written responses through a text-analysis program for their use of pronouns — such as I, me, she, he. These choices of pronouns were used to capture participants’ focus on the feelings and behaviour of those involved in the conflict. Written responses were also examined for forgiveness and reinterpreting the conflict more positively, both of which implied the participants’ use of reasoning strategies.

The researchers found that envisioning future relationship affected both participants’ focus on their feelings, and their reasoning strategies. As a result, participants reported more positivity about their relationship altogether, especially when study participants extended their thinking about the relationship a year into the future.

“Our study demonstrates that adopting a future-oriented perspective in the context of a relationship conflict — reflecting on how one might feel a year from now — may be a valuable coping tool for one’s psychological happiness and relationship well-being,” said Huynh.

6 . Four Qualities That Make You Attractive to Others

There is something many people gets wrong about attraction.     1     The reality is that attraction usually has more to do with personality characteristics than appearance. What follows are four qualities that can make you highly attractive to others.

Have control over your emotions(情绪). It’s not easy to always have control over your emotions. And people who do are extremely attractive. Have control over your emotions so that your emotions don’t control you. Allow yourself to think about what you’re going to say.     2    

Laugh at yourself. It’s not what happens to us that makes us feel stressed.     3     Every time you laugh at yourself, you decide to minimize something that could affect you negatively. Laughing at yourself is an attractive quality, as it means you don’t take yourself too seriously.

    4     When you show your warmth, people see you as respectful and friendly. Also, they see you as someone approachable. A warm person says hello to and cares about you after your long and tough day. This quality is important for you to build meaningful relationships.

Give plenty of space. The secret to long-lasting relationships is space, because time apart helps each partner recharge and bring positive energy into the relationship.     5     They don’t let others breathe. Instead, those who let others have their space when they need it are extremely attractive.

7 . Personality is one of the most interesting ways in which people are different from one another. But where does our personality come from? Are we ________ with it or does it change as we get older? A great deal of research into personality indicates that people’s personalities are more or less ________ before they are born. However, not everyone is ________. Psychologist Sanjay Srivastava and a team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have just completed a large-scale study into personality. The researchers evaluated data from 132, 515 adults aged between 21 and 60. The team focused on five personality traits—what scientists call “The Big Five”. These are:

1. Conscientiousness—how careful, thorough and self-disciplined are you?

2.________ —how considerate and helpful are you?

3. Neuroticism—how self-conscious and tense are you?

4. Openness—how ________ , imaginative and open to new experiences are you?

5. Extraversion—how sociable and energetic are you?

What they found contradicted long-held assumptions about ________ personalities are set. Conscientiousness, a trait marked by organization and discipline and linked to success at work and in relationships, was found to increase through the age ranges studied, with the most ________ occurring in a person’s twenties. Similarly, agreeableness, a trait associated with being warm, generous and helpful, contradicted the theory that personalities don’t change after the age of 30.________, people in the study showed the most change in agreeableness during their thirties and continued to improve through their sixties.

The changes in these two traits revealed in the study seem to ________ the experiences that people tend to have at certain stages of their lives. Common sense tells us that people become more responsible and conscientious as they ________ and become better at managing their jobs and relationships. Similarly, agreeableness changes most in people’s thirties when many of them are raising a family and take on the role of ________. Openness showed small ________ in both men and women over time, a change that indicates less interest in forming new relationships, and reflects the tendency we have as we get older to spend more time with a small group of well-known relatives and friends, and less time going out and meeting ________ people.

The personality traits were ________ consistent between men and women, except for neuroticism and extraversion, with young women scoring higher than young men in both. However, the difference in neuroticism is only apparent in youth and young adulthood, and the gap between men and women in both neuroticism and extraversion ________ as people age.

9 . “I’m sorry” are two very important words that play a big part in daily life. You might apologize while squeezing through a crowd or using the last of the printer paper at work. It’s easy to say “I’m sorry”, but true apologies are a different story.    1     Or you may wonder how to properly demand an apology if the other person is at fault? With the following tips, you’ll find these are not hard.

Apologize sincerely. A genuine apology can help repair your relationship, and even your reputation—you’re showing that you can be trusted to do what’s right. But your relationship will remain tense if your apology seems casual.    2    

Apply specific principles. A meaningful apology comes down to the three R’s- regret, responsibility and remedy (补救办法). Firstly, communicate your regret. Show the other person you have recognized your error and can relate to his/her pain. Then take complete responsibility.    3     Lastly, show that you’re working to improve the situation. Offer to make up for the harm you caused or promise you wouldn’t repeat it again.

    4    If you’re the offended (冒犯) party, describe what’s changed in the relationship and your true feeling. For example, you could say, “Although there’s a disagreement between you and me, I want us to be friends again. But I’ve been hurt, and I’d like an apology. I need you to acknowledge what you’ve done.”

Don’t expect immediate forgiveness. Most people hope for immediate forgiveness while apologizing, but that may mean you don’t respect the others’ emotions and all you care about is yourself.    5    After all, they were hurt and it would take them a while to recover.

10 . Internal communication, also known as IC, refers to a group of processes responsible for effective circulation of message within an organization. These messages are information that is valuable to the organization and are supposed to be kept confidential(机密的). The means of transferring this information is often done through emails, letters, notice boards, and even with the help of social media like Skype, Zoom, and Google Meet, in the current times.

Honest internal communication is the healthiest way to keep your organization growing. With honesty around the workplace, it is a safer environment for the employees to voice their opinions which could help in the modification of a certain operation that might have been outdated. Other than changes, not opening up to your colleagues can result in frustration and give rise to “gossip culture” at the workplace. When information is not passed out with lucidity, not only does the quality of work get affected but it also gives rise to questioning the worth of the time spent in the company.

An atmosphere of honesty also encourages growth in responsibility, leadership, and self-accountability. If the CEO of a company voices the shortcomings of his team in a respectful manner, it would bring room for each and every employee to take it on a positive note and bring around the change for the one common goal of development of the company that they are working for. This brings a lot of change in the attitude of every individual employee since they start seeing the company that they are working for as an asset that they cherish (珍爱) dearly.

In a workplace, things go both wrong and right, so it is important to both appreciate and criticize when such situations occur from the end of both the leadership and the employees. The positives should be celebrated while the negatives should be taken as positive criticisms that could help the company grow into something better. The main goal of unity and development should always be kept in mind.