1 . Three young men were on a crowded train when they encountered a heavily armed terrorist. With little regard for their personal safety, they rushed the terrorist and controlled him. Only some people seem capable of this split-second form of heroism. Why some men rise to the occasion — and others don’t — has been a bit tricky to explain. Psychologists have explored this question through biological and personality psychology.

Of course, heroism and courage can appear in many forms, and men and women risk their reputations, health, and social standing to do what they think is right. When it comes to physically risky bravery, people assume that men will take the lead. There are sound biological reasons for this fixed image. One of the most common fears in men is that they’ll be outed as a coward (懦夫), and a man who fails to display physical courage will suffer damage to his reputation in a way that a woman will not. Throughout human history, attaining a position of high status or dominance among one’s peers (同龄人) has been the ticket that needs to get punched for men to attract mates and father children.

People tend to have an idea of what heroes are like. When rating the personalities of movie heroes, participants expected them to be more careful and hard-working, open to experience, agreeable, and emotionally stable than the average person. But some studies indicate that people who exhibit heroic behavior score high on personality usually associated with madmen: risk-taking, sensation seeking, coolness under stress, and a tendency to take over in social situations.

The study of the relationship between personality and heroism is at an early stage. Psychologists are still at a loss to predict in advance who will heroically step up when needed. Often, the hero is an otherwise ordinary person who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances. Meanwhile, some individuals trained to behave heroically might hesitate during a crisis. Future disasters will cry out for further acts of true heroism. Hopefully, the right mix of circumstances and personalities enable courage to carry the day.

3 . What do you think of being roommates with someone from a totally different generation? Lately, more and more Americans are becoming intergenerational (跨代的)roommates, and they’re changing the way people think they should be living.

Since 1971, there has been a major rise in intergenerational living arrangements in the United States, which refers to people from different generations living together with at least one generation gap. In fact, data show that this number has actually become four times larger since then. In a Pew Research Center article, it shared that by March 2021, there were 59.7 million Americans that had many generations living under one roof.

There are many factors that come into play for these types of arrangements. For some, it’s because of the increase in the average life-expectancy age (寿命), a decreased birth rate, a rise in college educational fees, the ever rising rentals and more. But if anything, many say that one main reason behind the rise is that older people have space to rent out and that having younger people around just makes them happier.

A 25-year-old student Nadia Abdullah and her 64-year-old roommate Judith were content with their present life. Their arrangement was $700 a month from Nadia, plus the promise of her doing some help around the house. This also allowed Nadia to live just 6 miles from her working place. Nadia was matched with Judith through a renting center specifically created to find intergenerational roommates.

Another young renting center reviewer, Kaplan, also gave some opinions on the service, saying, “Through this, I lived with Sarah while attending Harvard. She provided the knowledge you just can’t Google — showing me how to garden, how to cook fish and add French Romanticism to life.”