Do you often feel lonely? What do you do when you feel that way? Hide yourself away and spend your time reading, watching TV or walking around? You might think that feeling lonely is just like feeling happy, sad or scared -- that it's just one of your various moods. That is true. However, if you let yourself be lonely for too long without dealing with it, you could be making a serious mistake. Doctors have known for some time that feeling lonely is bad for the mind. It can lead to mental health problems such as depression, stress and reduce confidence. "Being lonely means not feeling connected or cared for, but it's not about being mentally alone," Lisa Jaremka, scientist from Ohio State University, US, told Live Science in January. And there's growing evidence that not having friends is connected with physical illness as well. In 2006, for example, scientists studied 2,800 women who had cancer. They found that those who had few friends or family were five times more likely to die of their disease than women with many social contacts. Also, even healthy people had a better chance of falling ill if they felt left out by others, according to the BBC. The results have scientists thinking that loneliness might hurt the immune system , which protects the body from diseases. Hoping to prove this theory, Jaremka and her research team put volunteers through a stress test. During the test, volunteers were asked to make an unprepared speech in front of a group of stony-faced people. The researchers found that volunteers who said they were lonely in their daily lives felt more stress during the test. And their blood samples showed that all the stress had managed to cause harmful changes to their immune system. "Loneliness has been thought of in many ways as a chronic stressor -- a socially painful situation that can last for quite a long time, " explained Jaremka, who led the study. The number of people suffering from loneliness is increasing all over the world. However, solving the problem is easier said than done.... What was the purpose of the stress test carried out by Jaremka's team? A) To find out how people fight diseases. B) To prove loneliness hurts people's immune systems. C) To find out the relationship between loneliness and stress. D) To see how people's emotions change when they give unprepared speeches.
B
"Oh,you must have been a spoiled kid.You must be really bossy.I wonder what you're going to be like to deal with?" That's often the response Angela Hult gets when people find out she's an only child,she told ABC News.Despite such negative remarks,Hult has decided to have only one child herself.And she's not alone. According to the US' Office for National Statistics,women approaching the end of their childbearing years had an average of 1.9 children in 2004,compared with 3.1 for their counterparts in 1976.The percentage of onechild families in Britain had risen from 18 percent in 1972 to 26 percent in 2007. But even though only children are becoming increasingly common,the traditional view that they're selfish,spoiled and lack social skills holds strong.Even parents of only children,like Hult,are made to feel guilty about having only one child.Worried that they're being selfish and endangering their child's future,they flock to online discussion forums seeking advice.Soon,however,they ask themselves:is this social prejudice really reasonable? "There have been hundreds and hundreds of research studies that show that only children are no different from their peers ," Susan Newman,a social psychologist at Rutgers University in the US,told ABC News. This raises another question:why are only children still viewed with such suspicion? "There is a belief that's been around probably since humans first existed that to have just one child is somehow dangerous,both for you and for the continuation of your race," Toni Falbo,a professor of educational psychology,told the Guardian."In the past a lot of children died.You'd have had to be crazy to only have one." Times,of course,have changed and infant mortality has largely reduced.So what do only children themselves say? Kayley Kravitz,a blogger for The Huffington Post,grew up as an only child and highly recommends the experience."Being an only child taught me the most valuable skill of all:the ability to be alone," she said. What does Susan Newman mean? A) Only children are as good as their peers. B) Only children are more selfish and spoiled. C) Parents feel guilty about having only one child. D) Parents will endanger their only child's future.
A
Q: Why are newspapers and TV broadcasts filled with disaster, corruption and incompetence? It may be because we're drawn to depressing stories without realizing, according to psychologists. When you read the news, sometimes it can feel like the only things reported are terrible, depressing events. Why do the media concentrate on the bad things in life, rather than the good? In fact, many people often say that they would prefer good news. The researchers present their experiment as solid evidence of a so called "negativity bias ", psychologists' term for our collective hunger to hear, and remember bad news. It isn't just delight in other people's misfortune, the theory goes, but that we've evolved to react quickly to potential threats. Bad news could be a signal that we need to change what we're doing to avoid danger. As you'd expect from this theory, there's some evidence that people respond quicker to negative words. In lab experiments, flash the word "cancer", "bomb" or "war" up at someone and they can hit a button in response quicker than if that word is "baby", "smile" or "fun". We are also able to recognize negative words faster than positive words, and even tell that a word is going to be unpleasant before we can tell exactly what the word is going to be. There's another interpretation that researchers put on their evidence: we pay attention to bad news, because on the whole, we think the world is more hopeful than it actually is. When it comes to our own lives, most of us believe we're better than average, and that, like the cliches, we expect things to be all right in the end. This pleasant view of the world makes bad news all the more surprising and arresting. It is only against a light background that the dark spots are highlighted. So our attraction to bad news may be more complex than just journalistic prejudice or a hunger springing from the darkness within. What will be read first by most readers according to the theory? A) Movie star arrested for taking drugs. B) Movie star went on a campaign for ASL disease. C) Movie star accepts Ice Bucket Challenge D) Movie star awarded the third Oscar in three years.
A: A