首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
April Fools Day Is No Joke A)As our society gets ever more serious and humorless, here’s why we need to laugh more. The average
April Fools Day Is No Joke A)As our society gets ever more serious and humorless, here’s why we need to laugh more. The average
admin
2016-10-18
15
问题
April Fools Day Is No Joke
A)As our society gets ever more serious and humorless, here’s why we need to laugh more. The average American adult laughs just 18 times a day. That’s down from the eight laughs an hour they enjoyed when they were five years old. This, according to emerging research in the behavioral sciences, is a big problem.
B)While schools are instituting anti-bullying programs, research finds that many forms of teasing are actually highly beneficial. These days, comedy is everywhere—on television, in movies, and all over the Internet. Yet our lives lack levity. We are over-scheduled, over-tired, and over-worked. Who has time to crack jokes with friends anymore? Plus, being funny seems to be riskier than ever. One failed joke can light up the Twitter sphere.
C)Modern science, however, suggests humor might be far more important and powerful than most of us realize—and that we could all stand to benefit from doubling down on comedy.
D)Over the centuries, most scholars focused on humor’s dark side. Plato and Aristotle believed comedy was all about exerting superiority over your peers and delighting in others’ follies(罪恶). Freud thought humor was a psychic release valve for people to release their dirty and repressed thoughts. When Lord Chesterfield, the champion of eighteenth-century manners, noted in one of his famous letters that "there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter," he was echoing the common opinion of philosophers and historians alike.
E)But increasingly, scientists are embracing and examining the brighter side of life, with a special emphasis on what makes people happy. No wonder then, that humor is now seen as a virtue in the increasingly popular positive psychology movement, alongside concepts like creativity, curiosity and love.
F)But that’s just the beginning. Humor, for example, has been shown to significantly enhance relationships, romantic and otherwise. If two people can make each other laugh, after all, they likely share many of the same values, beliefs, and interests—the bedrock(基石)of healthy relationships. No wonder, then that a survey of 700 men and women found that people considered humor one of the most important characteristics when choosing a partner. And studies of happy marriages, especially those lasting more than 50 years, find spouses often credit their marital bliss to laughing together.
G)Humor can also smooth interactions and build bonds. While schools are instituting anti-bullying programs, research finds that many forms of gentle teasing are actually highly beneficial. Such verbal and physical play is integral for setting social boundaries, easing conflicts, and negotiating the uncertainties of life. Humor even seems to help serious business negotiations. In one study, people trying to bargain down the price of a landscape painting were more likely to come to an agreement if the person on the other side of the negotiating table cracked, "I’ll throw in my pet frog. "
H)There are less obvious benefits to enjoying a joke. Comedy challenges assumptions and humor broadens perspectives, thus enhancing creativity. In one experiment, researchers had people try to solve a classic-puzzle: attach a candle to a blank wall using only the candle, a box of tacks, and some matches. Folks who watched slapstick comedy were more successful at solving the task—tack the box to the wall and then use a match to melt the candle onto the box—than those who had watched a math video or exercised.
I)Being funny can also be a useful way to point out what is wrong with the world. In fact, the former leader of the Serbian youth movement Otpor, claims " laughtivism" —injecting humor into its protest movements—was one of the main reasons they were able to overthrow President Slobodan in 2000. According to him, jokes like this made the protesters seem cool and courageous and made Slobodan look stupid. As the butt of the joke, he faced a lose-lose situation: He could either allow activists to make fun of him—or risk looking like he couldn’t take a joke.
J)While most of us aren’t focused on overthrowing despots, that doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from a more personal version of ’"laughtivism"—using humor to navigate the frustrations and slights we face in our daily lives. Research shows that while people don’t like complainers, they do like humorous complainers— those who manage to vent wittily about bad weather or a terrible customer service experience.
K)And finally, although science hasn’t proven that laughter is the best medicine, it has shown that humor is a potentially powerful mechanism to deal with physical and psychological pain. Historical records indicate that people facing great suffering, from Holocaust victims to prisoners of war, found humor to be an important way to cope—findings bolstered by laboratory and clinical research. In one especially touching experiment, researchers interviewed a group of widowers six months after the death of their spouses. Those able to smile and laugh about their marriage during this time of lingering sadness had fewer problems with grief and depression in the years that followed.
L)The science is clear: We’d all benefit from living a more humorous life. But how, exactly, do we do that? It might help to understand what makes things funny in the first place. While deconstructing humor has stumped scholars for millennia, we’re partial to the benign violation theory, a new comedic axiom McGraw developed with his collaborator Caleb Warren and has been testing at the University of Colorado’s Humor Research Lab(HuRL). The theory proposes that people are amused by situations that seem wrong or threatening in some way(i.e. , a violation), but are actually okay or safe(i. e. , benign). For example, tickling is a harmless physical attack and therefore funny—as long as it’s at the hands of someone you know and trust. And puns misuse language in a way that makes sense—at least to the people who care about language and can understand the joke.
M)The idea that humor arises from potentially negative experiences, from violations, points to where we should all be looking for more comedic fodder. Mark Twain had it light when he quipped. " The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in Heaven. ’’ Paradise is no place for laughs— but a boring meeting, a traffic jam, or a family holiday?
N)Even better, transforming these violations into benign violations—finding a way to laugh them—robs these stresses and strains of their bite.
O)So, if you want to inject more humor into your life, you could go to more comedy clubs or increase your intake of silly movies. That would surely increase your laughs per hour—but we prefer a different approach, one that isn’t dependent on what comedian’s in town or the quality of the latest Will Ferrell Flick: teach yourself to think like a comedian. Take a step back from the faults and foibles of daily life, and find a way to laugh at them. Take what’s wrong, in other words, and find a way to make it okay.
People who you know and trust can use some situations that easily cause misunderstanding to entertain themselves.
选项
答案
L
解析
定位句提到“这种理论认为,人们会因为一些场景而感到好笑,这些场景通常是错误或者让人受到威胁的场景(这就是违反),但事实上却是安全的(这就是良性)。例如,挠痒痒就是一种身体攻击行为,但只要这种情况掌握在你信任或你了解的人手中,它就会变得有趣。”题干中的easily cause misun—derstanding是对论述中seem wrong or threat—ening in some way的同义转述,entertain是对amused的同义转述。因此L)正确。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/kXmFFFFM
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
A、Hemustbejoking.B、Hemightbeserious.C、Hecan’tbecomealawyer.D、Heneedsbusinesstraining.B从该女士的回答可以看出,Steve已多次说他想学一
White-hotTrainingintheSociety1.目前社会上的各种培训趋于白热化2.阐明这种现象产生的原因3.说明这种现象带来的影响
Ahundredyearsago,itwasassumedandscientifically"proved"byeconomiststhatthelawsofsocietymadeitnecessarytohave
Althoughonemightnotthinksofromsomeofthecriticismofit,advertising【B1】______thekindofsocietyintheUnitedKingdo
Althoughonemightnotthinksofromsomeofthecriticismofit,advertising【B1】______thekindofsocietyintheUnitedKingdo
Althoughonemightnotthinksofromsomeofthecriticismofit,advertising【B1】______thekindofsocietyintheUnitedKingdo
随机试题
典型的产品生命周期一般可分为
慢性阻塞性肺病(COPD)包括
正常成人自然开口度平均约为
乙公司的下列行为,构成不正当竞争的是()。关于消费者林某等人的损害赔偿请求权,下列意见正确的是()。
基桩静载试验,每级加载量一般为预估最大荷载的()。
(),是指政府根据本国不同时期产业结构的变化趋势而制定的,旨在通过产业间资源的合理配置,影响与推动产业结构的调整与优化,促进经济增长的产业政策。
占整个电信业务收入比重最大的业务在2002年上半年中与去年同期相比变化情况是()。下列说法中不正确的是()。
使儿童更好地适应互联网时代,不仅意味着要让他们掌握计算机技术、会使用计算机查找信息,更重要的在于要让儿童对互联网上_______的信息有清醒的辨别能力。填入画横线部分最恰当的一项是()。
下列关于宽带城域网核心交换层特点的描述中,错误的是()。
下列引用的定义中,()是错误的。
最新回复
(
0
)