Decision making and Happiness
A Americans today choose among more options in more parts of life than has ever been possible before. To an extent, the opportunity to choose enhances our lives. It is only logical to think that if some choice is good, more is better; people who care about having infinite options will benefit from them, and those who do not can always just ignore the 273 versions of cereal they have never tried. Yet recent research strongly suggests that, psychologically, this assumption is wrong. Although some choice is undoubtedly better than none, more is not always better than less.
B Recent research offers insight into why many people end up unhappy rather than pleased when their options expand. We began by making a distinction between "maximisers" (those who always aim to make the best possible choice) and "satisficers" (those who aim for "good enough, " whether or not better selections might be out there).
C In particular, we composed a set of statements—the Maximization Scale—to diagnose people’s propensity to maximize. Then we had several thousand people rate themselves from 1 to 7 (from "completely disagree" to "completely agree") on such statements as "I never settle for second best. " We also evaluated their sense, of satisfaction with their decisions. We did not define a sharp cutoff to separate maximisers from satisficers, but in general, we think of individuals whose average scores are higher than 4 (the scale’s midpoint) as maximisers and those whose scores are lower than the midpoint as satisficers. People who score highest on the test—the greatest maximisers—engage in more product comparisons than the lowest scorers, both before and after they make purchasing decisions, and they take longer to decide what to buy. When satisficers find an item that meets their standards, they stop looking. But maximisers exert enormous effort reading labels, checking out consumer magazines and trying new products. They also spend more time comparing their purchasing decisions with those of others.
D We found that the greatest maximisers are the least happy with the fruits of their efforts. When they compare themselves with others, they get little pleasure from finding out that they did better and substantial dissatisfaction from finding out that they did worse. They are more prone to experiencing regret after a purchase, and if their acquisition disappoints them, their sense of well-being takes longer to recover. They also tend to brood or ruminate more than satisficers do.
E Does it follow that maximisers are less happy in general than satisficers? We tested this by having people fill out a variety of questionnaires known to be reliable indicators of well-being. As might be expected, individuals with high maximization scores experienced less satisfaction with life and were less happy, less optimistic and more depressed than people with low maximization scores. Indeed, those with extreme maximization ratings had depression scores that placed them in the borderline clinical range.
F Several factors explain why more choice is not always better than less, especially for maximisers. High among these are "opportunity costs. " The quality of any given option cannot be assessed in isolation from its alternatives. One of the "costs" of making a selection is losing the opportunities that a different option would have afforded. Thus an opportunity cost of vacationing on the beach in Cape Cod might be missing the fabulous restaurants in the Napa Valley. EARLY DECISION-MAKING RESEARCH by Daniel Katmeman and Amos Tversky showed that people respond much more strongly to losses than gains. If we assume that opportunity costs reduce the overall desirability of the most preferred choice, then the more alternatives there are, the deeper our sense of loss will be and the less satisfaction we will derive from our ultimate decision.
G The problem of opportunity costs will be worse for a maximiser than for a satisficer. The latter’s "good enough" philosophy can survive thoughts about opportunity costs. In addition, the "good enough" standard leads to much less searching and inspection of alternatives than the maximiser’s "best" standard. With fewer choices under consideration, a person will have fewer opportunity costs to subtract.
H Just as people feel sorrow about the opportunities they have forgone, they may also suffer regret about the option they settle on. My colleagues and I devised a scale to measure proneness to feeling regret, and we found that people with high sensitivity to regret are less happy, less satisfied with life, less optimistic and more depressed than those with low sensitivity. Not surprisingly, we also found that people with high regret sensitivity tend to be maximisers. Indeed, we think that worry over future regret is a major reason that individuals become maximisers. The only way to be sure you will not regret a decision is by making the best possible one. Unfortunately, the more options you have and the more opportunity costs you incur, the more likely you are to experience regret.
I In a classic demonstration of the power of sunk costs, people were offered season subscriptions to a local theater company. Some were offered the tickets at full price and others at a discount. Then the researchers simply kept track of how often the ticket purchasers actually attended the plays over the course of the season. Full-price payers were more likely to show up at performances than discount payers. The reason for this, the investigators argued, was that the full-price payers would experience more regret if they did not use the tickets because not using the more costly tickets would constitute a bigger loss. To increase sense of happiness, we can decide to restrict our options when the decision is not crucial. For example, make a rule to visit no more than two stores when shopping for clothing.
参考答案：
Questions 1-4
Use the information in the passage to match the category (listed A-D) with descriptions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
A Maximiser
B Satisficer
C Both
D Neither of them
1.finish transaction when the items match their expectation B
2.buy the most expensive things when shopping D
3.consider repeatedly until they make final decision A
4. participate in the questionnaire of the author C
Questions 5-9
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1 In boxes 5-9 on your answer sheet, write
TRUEif the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
5. With the society’s advancement, more chances make our lives better and happier.False
6. There is difference of findings by different gender classification. Not Given
7. The feeling of loss is greater than that of acquisition. True
8. ‘Good enough’ plays a more significant role in pursuing ‘best’ standards of maximiser.False
9. There are certain correlations between the "regret" people and the maximisers. True
Questions 10-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
10. What is the subject of this passage?
A. regret makes people less happy
B. choices and Well-being
C. an interesting phenomenon
D. advices on shopping
11. According to conclusion of questionnaires, which of the following statement is correct?
A. maximisers are less happy
B. state of being optimistic is important
C. uncertain results are found
D. maximisers tend to cross bottom line
12. The experimental on theater tickets suggested:
A. sales are different according to each season
B. people like to spend on the most expensive items
C. people feel depressed if they spend their vouchers
D. people would regret if they failed to spend on discount sales.
13. What is author’s suggestion on how to increase happiness:
A. focus the final decision
B. be sensitive and smart
C. reduce the choice or option
D. read label carefully
Biomimetic Design
What has fins like a whale, skin like a lizard, and eyes like a moth? The future of engineering. Andrew Parker, an evolutionary biologist, knelt in the baking red sand of the Australian outback just south of Alice Springs and eased the right hind leg of a thorny devil into a dish of water.
A “Its back is completely drenched!” Sure enough，after 30 seconds, water from the dish had wicked up the lizard’s leg and was glistening all over its prickly hide. In a few seconds more the water reached its mouth, and the lizard began to smack its jaws with evident satisfaction. It was, in essence, drinking through its foot. Given more time, the thorny devil can perform this same conjuring trick on a patch of damp sand— a vital competitive advantage in the desert. Parker had come here to discover precisely how it does this, not from purely biological interest, but with a concrete purpose in mind: to make a thomy-devil-inspired device that will help people collect lifesaving water in the desert. “The water’s spreading out incredibly fast!” he said, as drops from his eyedropper fell onto the lizard’s back and vanished, like magic. “Its skin is far more hydrophobic than I thought. There may well be hidden capillaries, channeling the water into the mouth.”
B Parker，s work is only a small part of an increasingly vigorous, global biomimetics movement. Engineers in Bath, England, and West Chester, Pennsylvania, are pondering the bumps on the leading edges of humpback whale flukes to learn how to make airplane wings for more agile flight. In Berlin, Germany, the fingerlike primary feathers of raptors are inspiring engineers to develop wings that change shape aloft to reduce drag and increase fuel efficiency. Architects in Zimbabwe are studying how termites regulate temperature, humidity, and airflow in their mounds in order to build more comfortable buildings, while Japanese medical researchers are reducing the pain of an injection by using hypodermic needles edged with tiny serrations, like those on a mosquito’s proboscis, minimizing nerve stimulation.
C Ronald Fearing, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, has taken on one of the biggest challenges of all: to create a miniature robotic fly that is swift, small, and maneuverable enough for use in surveillance or search-and-rescue operations. Fearing made his own，one of which he held up with tweezers for me to see, a gossamer wand some 11 millimeters long and not much thicker than a cat’s whisker. Fearing has been forced to manufacture many of the other minute components of his fly in the same way, using a micromachining laser and a rapid prototyping system that allows him to design his minuscule parts in a computer, automatically cut and cure them overnight, and assemble them by hand the next day under a microscope.
D With the microlaser he cuts the fly’s wings out of a two-micron polyester sheet so delicate that it crumples if you breathe on it and must be reinforced with carbon-fiber spars. The wings on his current model flap at 275 times per second~faster than the insect’s own wings— and make the blowfly’s signature buzz. “Carbon fiber outperforms fly chitin,” he said, with a trace of selfsatisfaction. He pointed out a protective plastic box on the lab bench, which contained the fly-bot itself, a delicate, origami-like framework of black carbonfiber struts and hairlike wires that, not surprisingly, looks nothing like a real fly. A month later it achieved liftoff in a controlled flight on a boom. Fearing expects the fly-bot to hover in two or three years, and eventually to bank and dive with flylike virtuosity.
E Stanford University roboticist Mark Cutkosky designed a gecko-inspired climber that he christened Stickybot. In reality, gecko feet aren‘t sticky— they’re dry and smooth to the touch and owe their remarkable adhesion to some two billion spatula-tipped filaments per square centimeter on their toe pads, each filament only a hundred nanometers thick. These filaments are so small, in fact, that they interact at the molecular level with the surface on which the gecko walks, tapping into the low-level van der VVaals forces generated by molecules，fleeting positive and negative charges, which pull any two adjacent objects together. To make the toe pads for Stickybot, Cutkosky and doctoral student Sangbae Kim, the robot’s lead designer, produced a urethane fabric with tiny bristles that end in 30-micrometer points. Though not as flexible or adherent as the gecko itself, they hold the 500-gram robot on a vertical surface.
F Cutkosky endowed his robot with seven-segmented toes that drag and release just like the lizard，s， and a gecko-like stride that snugs it to the wall. He also crafted Stickybot’s legs and feet with a process he calls shape deposition manufacturing (SDM), which combines a range of metals, polymers, and furies to create the same smooth gradation from stiff to flexible that is present in the lizard’s limbs and absent in most man-made materials. SDM also allows him to embed actuators, sensors, and other specialized structures that make Stickybot climb better. Then he noticed in a paper on gecko anatomy that the lizard had branching tendons to distribute its weight evenly across the entire surface of its toes. Eureka. “When I saw that, I thought, Wow, that’s great!” He subsequently embedded a branching polyester cloth “tendon” in his robot’s limbs to distribute its load in the same way.
G Stickybot now walks up vertical surfaces of glass, plastic, and glazed ceramic tile, though it will be some time before it can keep up with a gecko. For the moment it can walk only on smooth surfaces, at a mere four centimeters per second, a fraction of the speed of its biological role model. The dry adhesive on Stickybot5s toes isn't self-cleaning like the lizard’s either, so it rapidly clogs with dirt. “There are a lot of things about the gecko that we simply had to ignore,” Cutkosky says. Still, a number of real-world applications are in the offing. The Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which funds the project, has it in mind for surveillance: an automaton that could slink up a building and perch there for hours or days, monitoring the terrain below. Cutkosky hypothesizes a range of civilian uses. “I‘m trying to get robots to go places where they’ve never gone before，“he told me. “I would like to see Stickybot have a real-world function, whether it，s a toy or another application. Sure, it would be great if it eventually has a lifesaving or humanitarian role…"
H For all the power of the biomimetics paradigm, and the brilliant people who practice it, bio-inspiration has led to surprisingly few mass-produced products and arguably only one household word— Velcro, which was invented in 1948 by Swiss chemist George de Mestral, by copying the way cockleburs clung to his dog‘s coat. In addition to Cutkosky5s lab, five other high-powered research teams are currently trying to mimic gecko adhesion, and so far none has come close to matching the lizard’s strong, directional, self-cleaning grip. Likewise, scientists have yet to meaningfully re-create the abalone nanostructure that accounts for the strength of its shell, and several well-funded biotech companies have gone bankrupt trying to make artificial spider silk.
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