No one likes bad news, but for some people, no news is worse. People who are mildly neurotic are stressed by uncertainty even more than by bad news, a new study finds. Psychologists have long known that bad news grabs attention, making its recipients take notice, while good news often is given short effect in the brain. Scientists have explained the phenomenon as a survival mechanism of the brain. But researchers at the University of Toronto wanted to learn more about how people respond to uncertainty--a lack of information or information that isn’t well understood. Forty-one young men and women took a test designed to assess how neurotic they were, then were fitted with electrode(电极 ) caps that measured brain activity as they completed certain tasks. As a way of monitoring stress, the investigators tracked neural activity in the anterior cingulate cortex(前扣带皮层), a part of the brain involved in conflict, uncertainty and monitoring errors. The participants later were asked to respond when they thought a second had passed since a symbol had appeared on a computer monitor. After responding, they received feedback on the monitor in the form of a plus sign indicating a job well done, a minus sign indicating improvement was needed, or a question mark with no further explanation. The subjects who had scored higher on the neuroticism scale demonstrated more brain activity in response to uncertain feedback than to negative feedback, the researchers found. In the real world, such a heightened response might occur when an employee is up for a promotion but does not know the outcome, and a highly neurotic individual would respond less intensely to losing the promotion said Jacob Hirsh, a lead author of the paper. The opposite is true for people who are not neurotic, Hirsh added. They are not bothered by uncertainty but are very upset by negative feedback. Richard Sorrentino, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario who also studies uncertainty, said he had conducted a similar study looking at married women who were ambivalent(有矛盾情绪的)toward their partners and not sure whether they could be trusted. "If they were the type who preferred certainty, they were better off if they didn’t trust their husbands at all than if they were uncertain about whether to trust him," he said. Wives who preferred certainty but who were uncertain about their husbands often suffered severe symptoms, he added, including depression. According to Richard Sorrentino, the married women who suffered much are those ______.
A. who have a harmonious relationship with their husbands
B. who prefer certainty but distrust their husbands
C. who totally don’t believe in their husbands
D. who wonder whether their husbands should be trusted or not
They give Action Man a certain ruggedness and bestow instant testosterone (肾上腺激素) on movie heroes, and according to British psychologists, facial scars can also make men more attractive to the opposite sex. Men with mild facial scars were typically ranked as more appealing by women who were looking for a brief relationship, though they were not considered better as marriage material, a study found. In the same experiments, women with facial scars were judged to be as attractive as those without, the researchers said. The sexual allure of the facial scar has long puzzled psychologists. Many believe they are seen by women as a sign of masculinity and an exciting, risk-taking personality, though in Shakespeare’s Ali’s Well that Ends Well, an old lord, Lafeu, takes a different view, commenting: "A scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good livery(特殊的外貌) of honor." Psychologists at the universities of Liverpool and Stirling decided to investigate the effects of facial scars by asking ll5 women and 64 men to rate the attractiveness of eight strangers of the opposite sex. Half were asked to look at original face shots, while the other half viewed images that had been digitally manipulated to add scars to their cheeks, jawbones(颌骨.) or foreheads. While the scars made no difference to the perceived attractiveness of women, scarred men ranked 5.7 percentage points higher in the appeal ratings than those with undamaged skin. "A large scar is unlikely to make you more attractive, but there are some scars that women do seem to find appealing. There’s the whole James Bond thing, where a person is attractive but probably not the best marriage material," said Robert Burriss, a psychologist at Liverpool who led the study. For each picture, volunteers were asked to guess whether the scar was from a fight, an accident or illness. The men’s scars were often blamed on a violent encounter, while those on women were often attributed to accidents. "When scarring is seen as the result of a violent encounter, it signifies strength or bravery in a guy, or it could be due to an accident, and so evidence of a risk-taking personality. Either way, it’s another way of assessing a man’s masculinity,’ Burriss said. Men without scars could be seen as more caring and cautious, and so more suitable for a long term relationship, he added. If a man has a scar on face, ______.
A. it was mainly a result of accident
B. it often reflects a caring personality
C. many factors may contribute to it
D. no women will get married with him
Since there is such an abundance of food in the sea, it is understandable that some of the efficient, highly adaptable, warm-blooded mammals that (67) on land should have returned to the sea. Those that (68) have flourished. Within about 50 million years-- (69) time at all, geologically speaking--one of the four kinds of mammals that has (70) to a marine environment has developed into the largest of all animal (71) , the whale. A second kind, the seal, has produced what is probably the greatest population of large carnivorous mammals on Earth. This suggests that these "top dogs" of the ocean are (72) and multiplying. (73) , such has not been the case, at ieast not for the last 150 years. Trouble has closed in (74) these mammals in the form of equally warm-blooded and even more (75) adaptable predators, humans. At sea, (76) on land, humans have now (77) themselves on the top of the whole great pyramid of life, and (78) have caused serious problems for the mammals of the sea, There is a simple (79) for this. (80) mammals have the misfortune to be swimming aggregates of (81) that humans want: fur, oil and meat. Even so, they might not be so (82) to human depredation if they did not, like humans, (83) so slowly. Every year humans (84) more than 50 million tons of fish from the oceans without critically depleting the population of any (85) . But the slowbreeding mammals of the sea have been all but wiped out by humans (86) satisfy their wants and whims.
A. returned
B. gone
C. turned
D. changed
Since there is such an abundance of food in the sea, it is understandable that some of the efficient, highly adaptable, warm-blooded mammals that (67) on land should have returned to the sea. Those that (68) have flourished. Within about 50 million years-- (69) time at all, geologically speaking--one of the four kinds of mammals that has (70) to a marine environment has developed into the largest of all animal (71) , the whale. A second kind, the seal, has produced what is probably the greatest population of large carnivorous mammals on Earth. This suggests that these "top dogs" of the ocean are (72) and multiplying. (73) , such has not been the case, at ieast not for the last 150 years. Trouble has closed in (74) these mammals in the form of equally warm-blooded and even more (75) adaptable predators, humans. At sea, (76) on land, humans have now (77) themselves on the top of the whole great pyramid of life, and (78) have caused serious problems for the mammals of the sea, There is a simple (79) for this. (80) mammals have the misfortune to be swimming aggregates of (81) that humans want: fur, oil and meat. Even so, they might not be so (82) to human depredation if they did not, like humans, (83) so slowly. Every year humans (84) more than 50 million tons of fish from the oceans without critically depleting the population of any (85) . But the slowbreeding mammals of the sea have been all but wiped out by humans (86) satisfy their wants and whims.
A. forms
B. kinds
C. varieties
D. types