Understanding the TestChoose the best answer for each of the following questions according to the test.How to be happy1. Britain’s most prestigious scientific institution, the Royal Society, will host a meeting for some of the world’s top psychologists. Their aim is to find out why it is that some people’s lives go so right. What is it that makes them happy and fulfilled, while others seem doomed to founder in misery, dissatisfaction and dejection?2. Psychologists have known for sometime that optimism is a good defence against unhappiness. “If you’re optimistic and you think life is going to get better, it will become a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” says Baylis. “You will involve yourself more, you’ll put yourself forward more, you will take more care of yourself. You’ll figure that if you do more exercise and not booze as much, life will be better.”3. But some of us are just not natural optimists. What are we supposed to do?4. Positive psychologists believe optimism can be learned, and we can teach ourselves to see a half-empty glass as half-full. All we have to do is to spend time mulling over all the things that have gone right for us, rather than dwelling on what has gone badly.“Research on depression shows that one of the biggest causes of depression is ruminating about something that went wrong in the past,”says Baylis.“What happens is you look into the past and think about some event and keep turning it over, saying,‘I messed up, I messed up,’ and you let it hurt you. You keep feeding it the oxygen of attention and the flames keep burning you.”5. But just as dwelling on negative events can lead to depression, dwelling on things that have gone well can help pick you up, he says.“You have to thank your lucky stars about what goes right on a daily basis. Whenever you get the feeling of being negative about things, just take a moment out and remind yourself of the stuff that has gone well. It could be anything from a conversation to your gar- den looking nice, or that it didn’t rain on you when you were out on your bike. It’s an extremely powerful technique.”6. By reminding ourselves what went well in stead of what went wrong, positive psychologist believe we can build a buffer against unhappiness, making us better able to take life’s knocks when they come.7. Seligman, who is the figurehead of the positive psychology movement, goes further than suggesting people learn to think positively. He has worked out what he sees as a blueprint for happiness that people can use to set them on the path to a fulfilling and satisfying ader life. He believes there are three routes to happiness, which he calls the“pleasant life”, the“good life”and the“meaningful life”. Some are better than others, although a mix of all three is ideal. The pleasant life sees superficial pleasures as the key to happiness, and it is this that many people mistakenly pursue, he says.“The biggest mistake that people in the rich west make is to be enchanted with the Hollywood idea of happiness, which is really just giggling and smiling a lot,” he says.While a life bent on instant pleasure and gratification offers some degree of happiness, it is ultimately unsatisfying on its own, he says.8. Money, it turns out, isn’t the answer either. Seligman believes that once we have enough to pay for life’s basics such as food and a roof over our heads, more money adds little to our happiness.9. To be seriously happy, Seligman says, we have to set our sights on a good life and a meaningful life. To do this we need to identify what he calls our signature strengths, which could be anythingfrom perseverance and leadership to a love of learning.10. Seligman says that once we know our signature strengths, using them more and more in our daily lives will make us feel happier and more fulfilled. By exploiting our strengths, he says, we will find life more gratifying and become completely immersed in what we are doing, whether working, making music or playing sport — a state positive psychologists call “flow”.11. Using our signature strengths in our working and social lives will help us achieve what Seligman calls a good life,while using them.to help others will put us on course for achieving a meaningful life, he says.12. While positive psychology is broadly seen as valid by the psychology and psychiatry establishment, it does have its critics.13. Positive psychologists also stand accused of burying their heads in the sand and ignoring that depressed, even merely unhappy people, have real problems that need dealing with. Seligman counters this, saying positive psychology is not meant to replace other forms of therapy,but should be complementary, while people work through their negative feelings.3. Which of the following statements is NOT true?( )
A、A. Optimism can be learned.
B、B. We can teach ourselves to be optimistic.
C、C. Mulling over all the things that have gone right will help.
D、D. Optimism is gained naturally and nothing can change it.
【正确答案】：D
【题目解析】：P69
