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Ever won the lottery? No? But did that stop you buying another lottery ticket? If the answer is another “ no, “ you might call yourself an optimist.
According to researchers at University College London, human beings are sanguine creatures. It is all in the brain, they say. A study suggests that human brain is very efficient at processing good news: about 80% of people have a tendency to see the glass as half-full, not half-empty, even if they don’t consider themselves to be optimists.
The good news is that this brings a health benefit, having a positive outlook on life reduces anxiety. A study of nearly 100, 000 women showed a lower risk of death from heart disease among optimists.
But there are problems in always having an optimistic attitude. The authors of the study point out that the 2008 financial crisis may have been caused by analysts overestimating their assets’ performance even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. There are personal health risks too. Dr Tali Sharot, lead researcher, said: “Smoking Kills’ messages don’t work since people think their chances of cancer are low. There’s a very fundamental tendency in the brain. “
But, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. Even if seeing the world through rose-colored glasses poses a risk to our health, it’s not something that is likely to cause us to lose sleep. Let’s just keep our chins up and keep smiling!
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The International Olympic Committee(IOC)has launched an investigation into allegations that its officials in more than 50 countries have been selling London Olympics tickets on the black market for profit. The IOC met at an emergency session on Saturday to look into a pile of evidence uncovered by Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper. The paper claims that high-ranking Olympic officials have been selling tickets for the games at hugely inflated prices. The highest priced tickets on the black market were for the men’s 100-meter final. The IOC has issued a statement saying it takes these allegations very seriously and has immediately taken the first steps to investigate.
IOC rules forbid national Olympics committees from selling tickets overseas, increasing ticket prices or selling tickets to unauthorized, third-party resellers. Despite this, Sunday Times undercover reporters posing as illegal ticket sellers say they have recorded evidence of 27 officials selling tickets distributed to 54 countries. One of the most serious allegations was against the Greek Olympic Committee president Spyros Capralos. He denies saying he had “pulled strings“ with the head of the London Olympics Sebastian Coe even though the paper posted videos of its reporters’ negotiations with Capralos on its website. Mr Capralos has so far refused to comment.
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Pressed by competition and its own success, the popular search engine Google has created an automated way to search for new employees who are fully appropriate as well as high-achieving.
In a project, the 100, 000 people who fill in online job applications for Google each month will be asked to complete a complicated questionnaire(问卷)exploring their attitudes, behaviour, personality and backgrounds going back to their school days.
The questions range from whether applicants have ever set a world record, to whether their workspace is messy or tidy or what magazines they read. Answers are studied by Google’s mathematicians to calculate a score meant to predict how well a person will fit into the organization’s diversified and competitive culture.
Psychometric tests(心理测试)are already used by more traditional companies to select workers, but they are unheard of in a company like Google, which is built on a belief in individual talent. The online questionnaire is based on the answers to 300 questions sent out last summer to every employee at the head office in California’s Silicon Valley. Some questions were factual: What programming languages are you familiar with? What Internet mailing lists are you on?
Other questions, however, tried to establish personality and behavioural characteristics: have you ever tutored another person?
“We wanted to cast a very wide net, “ said Laszlo Bock, Google’s Vice-President for People Operations. “ It is not unusual to walk into our office and bump into dogs. Maybe people who own dogs have some personality feature that is useful. “
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