王长喜老师 专四阅读周计划 第四周星期二.docVIP

星期2 Tuesday Happiness is nearly always a rebound from hard work.辛勤工作的报酬几乎总是幸福。 社会现象类394 5分钟/4 Text B 科技应用类7分钟文学人物类424 6分钟体育人物类560 7分钟Beauty is a curious phenomenon, one of permeable, shifting boundaries. We may think we understand it, since we sense it effortlessly. In fact, it is a bundle of mysteries researchers are still uncovering. Consider the ancient proverb: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Until about 30 years ago it seemed too obvious for scientists to bother with. When they finally tested it, their results startled them. On the one hand, the maxim is false. Facial beauty is the same throughout the world. In every tribe and culture, individuals will consider Marilyn Monroe, say, an attractive woman. It goes further. Males can identify good-looking men, and females charming women. Old and young, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, all agree on who is beautiful. So do people of every class and personality type. We don’t learn this response. We’re born with it. In one recent study, babies just 20 hours old recognized attractive faces and preferred them. So beauty is in our DNA. The eye of the beholder doesn’t matter. On the other hand, and this is where it gets interesting, the facial shell is just the foundation of beauty. We see the self in the face, every day, all the time, and we can’t distinguish the two. This blurring means that we gift the attractive with a large number of virtues. They seem more competent, likeable, happier, blessed with better lives and personalities. In one experiment, people predicted happier marriages and better jobs for them, and rated them lower on only one aspect: their caliber as parents. Another study found people consider them more amiable, happy, flexible, pleasure-seeking, serious, candid, outspoken, perceptive, confident, assertive, curious and active. They exert more control over their destiny, subjects felt, while the homely endure the world’s sudden change. It is called the “beautiful is good” stereotype, and it