The social sciences are flourishing. As of 2005, there were almost half a million professional social scientists from all fields in the world, working both inside and outside academia. According to the World Social Science Report 2010, the number of social-science students worldwide has swollen by about 11% every year since 2000.

Yet this enormous resource is not contributing enough to today’s global challenges, including climate change, security, sustainable development and health. 【G1】_____________________Humanity has the necessary agro-technological tools to eradicate hunger, from genetically engineered crops to artificial fertilizers. Here, too, the problems are social: the organization and distribution of food, wealth and prosperity.

【G2】____________________________________________________________This is a shame—the community should be grasping the opportunity to raise its influence in the real world. To paraphrase the great social scientist Joseph Schumpeter: there is no radical innovation without creative destruction.

Today, the social sciences are largely focused on disciplinary problems and internal scholarly debates, rather than on topics with external impact. Analyses reveal that the number of papers including the keywords “environmental changed” or “climate change” has increased rapidly since 2004. 【G3】____________________________________________________When social scientists do tackle practical issues, their scope is often local: Belgium is interested mainly in the effects of poverty on Belgium, for example. And whether the community’s work contributes much to an overall accumulation of knowledge is doubtful.

The problem is not necessarily the amount of available funding.【G4】_______________________________________________This is an adequate amount so long as it is aimed in the right direction. Social scientists who complain about a lack of funding should not expect more in today’s economic climate.

The trick is to direct these funds better. The European Union Framework funding programs have long had a category specifically targeted at social scientists. This year, it was proposed that the system be changed: Horizon 2020, a new program to be enacted in 2014, would not have such a category. This has resulted in protests from social scientists. But the intention is not to neglect social science; rather, the complete opposite. 【G5】_________________________________That should create more collaborative endeavors and help to develop projects aimed directly at solving global problems.

[A] It could be that we are evolving two communities of social scientists: one that is discipline-oriented and publishing in highly specialized journals, and one that is problem-oriented and publishing elsewhere, such as policy briefs.

[B] However, the numbers are still small: in 2010, about 1,600 of the 100,000 social-sciences papers published globally included one of these keywords.

[C] The idea is to force social scientists to integrate their work with other categories, including health and demographic change; food security; marine research and the bio-economy; clean, efficient energy; and inclusive, innovative and secure societies.

[D] The solution is to change the mindset of the academic community, and what it considers to be its main goal. Global challenges and social innovation ought to receive much more attention from scientists, especially the young ones.

[E] These issues all have root causes in human behavior: all require behavioral change and social innovations, as well as technological development. Stemming climate change, for example, is as much about changing consumption patterns and promoting tax acceptance as it is about developing clean energy.

[F] Despite these factors, many social scientists seem reluctant to tackle such problems. And in Europe, some are up in arms over a proposal to drop a specific funding category for social-science research and to integrate it within cross-cutting topics of sustainable development.

[G] During the late 1900s, national spending on social sciences and the humanities as a percentage of all research and development funds—including government, higher education, non-profit and corporate-varied from around 4% to 25%; in most European nations, it is about 15%.

Psychologists used to believe that greater prejudice among older adults was due to the fact that older people grew up in less egalitarian times.【G1】_____________

The frontal lobes are the last part of the brain to develop as we progress through childhood and adolescence, and the first part of the brain to atrophy as we age. Atrophy of the frontal lobes does not diminish intelligence, but it degrades brain areas responsible for inhibiting irrelevant or inappropriate thoughts. Research suggests that this is why older adults have greater difficulty finding the word they’re looking for and why there is a greater likelihood of them voicing ideas they would have previously sup-pressed.

【G2】________________

At Williams College in Massachusetts, an African-American student said her white grandfather had recently started referring to her as his “little nigger grandchild”. She was shocked and hurt by this, and couldn’t understand why her grandfather would say such a thing when she knew he loved her and was still mentally alert. The consequences of his disinhibited words were substantial, although he was creating friction only with family and friends.

Researchers have found evidence of a variety of problems of this kind. For example, older adults in experiments are more likely than younger adults to rely on stereotypes and they have more difficulty than younger adults suppressing their stereotypic thoughts.【G3】______________Furthermore, all of these effects only emerge among older adults who show signs of poor frontal lobe functioning.

There are two ways of interpreting the disinhibited expressions of older adults. Perhaps such statements reveal people’s true personality, finally emerging now that they can no longer suppress their beliefs.【G4】_____________Alternatively, it may be the case that our inhibitory abilities don’t suppress our personality but rather help shape it.

According to one researcher, some of the children in her primary school used to shove snow down the jacket of a boy who had muscular dystrophy, because his physical disability prevented him from protecting himself. These children may have grown into adults who truly believe it is morally reprehensible to torment disabled children, but it is quite likely that they rely on their inhibitory ability to keep their earlier and more primitive attitudes in check.【G5】____________________

[A] But it doesn’t stop there—researchers also find that older adults are more likely to be socially in-sensitive across a variety of domains.

[B] In other words, strip away the political correctness enabled by the frontal lobes, and you learn what the student’s grandfather had really been thinking all these years.

[C] Famous people are at a disadvantage when their frontal lobes start to shrink, as many of their utterances are part of the public record. But disinhibition is also costly for people outside the public eye.

[D] Such changes in social attitudes are not inevitable, but they are common. And the people who find themselves becoming less tolerant or more prejudiced can be quite unsettled by the shift in their own attitudes—a change that can affect friendships and their position in society.

[E] From this perspective, inhibitory ability isn’t stopping people’s true opinions from emerging so much as it’s suppressing their prior opinions. The research indicates that older adults simply have greater difficulty suppressing prejudices than younger adults do.

[F] But psychologist William von Hippel says it should not necessarily be a surprise—he argues that it’s not usual for people to become more prejudiced as they get older.

[G] In contrast to this view, recent research shows that normal changes to the brain in late adulthood can lead to greater prejudice among older adults.

There is a new revolution going on in Chilean society recently.【G1】_________The government is tackling the problem of teenage pregnancy by handing out morning-after pills to 14-year olds without their parents’ permission. A bill to allow terminally ill patients to choose a “merciful death” was recently introduced to the legislature, and there is growing momentum behind calls for a civil-union law that would extend the legal benefits of marriage to gay and unmarried heterosexual couples. The legal system is struggling under the weight of divorce suits—Chile only legalized divorce in 2004. In a society traditionally ruled by men, the President and half of her cabinet are women.

【G2】_________________

“This is the ideology of liberation from taboos, blocks, burdens and traumas that promises happiness for all. A happiness that never arrives” says Gonzalo Rojas, a law professor, columnist and self-declared supporter of former dictator General Augusto Pinochet. He summarizes the new social ethic as “I demand, the State grants, society accepts, and critics stay away,” and he likens it to the “me” generation of the United States in the 1970s. He feels sorrow what he sees as the failure of the sustained economic growth promoted by Pinochet’s radical economic reforms to produce equivalent moral development.

【G3】___________________

He condemns liberals for wanting to put education and health under state control and for leaving personal morality to the individual.

【G4】____________________

Eugenio Tironi, an influential sociologist, sees it, perhaps ironically, as the outcome of Pinochet’s own economic liberalization policies. As prosperity grew, the society first rid itself of the General’s authoritarian rule, and then began to tackle some of the conservative shackles on personal freedom. Chilean society itself had become more liberal, he says. “What conservative society would dare elect as president a woman, a leftist, a victim of human rights violations, and an annulled mother?”

【G5】______________________

The Church remains a moral beacon for the nearly 80% of Chileans who call themselves Catholic, but even for many of them, its discourse is sometimes at odds with their lifestyles.

But even as a wave of social changes animates debates in the media, school board meetings and Sunday family lunches, a recent opinion survey by the MORI organization suggests Chile’s values may not be quite as liberal as the recent trends suggest. “People are more accepting of alternative lifestyles, but most regard their family and traditions as the most important, and oppose abortion,” says Cristobal Huneeus, research director of MORI Chile.

[A] Nor is Rojas alone voice of despair. “This agenda goes against the fundamental values of the Christian Western society,” says Marco Antonio Gonzalez, director of Fundacion Jaime Guzman E., a right-wing think tank.

[B] Her economics may be pretty conventional, but in the social sphere, Chile’s agnostic, no-longer-married-mother President Michele Bachelet is revolutionizing this traditionally conservative Catholic country.

[C] The institution most challenged by the new wave of social liberalization is the Catholic Church, which resisted the passing of a divorce law two years ago and has decried the availability of morning-after pills to teenagers.

[D] The liberals counter that the social changes being challenged from the right are products not of any government agenda, but simply of the increased personal freedom brought to Chile by economic growth and globalization.

[E] The way Chileans relate to authority has changed too. Their relationship now is horizontal rather than vertical.

[F] The Bachelet administration has canvassed expert and citizen opinion in the course of recent efforts at education and welfare reform.

[G] Hardly surprising, then, that right-wing conservatives see Bachelet’s government as a threat to traditional values.

[A] Save up before quitting

[B] Map out the worst-case scenario

[C] Keep your retirement account well-funded

[D] Redefine retirement

[E] Scrutinize your finances

[F] Pick up freelance work

[G] Adjust your lifestyle

How to Afford to Quit Your Job

When Tess Vigeland, the former host of public radio’s “Marketplace,” came home from work and cried in her backyard for three hours, she knew it was time to leave her job.

With her recently published book, “Leap: Leaving a Job with No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want,” she is encouraging people to make similar moves. While doing so certainly involves some risks, Vigeland says it doesn’t mean being reckless. If you are considering a similarly big change, Vigeland suggests you keep the following in mind:

【G1】______________________________________________

Vigeland recommends considering your current expenses and income, including from alternate sources, such as a partner’s salary or freelance work, to consider whether you can cover your basic living costs without your primary income. “I did some back-of-the-napkin calculations with my husband and we figured his salary could pay the mortgage with me not working at all,” she says. In addition, she planned to take on freelance work, so her income would not go to zero. “I also knew I had a large retirement account that I could tap into if I had to, and home equity,” she adds.

【G2】_______________________________________________

After leaving her job in public radio, Vigeland’s income the following year was just one-third of what it had been previously, which meant she and her husband had to cut certain expenses from their budget. “We didn’t go out to dinner as much, we didn’t go on big vacation trips and we just did a lot of road trips around California, and that was fine,” she says.

【G3】_______________________________________________

Imagining the worst can actually help calm your deepest fears, Vigeland says. Would you have to move in with your parents? Ask friends for financial help? For many people, the worst possible outcome does not involve extreme poverty. Figure out what the most terrible situation is for you. Could you handle it? The likelihood of facing it, however, is pretty unlikely, she says.

【G4】______________________________________________

Vigeland hasn’t contributed much to her pension accounts since she left her full-time job, and she’s OK with that. “I stopped living for retirement. I don’t want to stop working at age 65. I’m 46 now, and I hope I’m working for the next 30 years,” she says. Instead of saving money and saving your adventures for old age, Vigeland suggests traveling and living on less now, when you can enjoy it even more.

【G5】_______________________________________________

Vigeland wishes she had laid aside more money before leaving her job, and it’s something she encourages others to do now. “I felt pressure to be churning out dollars and getting a paycheck, and I think better savings, even three months, would have saved me from a lot of that,” she says. Instead of scrambling to pick up freelance assignment as soon as possible, she could have taken her time more.

[A] Punit Shah, a researcher at King’s College London, investigated how the perception of internal bodily sensations is related to emotion and how this may, in turn, be linked to how we make decisions. First, Shah gave a group of typical adults a gambling task to measure their susceptibility to the framing effect. They were later asked to close their eyes and count their heartbeats to measure how well they monitored internal sensations. Their emotional awareness was also measured using a questionnaire. Shah discovered that people who were good at monitoring their heartbeat—people who “followed their heart”—were most guided by emotion and particularly susceptible to the framing effect.

[B] The research demonstrates that “following your heart” is related to complex decision-making, which builds on recent work showing that heartbeat perception is linked to survival in the financial markets. However, it also suggests that listening to your heart and being in touch with your emotions—usually seen as positive things—may lead to decisions that are not so rational.

[C] Decisions are based on the way choices are framed. This is because people use emotion when making decisions, leading to some options feeling more desirable than others. For example, when given ￡50, we are more likely to gamble the money if we stand to lose ￡30 than if we are going to keep ￡20.

[D] But what about people with poor emotional awareness and difficulties monitoring their heartbeat? Research has shown that these things are impaired in people with alexithymia, otherwise known as “emotional blindness.” As emotional blindness is more common in people with autism, Shah tested a group of adults diagnosed with this condition. Replicating previous research, people with autism showed a smaller framing effect. It was found that people with autism were able to monitor their heartbeat just as well as people without autism, but there was no relationship between how well they did this, or emotional awareness, and their susceptibility to the framing effect.

[E] Although both options are mathematically equivalent, the thought of losing money evokes a powerful emotional response and we are more likely to gamble to try to avoid losing money. This cognitive bias, first described by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman in the 1980s, is known as the “framing effect.” Despite this phenomenon being well documented, scientists are still trying to understand why our emotions have such a powerful influence on decision making.

[F] These findings add to evidence showing that people with autism think differently to typical people. Although this is related to the difficulties they experience in social situations, this different way of thinking may sometimes be advantageous in situations where it is it better to follow your head and not your heart.

[G] This indicates that people with autism use a different strategy when making decisions. Instead of using intuition and emotion like people without autism, they were not following their heart and don’t use emotional information to guide their decisions. Instead, they viewed differently framed, but numerically equivalent, options more rationally than typical people. So they gambled just as much as non-autistic people, but did so using the numerical information instead of making decisions based on how those numbers made them feel.

【G1】→【G2】→A→【G3】→【G4】→B→【G5】

[A] Although pain may be a horrible necessity, there is no doubt that humanity could cope with far less of the chronic sort. Understanding how the mind, the body and people’s genes interact to cause pain should bring more relief.

[B] Such ideas are being explored with brain scans which suggest that even if a low level of pain is being sent to the brain, the signal can be turned up by the “mind” itself. Indeed, patients can even be tricked into feeling pain. In one experiment volunteers were given a powerful painkiller and subjected to a painful stimulus—which, because of the painkiller, they could not feel. Then they were told the drug had worn off (although it had not), and subsequently complained that the stimulus hurt. People can, therefore, feel pain simply because it is expected. They can fail to feel pain for exactly the same reasons, for example when they are given placebos (a substance containing no medication and given to reinforce a patient’s expectation to get well) or are distracted. But although pain may be subjective, that does not mean the final experience is controlled solely by the mind.

[C] This would also help explain why chronic pains such as lower-back pain and arthritis fail to respond well to traditional pain therapies. But now an entirely new kind of drug, called Tanezumab, has been developed. It is an antibody for a protein called nerve growth factor (NGF), which is vital for new nerve growth during development. NGF, it turns out, is also crucial in the regulation of the sensitisation of pain in chronic conditions. After an injury which involves tissue damage and inflammation, levels of NGF increase dramatically. NGF seems to be involved in transmitting the pain signal. As a consequence, blocking NGF reduces chronic pain.

[D] Pain, unfortunately, is a horrible necessity of life. It protects people by alerting them to things that might injure them. But some long-term pain has nothing to do with any obvious injury. One estimate suggests that one in six adults suffer from a “chronic pain” condition. Steve McMahon, a pain researcher at King’s College, London, says that if skin is damaged, for instance with a hot iron, an area of sensitivity develops around the outside of the burn where although untouched and undamaged by the iron the behaviour of the nerve fibres is disrupted. As a result, heightened sensitivity and abnormal pain sensations occur in the surrounding skin. Chronic pain, he says, may similarly be caused not by damage to the body, but because weak pain signals become amplified.

[E] A recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that genes play a role in detennining sensitivity to pain. One gene, known as SCN9A, codes for a protein that allows the channels along which nerve signals are transmitted to remain active for longer and thus transmit more pain signals. It seems likely that this protein will attract a great deal more analgesic research. Variations in SCN9A may also explain why some patients prefer different classes of painkillers.

[F] Most pain resolves promptly once the painful stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but sometimes pain persists despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing of the body; and sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable stimulus, damage or pathology.

[G] Tanezumab must still complete the final stages of clinical trials before it can become a weapon for reducing human suffering. But unexpected pains do not always come from the body. According to Irene Tracey, a pain researcher at the University of Oxford, how pain is experienced also depends upon a person’s state of mind. If successive patients suffer the same burn, the extent to which it hurts will depend on whether one is anxious, depressed, happy or distracted.

【G1】→【G2】→【G3】→【G4】→E→【G5】