Several recent studies have focused on how people think about ethics in a non-native language—as might take place, for example, among a group of delegates at the United Nations using a lingua franca to hash out a resolution. The findings suggest that when people are confronted with moral dilemmas, they do indeed respond differently when considering them in a foreign language than when using their native tongue.

Why does it matter whether we judge morality in our native language or a foreign one? According to one explanation, such judgments involve two separate and competing modes of thinking—one of these, a quick, gut-level “feeling,” and the other, careful deliberation about the greatest good for the greatest number.【G1】____________This may seem paradoxical, but is in line with findings that reading math problems in a hard-to-read font makes people less likely to make careless mistakes.

【G2】___________________

As a result, moral judgments made in a foreign language are less laden with the emotional reactions that surface when we use a language learned in childhood.

There’s strong evidence that memory intertwines a language with the experiences and interactions through which that language was learned. For example, people who are bilingual are more likely to recall an experience if prompted in the language in which that event occurred. Our childhood languages, learned in the throes of passionate emotion—whose childhood, after all, is not streaked through with an abundance of love, rage, wonder, and punishment?—become infused with deep feeling.【G3】______________

If language can serve as a container for potent memories of our earliest transgressions and punishments, then it is not surprising that such emotional associations might color moral judgments made in our native language.

The balance is tipped even further toward this explanation by a recent study published in the journal Cognition. This new research involved scenarios in which good intentions led to bad outcomes (someone gives a homeless person a new jacket, only to have the poor man beat up by others who believe he has stolen it) or good outcomes occurred despite dubious motives (a couple adopts a disabled child to receive money from the state).【G4】_________

These results clash with the notion that using a foreign language makes people think more deeply, because other research has shown that careful reflection makes people think more about the intentions that underlie people’s actions rather than less.

But the results do mesh with the idea that when using a foreign language, muted emotional responses—less sympathy for those with noble intentions, less outrage for those with nefarious motives— diminished the impact of intentions.【G5】______________

[A] By comparison, languages acquired late in life, especially if they are learned through restrained interactions in the classroom or blandly delivered over computer screens and headphones, enter our minds bleached of the emotionality that is present for their native speakers.

[B] Along with these differences, our moral compass also points in somewhat different directions depending on the language we are using at the time.

[C] When we use a foreign language, we unconsciously sink into the more deliberate mode simply because the effort of operating in our non-native language cues our cognitive system to prepare for strenuous activity.

[D] This explanation is bolstered by findings that patients with brain damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area that is involved in emotional responding, showed a similar pattern of responses, with outcomes privileged over intentions.

[E] Reading these in a foreign language rather than a native language led participants to place greater weight on outcomes and less weight on intentions in making moral judgments.

[F] The research illuminates what is true for all of us, regardless of how many languages we speak: that our moral compass is a combination of the earliest forces that have shaped us and the ways in which we escape them.

[G] An alternative explanation is that differences arise between native and foreign tongues because our childhood languages vibrate with greater emotional intensity than do those learned in more academic settings.

Recent years have witnessed an increase in the number of people who feel guilty or ashamed about what they perceive to be negativity. For example, people who seek help from a psychotherapist to deal with highly distressing emotions often apologize for being too negative.【G1】_____________

In fact, anger and sadness are an important part of life, and new research shows that experiencing and accepting such emotions are vital to our mental health. Attempting to suppress thoughts can backfire and even diminish our sense of contentment. “Acknowledging the complexity of life may be an especially fruitful path to psychological well-being,” says psychologist Jonathan M. Adler of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

Positive thoughts and emotions can, of course, benefit mental health.【G2】____________Taken to an extreme, however, that definition is not congruent with the messiness of real life. In addition, people’s outlook can become so rosy that they ignore dangers or become complacent.

【G3】__________________

Unpleasant and negative feelings are just as crucial as the enjoyable ones in helping you make sense of life’s ups and downs. “Remember, one of the primary reasons we have emotions in the first place is to help us evaluate our experiences,” Adler says.

Adler and Hal E. Hershfield, a professor of marketing at New York University, investigated the link between mixed emotional experience and psychological welfare in a group of people undergoing 12 sessions of psychotherapy. “Taking the good and the bad together may detoxify the bad experiences, allowing you to make meaning out of them in a way that supports psychological well-being,” the researchers found.

Negative emotions also most likely aid in our survival.【G4】______________Findings from a 2010 study suggested that pushing back negative emotions could spawn more emotional overeating than simply recognizing that you were, say, upset, agitated or blue. Suppressing thoughts and feelings can even be harmful. In a 2012 study psychotherapist Eric L. Garland of Florida State University and his associates found that those who restrained their thinking more often had stronger stress responses than did those who suppressed their thoughts less frequently.

Learning how to cope with negative emotions is the key. Instead of backing away from negative emotions, accept them. Acknowledge how you are feeling without rushing to change your emotional state.

【G5】____________________If the discomfort lingers, consider taking action. You may want to tell a friend her comment was hurtful or take steps to leave the job that makes you miserable.

[A] Reactions like this undoubtedly stem from our culture’s overriding bias toward positive thinking. Al-though positive emotions are worth cultivating, problems arise when people start believing they must be upbeat all the time.

[B] Eudaemonic approaches, on the other hand, emphasize a sense of meaning, personal growth and understanding of the self-goals that require confronting life’s adversities.

[C] If the emotion is overwhelming, you may want to express how you feel in a journal or to another person. The exercise may shift your perspective and bring a sense of closure.

[D] In other words, many people struggle with highly distressing emotions, such as extreme anger, or with suicidal thoughts although a therapy is to acknowledge and express a full range of emotions.

[E] Hedonic theories define well-being as the presence of positive emotion, the relative absence of negative emotion and a sense of life satisfaction.

[F] You may also try doing mindfulness exercises to help you get rid of negative feelings. One way to train yourself is to focus on your breathing while meditating.

[G] Bad feelings can be vital clues that a health issue, relationship or other important matter needs attention, Adler points out. The survival value of negative thoughts and emotions may help explain why suppressing them is so fruitless.

In their idle moments, historians occasionally speculate on how the world would be different if Adolf Hitler had passed the entrance exam to the Art Academy of Vienna, where he applied twice in the early years of the 20th century.【G1】_______________

On the contrary, the world is better off that a certain British statesman with a gift for inspiring rhetoric never allowed his love of painting to interfere with his career in politics.【G2】_______________One can’t help wishing that Hitler had been a better artist—and being grateful that Winston Churchill wasn’t.

That, anyway, is one lesson to be drawn from the PBS documentary series, whose first segment airs this week, “Chasing Churchill,” a travelogue narrated by the late prime minister’s granddaughter Celia Sandys, of the places he visited and loved. Whether he was headed for the gentle flower-draped hills of Provence or the stark deserts of North Africa, his habit, except during the war, was the same—painting. He was especially partial to romantically rugged scenery by sunset; if the light was better at dawn, says Sandys, he would not have been awake to see it.

Churchill bonded over painting with the American general, later president, Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s tastes ran to plashing streams, run-down barns and birch-studded snowscapes in a style that might be called Greeting Card Pastoral. He was appropriately modest about his works, which he described as “daubs.” Churchill, a far more accomplished and ambitious artist, was well aware of his amateur status.【G3】_______________________________

Politics is not a profession that ordinarily rewards creativity, which may be why so few politicians are willing to display it; it’s probably no coincidence that these three were among the most conspicuously self-assured world leaders of the 20th century. The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 interrupted plans to release a novel by Saddam Hussein with the forthright title Get Out of Here, Curse You! He had published three others, all critically acclaimed in the Iraqi press and best sellers, presumably because they were required reading in Iraqi schools.【G4】__________________

Safely out of office in 1995, former president Jimmy Carter published a book of poetry on subjects ranging from childhood reminiscence to geopolitics. The habits of a longtime politician die hard, even when he turns his hand to poetry; the slim volume bears 14 dedications spread over two pages.

Poetry is, of course, the most self-revelatory of arts.【G5】______________Hitler, too, was the only one of the three who occasionally populated his drawings with human figures, usually drawn badly and tiny compared with the real estate. Admittedly people are harder to draw than mountains and clouds, but perhaps the choice of subject by men who ruled vast territories is no coincidence. Alone in his aerie, the great man surveys his unpopulated domain: the artist as commander in chief.

[A] The 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli wrote 18 novels, some of them fairly racy by the standards of the time.

[B] Unfortunately, doubt has been cast on his literary credentials in the form of allegations that the books were actually written by a committee of officials from the Ministry of Information and Culture.

[C] But paintings, too, can reveal something about the hands that made them: Eisenhower’s blandness; Hitler’s bombastic obsession with monumental buildings such as the Vienna and Munich opera houses.

[D] Presumably, if he’d been allowed to pursue his dream, he would have inflicted on the world only a large number of mediocre watercolors, rather than World War II and the Holocaust.

[E] Otherwise Britain might have gained a collection of derivative post-impressionist landscapes to clutter the antiques shops of Portobello Road, and lost the war to Nazi Germany.

[F] Equipped with canvas, oils and camel’s-hair brushes, he parked himself behind an easel and in front of the landscape and commenced to smoke cigars, drink champagne and paint.

[G] But Hitler for many years regarded himself as an artist by profession. An authorized book of his watercolors referred to him in 1937 as “at once the First Fuehrer and the First Artist of our Reich.”

[A] Ways for parents to help deaf children speak

[B] Various reactions of parents to their deaf children

[C] Bad attitude of parents towards their deaf children

[D] Parents should understand the world of deaf children

[E] The reasons for children’s deafness

[F] Different behaviors of deaf children

[G] Social unfairness to the deaf

In the U.S. today, there are between 1,500,000 and 2,000,000 children who are either partially or totally deaf. How can their parents teach and help them? Helmer Myklebust, Northwestern University audiology professor, gives some clear answers.

【G1】______________________________________________

First of all, parents must find out just what sort of deafness their child has. A few “deaf” children actually have perfect hearing, but because of psychological tensions, choose neither to speak nor to hear. Some children—the aphasiacs—can hear, but because of injury to the brain, can make no sense from the sounds about them and gradually come to ignore sound entirely. Other children can hear a few sounds, but not those in the range of ordinary speech. Still others hear nothing at all.

【G2】______________________________________________

The silent world in which the deaf child lives is not easy for parents to understand. If the child loses his hearing at two or three, he will suddenly feel cut off. “Often he cries easily,” says Professor Myklebust, “and tries in other ways to show you that he feels lonely and sad.” If the child is born deaf, he is at first better off. Later, however, he lives a life of terrifying confusion. Usually, he hears no explanation for sudden and unexpected events, never hears the thousands of words that tie daily happenings together. Gradually, He notices how easily his brothers and sisters make their own wants known. He begins desperately to want to hear.

【G3】______________________________________________

Faced with their child’s deafness, says Professor Myklebust, some parents become overprotective, allow the child to play tyrant, fail to prepare him for the problems ahead. Other parents take the opposite extreme; they make no allowances for the child, confront his handicap with open hostility. Still other parents weep in front of the child, drag him to specialist after specialist for further treatment.

【G4】______________________________________________

Parents should treat the child as normally as possible, keeping his life and discipline consistent, helping him at all times to communicate. If he has lost his hearing after having learned to talk, he should be persuaded to talk constantly, learning to control his voice even though he cannot hear it. If he cannot talk but has some hearing left, the parent can buy hearing aids and auditory training units which will help teach the child what sort of sounds exist and what they mean. Even if the child has no hearing at all, he can still be taught to “feel” sound, learning first to pronounce “mmm-mmm” or “bu-bu-bu,” and later whole words, by the vibrations in his throat.

【G5】______________________________________________

Perhaps, the hardest thing the parent must do is to teach the child that he will be discriminated in many areas. Deaf people have been refused the rental of a farm, a house, or an apartment because the landlord himself considered them inferior and incapable. Some employers have said that they could not employ deaf people because hearing employees resented the fact that a deaf person could do the work as well as they do.

[A] It would be easy to believe that rudeness is “no big deal” and that people must just “get over it”, but more and more researchers are finding that this is simply not true. Experiencing rudeness at work has been associated with decreased performance, decreased creativity, and increased turnover intentions, to name just a few of the many negative outcomes of these behaviours. Knowing how harmful these behaviours can be, the question becomes: where do they come from, and why do people do them?

[B] Most people can relate to the experience of having a colleague inexplicably treat them rudely at work. You’re not invited to attend a meeting. A co-worker gets coffee for everyone but you. Your input is laughed at or ignored. A large and growing body of research suggests that such incidents, termed workplace incivility or workplace rudeness, are not only very common, but also very harmful. Although these behaviours are defined as low-intensity deviant behaviour with ambiguous intent to harm, the negative outcomes associated with workplace rudeness are anything but small or trivial.

[C] There are two ways in which behaviours and emotions can be contagious. One is through a conscious process of social learning. For example, if you’ve recently taken a job at a new office and you notice that everybody carries a water bottle around, it likely won’t be long until you find yourself carrying one, too. This type of contagion is typically conscious. If somebody asked why you are carrying that water bottle around, you would say, “Because I saw everybody else doing it and it seemed like a good idea.”

[D] While there are likely many reasons people behave rudely, at least one explanation that researchers have recently explored is that rudeness seems to be “contagious”. That is, experiencing rudeness actually causes people to behave more rudely themselves. Lots of things can be contagious—from the common cold, to smiling, yawning and other simple motor actions, to emotions (being around a happy person typically makes you feel happy). And as it turns out, being around a rude person can actually make you rude. But how?

[E] Another pathway to contagion is unconscious: research shows that when you see another person smiling, or tapping a pencil, for example, most people will mimic those simple motor behaviours and smile or tap a pencil themselves. If someone were to ask why you’re smiling or tapping your pencil, you’d likely answer, “I have no idea.”

[F] Unfortunately, because the rudeness is contagious and unconscious, it’s hard to stop. So what can be done? We need to re-examine the types of behaviours that are tolerated at work. More severe deviant behaviours, such as abuse, aggression and violence, are not tolerated because their consequences are blatant, While rudeness of a more minor nature makes its consequences a little harder to observe, it is no less real and no less harmful, and thus it might be time to question whether we should tolerate these behaviours at work.

[G] In a series of studies, researchers found evidence that rudeness can become contagious through a non-conscious, automatic pathway. When you experience rudeness, the part of your brain responsible for processing rudeness “wakes up” a little bit, and you become a little more sensitive to rudeness. This means that you’re likely to notice more rude cues in your environment, and also to interpret ambiguous interactions as rude. For example, if someone said, “Hey, nice shoes! ” you might normally interpret that as a compliment. However, if you’ve recently experienced rudeness, you’re more likely to think that person is insulting you.

B→【G1】→【G2】→【G3】→【G4】→G→【G5】

[A] The research was based on responses to the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (Elsa)—which gathers data from a representative sample of men and women aged 50 and over—in²⁰⁰⁸⁄₉and²⁰¹⁰⁄₁₁.

[B] The report says that alcohol consumption is growing among older people in England. By contrast, the proportion of British adults saying they do not drink and the proportion who say they binge-drank have both fallen.

[C] Alcohol Concern’s chief executive Jackie Ballard said: “Harmful drinking is a real issue for middle-aged and older people, many of whom are regularly drinking above recommended limits, often in their own homes. These are the people who, if they develop alcohol related illnesses, tend to require the most complex and expensive health care due to the mental and physical problems caused by drinking too much. Unless society starts to take this seriously and acknowledges the health problems and the cost to society which too much alcohol can cause, the situation will only get worse.”

[D] Age UK’s chief economist, Professor Jose Iparraguirre, author of the research, published in online journal BMJ Open, writes: “Our findings suggest that harmful drinking in later life is more prevalent among people who exhibit a lifestyle associated with affluence and with a ’successful’ ageing process. Harmful drinking may then be a hidden health and social problem in otherwise successful older people. Consequently, and based on our results, we recommend the explicit incorporation of alcohol drinking levels and patterns into the successful ageing paradigm.”

[E] Income was also associated with higher risk, but only for women. Neither being depressed or lonely were linked to increased risk of harmful drinking, although being single, separated or divorced was, although only for men. Analysis of the responses showed that the risk of harmful drinking peaked for men in their early 60s and then gradually tailed off, whereas for women risky drinking fell as they aged. Iparraguirre suggested that the current group of over 50s may be carrying on levels of higher consumption, developed in their younger years, into later life.

[F] People over 50 who are healthy, active, sociable and highly educated are at more risk of harmful drinking than their less well-off peers, according to research. A study of more than 9,000 people has concluded that drinking among the over-50s is a hidden “middle class” phenomenon, which should be targeted with explicit age-specific guidelines on consumption.

[G] Iparraguirre found that reporting better health and higher educational attainment were positively associated with an increased risk of harmful drinking. “Because this group is typically healthier than other parts of the older population, they might not realise that what they are doing is putting their health in danger,” he said.

[H] The study used national guidance on drinking, which says that consumption of 22 units or over for men, or 15 units or over for women, carries “increasing risk” or, if over 50 or 35 units respectively, “higher risk”. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has previously said that there should be a separate recommended safe drinking limit for over-65s of 1.5 units of alcohol a day.

F→【G1】→A→【G2】→【G3】→B→【G4】→【G5】