题干
It is a familiar scene these days: employees taking newly laid-off co-workers out for a drink for comfort. But which side deserves more sympathy，the jobless or the still employed？On March 6，researchers at a conference at the University of Cambridge suggested it was the latter.
Brendan Burchell，a Cambridge sociologist，presented his analysis based on various surveys conducted across Europe. The data suggest that employed people who feel insecure in their jobs show similar levels of anxiety and depression as those who are unemployed. Although a newly jobless person's mental health may“bottom out”after about six months，and then may even begin to improve，the mental state of people who are continuously worried about losing their own job“just continues to get worse and worse”, Burchell says.
Psychologists support this theory by arguing that human beings feel more stressed during times of insecurity because they sense an immediate but invisible threat. Patients have been known to experience higher levels of anxiety, for example, while waiting for examination results than knowing what they are suffering from—even if the results are cancer. It's better to get the bad news and start doing something about it rather than wait with anxiety. When the uncertainty continues, people stay in a nonstop“fight or flight”response, which leads to damaging stress.
But not every employee in insecure industries has such a discouraging view, Burchell says. In general, women get on better. While reporting higher levels of anxiety than men when directly questioned, women score lower in stress on the 12-item General Health Questionnaire, even when they have a job they feel insecure about losing. As Burchell explains,“For women, most studies show that any job—it doesn't matter whether it is secure or insecure—gives psychological improvement over unemployment.”He supposes that the difference in men is that they tend to feel pressure not only to be employed, but also to be the primary breadwinners, and that more of a man's self-worth depends on his job.
【小题1】Why do researchers think the still employed deserve more sympathy?| A．They have to do more work since then. |
| B．They have no chance to find better jobs. |
| C．They have to work with inexperienced workers. |
| D．They constantly worry about losing their jobs. |
| A．Not having a paid job. |
| B．Poor job conditions. |
| C．Not knowing what will happen. |
| D．Pressure to work longer hours. |
| A．Advice on preparing for a job interview. |
| B．Advice on handling pressure from insecure industries. |
| C．Some knowledge of psychology. |
| D．Difference in men and women. |
| A．Is it less stressful to get laid off than staying on? |
| B．Should more sympathy be given to the jobless? |
| C．Do employees bear more stress than ever before? |
| D．Do men or women show higher levels of anxiety? |
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