While residents of wealthy nations tend to have greater life satisfaction, new research shows that those living in poorer nations report having greater meaning in life.
These findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological science, suggest that meaning in life may be higher in poorer nations as a result of greater religiosity (笃信宗教). As countries become richer, religion becomes less central to people’s lives and they lose a sense of meaning in life.
“Thus far, the wealth of nations has been almost always associated with longevity, health, happiness or life satisfaction,” explains psychological scientist Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia. “Given that meaning in life is an important aspect of overall well-being, we wanted to look more carefully at differential patterns, correlates (相关物), and predictors for meaning in life.”
Oishi and colleague Ed Diener of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign investigated life satisfaction, meaning, and well-being by examining data from the 2007 Gallup World Poll, a large-scale survey of over 140,000 participants from 132 countries. In addition to answering a basic life satisfaction question, participants were asked: “Do you feel your life has an important purpose or meaning?” and “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”
The data revealed some unexpected trends:
“Among Americans, those who are high in life satisfaction are also high in meaning in life,” says Oishi. “But when we looked at the societal level of analysis, we found a completely different pattern of the association between meaning in life and life satisfaction.”
When looking across many countries, Oishi and Diener found that people in wealthier nations were more educated, had fewer children, and expressed more individualistic attitudes compared to those in poorer countries – all factors that were associated with higher life satisfaction but a significantly lower sense of meaning in life.”
The data suggest that religiosity may play an important role: Residents of wealthier nations, where religiosity is lower, reported less meaning in life and had higher suicide rates than poorer countries.
According to the researchers, religion may provide meaning to life to the extent that it helps people to overcome personal difficulty and cope with the struggles of working to survive in poor economic conditions:
“Religion gives a system that connects daily experiences with the coherent whole (连贯的整体) and a general structure to one’s life … and plays a critical role in constructing meaning out of extreme hardship,” the researchers write.
Oishi and Diener hope to reproduce these findings using more comprehensive measures of meaning and religiosity, and are interested in following countries over time to track whether economic prosperity gives rise to less religiosity and less meaning in life.
【小题1】Which of the following questions couldn’t the participants have answered?

A．Does your life have a purpose or meaning?

B．Do you have relatives living abroad?

C．Are you satisfied with your everyday life?

D．Is religion involved in your daily life?

【小题2】Which of the following statements is true?

A．Those who have higher life satisfaction usually have lower sense of meaning in life.

B．People in wealthier nations were more educated, have fewer children and express less individualistic attitudes compared to those in poorer countries.

C．Religion may provide meaning to life in that people can get strong support from it in face of hardship.

D．Wealthy people are more likely to commit suicide than poor people.

【小题3】What can be inferred from the passage?

A．The poorer a country is, the more religious its people are.

B．Economic prosperity gives rise to less religiosity and less meaning in life.

C．If you want to find meaning in life, you must practice a religion.

D．Meaning in life doesn’t have much to do with the amount of wealth one possesses.

【小题4】The main purpose of the passage is to explain the possible reason why __________.

A．greater life satisfaction leads to lower sense of meaning

B．residents of poorer nations enjoy greater meaning in life

C．residents of poorer nations are so religious

D．residents of wealthy nations have greater life satisfaction

短文改错

As we all know, most of us school students feel somehow nervously whenever we’re taking an exam. There is no doubt whether exams are important to us, but it was also of great importance to have a right attitude towards them. As the matter of fact, exams are no more than a means of evaluation. However there is no need to worry too many about the results. Only by studying hard every day and make good preparations can we avoid suffering from the pressure of exam.

We had better to go out for a walk before exams. In addition, having enough sleep could make us full of energy and make possible for us to perform well in the exams.

Internet use appears to cause a decline in psychological well-being（安康）, according to research at Carnegie Mellon University.
Even people who spent just a few hours a week on the Internet experienced more depression and loneliness than those who logged on less frequently, the two-year study showed. And it wasn’t that people who were already feeling bad spent more time on the Internet, but that using the Net actually appeared to cause the bad feeling.
Researchers are puzzling over the results, which were completely contrary to their expectations. They expected that the net would prove socially healthier than television, since the Net allows users to choose their information and to communicate with others.
The fact that Internet use reduces time available for family and friends may account for the drop in well-being, researchers suggested. Faceless, bodiless “virtual”（虚拟的）communication may be less psychologically satisfying than actual conversation, and the relationship formed through it may be shallower. Another possibility is that exposure to the wider world via the Net makes users less satisfied with their lives.
“But it’s important to remember this is not about the technology  per se; it’s about how it is used,” says psychologist Christine Riley of Intel, one of the study’s sponsors. “It really points to the need for considering social effects in terms of how you design applications and services for technology.”
【小题1】The best title for this passage would be ________.

A．Internet may Cause Depression

B．The Dark Side of Internet

C．How to Use Technology Properly

D．The Importance of Psychological Well-being

【小题2】Internet use may cause a decline in psychological well-being because ________.

A．people who were already feeling bad spend more time on the Internet

B．Internet users thought the world was wider than it really was

C．people were too eager to turn the “virtual” communication into reality

D．people have less time for actual communication with their family and friends

【小题3】What does the underlined Latin word “per se” (in Para. 5) mean?

A．probably	B．absolutely
C．oneself	D．itself

【小题4】What’s the tone of the passage?

A．Optimistic.	B．Critical.
C．Objective.	D．Pessimistic.

Once there lived a rich man 【小题1】 wanted to do something for the people of his town. But first he wanted 【小题2】 (find) out whether they deserve his help.
In the center of the main road into the town, he placed 【小题3】 very large stone. Then he 【小题4】 (hide) behind a tree and waited. Soon an old man came along with his cow.
"Who put this stone in the center of the road?" said the man, but he did not try to remove the stone. Instead, with some difficulty he passed around the stone and continued his way. 【小题5】 man came and did the same thing; then another came, and another. All of them complained about the stone but not tried to remove 【小题6】. Later in the afternoon a young man came along. He saw the stone, 【小题7】 (say) to himself, "the night will be very dark. Some 【小题8】 (neighbor) will come along 【小题9】 (late) in the dark and will fall against the stone."
Then he began to move the stone. He pushed and pulled with all his strength to move it. How great his surprise was at last! 【小题10】 the stone, he found a bag of money.