1. Find English equivalents for the following words and expressions.

Резкий скачок, всплеск; ценное генетическое достояние; проверенные временем приемы; ухаживать, добиваться руки партнера; древняя заповедь; сдерживающий эффект; держать ревность в узде.

2. Give Russian equivalents for the following words and expressions.

An appropriate concern; a destructive disturbance; to go to great lengths; to trigger; a guarantee of absolute fidelity; longevity and fecundity; the key to dealing with jealousy.

3. Make an appropriate choice.

1. All these time-honored techniques to fend off potential rivals are mentioned in the text EXCEPT

1. to put your arm around your partner in casual conversation

2. an innocent kiss on the cheek on display

3. the not-so-innocent mention of a partner’s flaws

2. According to the text our ancestors

1. often got a second chance to woo a mate

2. were not hyper-vigilant about any threats to their relationships

3. succeeded in acquiring mates and guarding them long enough to spawn

3. The word “exemplar” in line 3 could best be replaced

1. example

2. model

3. sample

4. Rational jealousy

1. springs from a weak sense of self

2. demands a guarantee of absolute fidelity

3. is a passionate concern and respect for the relationship

5. The author thinks that you can redirect your efforts to improving your relationship by

1. fending off potential rivals

2. accepting that perfect reassurance cannot really exist

3. seeking an ironclad guarantee of fidelity

Text 13 why are some people happier than others?

What is the nature of happiness? For psychologists, happiness is just one aspect of subjective -well-being (SWB). In addition to happiness, SWB includes having more positive than negative emotions and having feelings of overall life satisfaction.

To understand the roots of happiness and feelings of well-being, researchers looked first at external events and the demographic characteristics of happy people. But after decades of research, and despite what “common sense” might suggest, they found that external events and demographic characteristics have very little influence on SWB. More specifically, they found no correlation between age, gender, or intelligence and happiness. Researchers did not find that people who are married, wealthy, well-educated, and in good health tend to be happier than others, but the difference is often small.

If these variables don’t have a major effect on happiness, then what does? Increasingly, researchers are coming to believe that the keys to happiness are the goals people have, their ability to adapt to conditions around them, and their personalities. Consistent with this view is the fact that personality is a strong and consistent predictor of well-being over a period of years. Also people who are happy in one area of their fives (such as at work) tend to be happy in other areas as well. Thus, researchers believe that stable personality factors predispose people to feel happy or unhappy in a wide range of situations, though current fife events may significantly influence happiness at any given moment.

Using the Big Five trait model of personality, DeNeve and Cooper (1998) found that happy people and those reporting more positive than negative emotions tend to be high on extraversion and low on neuroticism. They also found that people who are satisfied with their fives tend to be high on conscientiousness and low on neuroticism. To a lesser extent, people high in agreeableness also tend to be more satisfied with their lives. Thus happy people in general tend to be enthusiastic, accommodating, understanding, flexible, gregarious, energetic, confident, optimistic, and affectionate.

Why personality should predict happiness so well is not known. Some evidence suggests that people may be genetically predisposed to be happy or unhappy. Exactly how genes might affect happiness is currently explored.

Evolutionary psychologists argue that differences between our ancestral environment and the contemporary world may also contribute to the human experience of happiness. For instance, evolved mechanisms that foster friendship, mating bonds, kinship, and cooperativeness probably make a positive contribution to the experience of happiness. Conversely, evolved mechanisms for survival may also include a competitive component, principally designed to benefit the success of the individual at the expense of the group. In the modem world these latter mechanisms may, under some circumstances, serve as a source of subjective stress, reducing one’s overall feeling of happiness.

Techniques for adapting and coping also seem to contribute to happiness. Many people who suffer severe injuries or who are imprisoned for long periods of time report that within a relatively short time following these episodes, they regain their normal levels of happiness. Most people who lose life partners take longer to return to normal, but many do so eventually. We don’t yet know exactly how adaptation contributes to happiness. It may be that most people simply “get used to” unpleasant situations, it maybe that they change the way they perceive the new situation, it may be that they restructure their lives to fit the changed conditions, or the explanation may lie elsewhere entirely. But adaptive techniques could help to explain the relative stability of happiness and feelings of well-being over time.