首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Meaning is Healthier Than Happiness [A]For at least the last decade, the happiness craze has been building. In the last three mo
Meaning is Healthier Than Happiness [A]For at least the last decade, the happiness craze has been building. In the last three mo
admin
2015-03-13
24
问题
Meaning is Healthier Than Happiness
[A]For at least the last decade, the happiness craze has been building. In the last three months alone over 1,000 books on happiness were released on Amazon, including Happy Money, Happy-People-Pills For All, and, for those just starting out, Happiness for Beginners.
[B]One of tne consistent claims of books like these is that happiness is associated with all sorts of good life ourcomes including—most promisingly—good health Many studies have noted the connection between a happy nunc and a healthy body—the happier we are, the better health outcomes we seem to have. In an overview of 150 studies on this topic, researchers put it like this: "Inductions of well-being lead to healthy functioning and inductions of ill-being lead to compromised health."
[C]But a new study, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS)challenges tne rosy picture Happiness may not be as good for the body as researchers thought. It might ever be bad.
[D]Of course, its important to first define happiness. A few months ago, I wrote a piece called "There’s More to Life Than Being Happy" about a psychology study that dug into what happiness really meant to people It specifically explored the difference between a meaningful life and a happy life.
[E]It seems strange that there would be a difference at all. But the researchers, who looked at a large sample of people over a month-long period, found that happiness is associated with selfish "taking" behavior and that having a sense of meaning in life is associated with selfless "giving" behavior.
[F]"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and complicated relationships are avoided," the authors of the study wrote. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need. " While being happy is about feeling good, meaning is derived from contributing to others or to society in a bigger way. As Roy Baumeister, one of the researchers, told me. " Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy. "
[G]The new PNAS study also sneds light on the difference oetween meaning ino happiness, but an the biological level. Barbara Fredrickson, a psychological researcher at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Steve Cole, a genetics and psychiatry(精神病学)researcher at UCLA. examined the self-reported levels of happiness and meaning in 80 research subjects.
[H]Happiness was defined, as in the earlier study, by feeling good. The "esearchers measurea happiness by asking subjects questions like "How often did you feel happy?" How often did you feel interested in life?" and " How often did you feel satisfied?" The more strongly people endorsed these measures of " hedonic(享乐主义的)well-being, " or pleasure, the higher they scored on happiness.
[I]Meaning was defined as an orientation to something bigger than the self. They measured meaning by asking questions like ’How often did you feel that your life has a sense of direction or meaning to it?" and "How often did you feei that you had something to contribute to society?" The more people endorsed these measures of " eudaimonic(幸福论的)well-being"—or, simply put. virtue—the more meaning they felt in life.
[J]After noting the sense of meaning and happiness that each subject had, Fredrickson and Cole, with their research colleagues, looked at the ways certain genes expressed themselves n each of the participants. Like neuroscientists who use fMRI(功能磁共振成像)scanning to determine how regions m the brain respond to different stimuli, Cole and Fredrickson are interested in how the body, at the genetic level, responds to feelings of happiness and meaning.
[K]Cole’s past work has linked various kinds of chronic adversity to a particular gene expression pattern. When people feel lonely, are grieving the loss of a loved one. or are struggling to make ends meet, their bodies go into threat mode. This triggers the activation of a stress-reiated gene pattern that has two features: an increase in the activity of pro-inflammatory(促炎症的)genes and a decrease in the activity of genes involved in anti-virai responses.
[L]Cole and Fredrickson found that people who are happy but have little to no sense of meaning in their lives have the same gene expression patterns as people who are responding to and enduring chronic adversity. That is, the bodies of these happy people are preparing them for oactenai threats by activating the pro-inflammatory response. Chronic inflammation is, of course, associated with major illnesses like heart disease and various cancers.
[M]"Empty positive emotions"—like the kind people experience during manic(狂喜的)episodes or artificially induced euphoria(欣快)from alcohol and drugs— " are about as good for you as adversity," says Fredrickson.
[N]It’s important to understand that for many people. a sense of meaning and happiness in life overlap; many people score jointly high(or jointly low)on the happiness and meaning measures in the study. But for many others. there is a dissonance(不一致)—they feel that they are low on happiness and high on meaning or that their lives are very high in happiness. but low m meaning. This last group, which has the gene expression pattern associated with adversity, formed "5 percent of study participants. Only one quarter of the study participants had what the researchers call " eudaimonic predominance" —that is, their sense of meaning outpaced their feelings of happmess.
[O]This is too bad given the more beneficial gene expression pattern associated with meaningfulness. People whose levels of happiness and meaning line up, and people who have a strong sense of meaning but are not necessarily happy, showed a de-activation of the adversity stress response. Their bodies were not preparing them for the bacterial infections that we get when we are aione or in rouble, but for the viral infections we get when surrounded by a lot of other people.
[P]Fredrickson’s past research, described in her two books. Positivity and Love 2. 0, has mapped the benefits of positive emotions in individuals. She has found that positive emotions broaden a person’s perspective and help protect people against adversity. So it was surprising to her that hedonic well-being, which is associated with positive emotions and pleasure, did so badly in this study compared with eudaimonic well-being.
[Q]" It’s not the amount of hedonic happiness that’s a problem. " Fredrickson tells me, " It’s that it’s not matched by eudaimonic well-being. It’s great when both are in step. But if you have more hedonic well-being than would be expected, that’s when this[gene]pattern that’s similar to adversity emerged. "
[R]The terms hedonism and eudaimonism bring to mind the great philosophical debate, which has shaped Western civilization for over 2,000 years, about the nature of the good life. Does happiness lie in feeling good, as hedonists think, or in doing and being good, as Aristotle and his intellectual descendants, the virtue ethicists(伦理学家), think? From the evidence of this study, it seems that feeling good is not enough. People need meaning to thrive. In the words of Carl Jung, "The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it. " Jung’s wisdom certainly seems to apply to our bodies, if not also to our hearts and our minds.
Experiments were carried out to determine our body’s genetic expression of feelings of happiness and meaning.
选项
答案
J
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/TMh7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
TheHealthBenefitsofDrinkingWater—IsBottledDrinkingWaterHealthierThanFilteredTapWater?[A]Waterisak
TheHealthBenefitsofDrinkingWater—IsBottledDrinkingWaterHealthierThanFilteredTapWater?[A]Waterisak
Angerisaverycommonhuman【C1】______andatsometimeoranotherweallexperienceit.Fromyoungchildrentooldpeopleweall
A、Therewereonlygrandparentsandchildren.B、Therewasonefather,onemother,andtheirchildren.C、Thereweremanyrelatives
A、Itrisksthehealthygrowthofchildren.B、Itmakesweddingstooexpensivetoenjoyfornewcouples.C、Itmakespeoplefeelwe
Justoveradecadeintothe21stcentury,women’sprogresscanbecelebratedacrossarangeoffields.Theyholdthehighestpol
Justoveradecadeintothe21stcentury,women’sprogresscanbecelebratedacrossarangeoffields.Theyholdthehighestpol
A、Maryshouldgetridofherpetassoonaspossible.B、Marywillnotbeabletokeepadoginthebuilding.C、Maryisnothappy
A、GhanaiantomatoestastebetterthanBritishones.B、BritishtomatoesarehealthierthanGhanaianones.C、Protectingtheenviro
随机试题
WhitmanwrotedownagreatmanypoemstoairhissorrowforthedeathofLincoln,oneofthefamousis______.()
甲抢夺乙的皮包不小心致乙重伤;没有抢到手而逃走。路人丙见状追捕甲,甲为了逃走将丙打成轻微伤,丙仍将甲制服。关于甲的行为,以下说法正确的有()(2019/客/1/仿33)
使用治疗剂量的强心苷治疗慢性心功能不全时,下列说法错误的是
A.升药B.轻粉C.砒石D.铅丹E.炉甘石外用蚀疮去腐、内服截疟平喘的药是
一束自然光从空气射到玻璃板表面上,当折射角为30°的反射光为完全偏振光,则此玻璃的折射率为()。
在单缝夫琅和费衍射实验中,若单缝两端处的光线到达屏幕上某点的光程差为δ=2.5λ(λ为入射单色光的波长),则此衍射方向上的波阵面可划分的半波带数量和屏上该点的衍射条纹情况是()。
据《社会生活环境噪声排放标准》,在社会生活噪声排放源边界处无法进行噪声测量或测量的结果不能如实反映其对噪声敏感建筑物的影响程度的情况下,噪声测量应在可能受影响的敏感建筑物()进行。
“备案号”栏应填写:()。“成交方式”栏应填写:()。
_______是古罗马的重要建筑,用来纪念战役的胜利。其有两种形式,即_______式和_______式。
Lifeasawomaninthecolonial(殖民的)Americaseemsquitedifferentfromitistoday.Womenwereconsideredinferiortomen,af
最新回复
(
0
)