ep ara e actice€¦ · i saw this tv programme with derren brown – you know, that great...

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listening Practice 1 03|01 11

it’s not all chance

Brad: Hey Lynda, I’ve finally found a job! My friend had invited me to a party last Saturday. Anyway, while I was there, I started talking to this guy I’d never met before. It turned out he manages a new computer shop and was looking for a part-time sales person. He asked me to come for an interview. I went and I got the job.

lynda: I always thought you were lucky, Brad, and now I know why. I saw this TV programme with Derren Brown – you know, that great magician.

Brad: Yeah – he usually explains how the magic works because he doesn’t want people to believe magic is real.

lynda: Right. Well, Derren wanted to see why some people are lucky and others are unlucky, so he made a TV programme about it. He conducted an experiment in an entire town – a small town called Todmorden. In the experiment, a statue of a dog was placed in the local park. Derren then sent a reporter to the town who pretended to be filming a documentary about the statue. She asked everybody whether they’d heard of the lucky statue and if they’d ever experienced good luck after stroking it. Guess what, after a few weeks, people started thinking this dog was the cause of any good luck they had.

Brad: I’m always amazed at how superstitious people are about luck. There was this survey done in America once, I can’t remember where I heard about it, but I remember that out of 1000 people on the survey, over 50% said they were a bit superstitious and another 25% were even more superstitious. What happened in Derren’s show? Did touching the dog really bring good luck or was it just a coincidence?

lynda: Well, yes and no. For instance, a coach full of locals went on a day trip to play the games of luck at a local amusement park. Of course, on their way to the park they stopped to pat the lucky dog. Believe it or not, they had a great day and they all won more than they normally would. They were certain the lucky dog had helped them. But Derren explains it differently. He says their belief in the lucky dog made them spend more time and effort on winning the games and that’s why they did better.

Brad: What about unlucky people?

lynda: Derren’s theory was that unlucky people don’t see opportunities. The team filmed Wayne, the butcher, who insisted he was very unlucky. They secretly presented Wayne with all kinds of opportunities for good luck. For example, they put an interviewer in the street who gave £20 to anybody who could answer a few simple questions about meat. Several people answered the questions correctly and won, but when Wayne came by, he said that he had no time to answer the questions and ran off. They even put £50 on the pavement just where Wayne was walking, but he walked right past it. This really demonstrated Derren’s theory about unlucky people not seeing an opportunity for luck even when it is in front of them.

Brad: I feel sorry for Wayne. It’s really all about attitude. I heard about an experiment done with two groups of people, ones who thought they were lucky and ones who were certain they were not. The results were interesting. Both groups were told to imagine they were waiting in a bank when a bank robber comes in. During the robbery they are shot in the arm. The unlucky people saw the whole event as proof of that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, while the fortunate people thought “it could have been so much worse”.

lynda: So it’s not really luck, but rather your personality – how you perceive things.

Brad: Exactly. Actually, I wrote a paper on luck for school last year. I learned that lucky people are skilled at creating and taking advantage of chance opportunities – like me talking to that stranger at the party. They also listen to their intuition when they make decisions and they’ve got a positive attitude towards life. But the good news is that unlucky people can become more fortunate by learning to imitate the attitudes and behaviour of lucky people.

lynda: I’ll try to do that – maybe I’ll be lucky!



listening Practice 2 03|02 Page 112

Mazes

interviewer: Good evening. This is Mel Radcliff on History Today. Not long ago, a wonderful maze appeared in the South Bank area near the Thames in London. It was built from 250,000 books. Seeing the maze made me curious about mazes, so I invited Christina Proni, an expert on mazes and labyrinths, to tell us a bit about them. Christina, is there a difference between labyrinths and mazes?

Proni: Indeed there is. Labyrinths have one single path and have been around for much longer than mazes. In fact, some ancient books mention labyrinths built in Egypt around the 19th Century BC. According to these books, a pharaoh built a huge palace in the form of a labyrinth. He even had a labyrinth built inside the pyramid where he was buried. The purpose of this was to make it difficult for robbers to steal the treasure that was buried with him.

interviewer: Wasn’t there a labyrinth in Crete with the story of that monster in it – the minotaur?

Proni: That’s right. It was built around the same time the Egyptian labyrinth was built. Unfortunately, this labyrinth was burnt to the ground around 15th century BC. However, archeologists did find coins and wall paintings with labyrinth designs on them at the location. Later, the Romans also used similar labyrinth patterns on mosaic floors. These were very often found at the entrance to homes, but you couldn’t actually walk through these labyrinths – they weren’t big enough.

interviewer: So what was their function?

Proni: Some experts believe they were put there to confuse harmful spirits and keep them out of the home. Examples of these mosaics can still be seen wherever there were Romans – even in England. In the middle ages, labyrinths were often paths that followed a complicated route like a snake. You could walk along them, but you could see where you were going. Then, about 600 years ago, in the Renaissance, the labyrinth started to change.

interviewer: How did it change?

Proni: Firstly, designers started to use tall bushes as walls along the labyrinth path. When you walked through the labyrinth, you felt trapped because you couldn’t see the way out. Secondly, instead of only one entrance and one path, new labyrinths had a path that separated into several different directions. This meant you had to decide which path to take and you could quickly feel very lost. This new kind of labyrinth is what today we call a maze. These mazes were very popular in the Renaissance. Only the very wealthiest people could afford to have one in their gardens.

interviewer: I once heard that you could find your way in a maze by putting one hand on the bushes and never taking it off – just following it till you get out.

Proni: That’s true for those early classic mazes but since then, maze designers have become more creative and make mazes that really confuse people. Nowadays, they’ve made mazes more three-dimensional by adding things like bridges that you go over or under. Moreover, more and more maze designers today use computer technology.

interviewer: How does that work?

Proni: Well, there’s one kind of maze that’s cut through a field of corn. The designers use a computer to create it, and then copy the design onto the field of corn. The computer can create an incredibly complex maze but it only lasts for one season – until the corn is collected.

interviewer: I read about one of those. A couple of years ago, a whole family got lost in a corn maze in the USA and after hours, the police had to come and rescue them! Are computers used for other mazes?

Proni: Yes. In a water maze, the computer controls walls of water that come up from the ground and block the path in front of you, forcing you to turn in another direction. They also use computers in mazes with mirrors. Here the visitor’s movements turn on the computer, which starts moving mirrors all around the visitor. Soon, the visitor can’t work out what is real and what is an illusion.

interviewer: Are there a lot of mazes around today that people can visit?

Proni: Yes, they’ve never been more popular. In 1980, there were only around 42 mazes open to the public in the UK and today there are over 125 mazes. In fact, it’s estimated that in the last 25 years over 10,000 mazes have been built in countries all over the world.

interviewer: Thank you, Christina, for a fascinating talk.


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Queuing

interviewer: Good morning. This is Grace Fletcher. Today on Psychology Book Review, we have with us Professor Grant Millener, a sociologist who’s just published a book called The Long Line. Professor, you did years of research into queuing for your book. Maybe you can explain to our listeners what is meant by the queuing theory.

Prof. Millener: That’s a good idea, Grace. Put simply, queuing theory is the study of queues and how to organise them – and I mean all kinds of queues, from the queues at supermarket checkouts to queues of cars in traffic. The whole theory that you can organise queues to be more efficient was actually invented about 100 years ago. Back in 1909, the telephone was a new invention and these phones worked differently than today’s smartphones. You had to call an operator and then the operator would connect you to the person you wanted to speak to. But this meant phone companies had a problem. If there were more calls than operators, people would have to wait to get their calls answered and they got annoyed. On the other hand, if there were too many operators, the phone company would lose money. A Danish engineer named Agner Krarup Erlang came up with a mathematical equation to solve the problem. His equation is still used as a basis for queue organisation.

interviewer: So organising queues can be solved by a mathematical equation.

Prof. Millener: I wish it were that simple. No, today we also use psychology to help us with three important queuing problems. The first is how to stop people from getting bored in a queue. The second is how to stop people from feeling disappointed and annoyed when they have to wait longer than they expect and, finally, how to stop people from getting angry when someone joins the queue after them but gets served before them. We feel this is unjust and this can even make some people become violent!

interviewer: What kinds of solutions have people come up with?

Prof. Millener: Lots of creative ways have been used to overcome boredom. One New York bank hired a concert pianist to play music for bank customers waiting to be served.

interviewer: What a great idea!

Prof. Millener: And have you ever forgotten to make a reservation at a restaurant and then had to queue for a table? Well, today some restaurants use mobile phone apps to notify their customers when their table is available. While people are waiting for a table, they can stay at home till the restaurant is ready for them.

interviewer: Or wander around local shops looking for bargains! And what about expectations?

Prof. Millener: Disney is the best for managing the expectations of people in queues. A few years ago, they started putting digital screens where there were long queues. When you’re in the queue, the screens show you the estimated time you have to reach your ride. But the times are always about ten minutes longer than you will really have to wait. So you are manipulated into thinking you’ve arrived quickly and that makes you happy!

interviewer: Brilliant. What about people getting served before you in a queue even if they came later? I get so angry about that.

Prof. Millener: Actually, people feel differently about that situation depending on where it happens. If you’re waiting in a hospital emergency room, for example, you will probably understand if the doctor sees someone else first. And most people are ok with the idea of an express lane in a supermarket. We think it’s right for someone with a bag of fruit to wait less time than someone with a whole trolley full of stuff.

interviewer: But in lots of situations, this kind of behaviour makes people really angry.

Prof. Millener: True, and something we call the serpentine queue was invented to help solve that problem. You know what they are even if you aren’t familiar with the name – they’re those long queues where ropes or some other barrier mark where people should stand. In this queue, the customer who reaches the front gets served by the first available person. This isn’t always faster than other queues – but it makes people feel they are not being cheated or treated badly.

interviewer: Professor Millener, our time is up, but I’d really like to thank you. Who would have thought that queuing was such an interesting topic!




all about sherlock Holmes

Josh: Mum, I have to write a paper about a famous character from literature and I decided to do Sherlock Holmes. Can you help me?

Mum: Sure, Josh. I did a course on 19th Century detective literature at university and I actually remember quite a bit about Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle – that’s the author who created him.

Josh: Great – I’ve got lots of questions. For a start, when did Doyle start writing about Sherlock Holmes?

Mum: Doyle published his first story in 1879, but Holmes wasn’t in it. The character of Holmes was introduced in two novels written by Doyle in 1887 and 1890. But Holmes didn’t become really popular until 1891, when Doyle started publishing short stories about him in a magazine.

Josh: Why did he decide to write a short story for a magazine instead of a novel?

Mum: In the late 19th century, lots of novels were published in magazines. Each new chapter would be published monthly in the new edition of the magazine. Readers would follow the plot of the book over quite a long period of time. You can imagine that with a complicated detective novel, this might be a bit difficult.

Josh: Yeah – I’d forget all the details between one reading and the next.

Mum: Exactly. But then Conan Doyle realised that he could write all about Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in a series of short stories for a magazine. Each monthly issue would contain a complete story, but the main characters in each story wouldn’t change. That way there was no problem remembering the plot. It’s almost like a good series on TV – each episode is different, but we watch it week after week because we get to know and like the characters in the series.

Josh: I get it. What about the character of Sherlock Holmes? Did Doyle invent him or was he based on someone real?

Mum: The evidence is that Holmes was based mostly on two very real people. In 1877, Doyle was a student of medicine at the University of Edinburgh and one of his professors was a brilliant man called Joseph Bell. Dr. Bell’s lectures were very entertaining. He was particularly famous for being able to deduce a lot about his patients’ disease, personality and occupation within minutes of meeting them. And he was usually right. He did it by observing and listening to them closely and noticing small details most people didn’t pay any attention to. This made a real impression on Doyle and he used it in creating Holmes’ character.

Josh: You said two people – who was the other person?

Mum: That would be Henry Littlejohn, a famous Edinburgh forensic scientist who was one of the first people to use evidence like fingerprints and photographs in his investigations of criminals.

Josh: How would Doyle have heard about him?

Mum: During the time Doyle was writing “The Final Problem” in 1893, lots of people were following the trial of Alfred John Monson, who was accused of shooting a student of his during a hunting trip. Monson’s solicitor claimed that the student had accidentally shot himself but Littlejohn was called in as an expert witness. He claimed that the position of the wound, the way the bullet had damaged the bones and even the smell of the victim proved that this was a murder and not an accident. Doyle would have followed this trial and must have been fascinated with the way Littlejohn used the forensic evidence. Littlejohn’s methods and personality also became part of the character and methods of Sherlock Holmes.

Josh: One last question. Were there any fictional detectives before Sherlock Holmes?

Mum: In the 1840s, three short mystery stories by the American writer Edgar Allen Poe starred a French detective. And about 25 years later, Wilkie Collins, a British lawyer, wrote the first modern detective novel starring an amateur detective and a detective from London’s Scotland Yard. But Sherlock Holmes is much more famous. OK Josh, that’s enough. I think it’s time you did some research on your own and wrote your essay. I’ve got other things to do.

Josh: I suppose I’d better start! Thanks for helping, mum.




the Brain

interviewer: On today’s programme, Trends in Psychology, we’ll be talking to Dr Max Smallwood, who’s written many articles and books on the human brain. He’ll be talking to us about how our brains work and what we can do to become smarter. Dr Smallwood, I’ve often heard people use the term IQ. Can you tell us a little about what IQ is?

Dr smallwood: I’ll try. IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient – which means the level of intelligence. Let me give you some background. About 100 years ago, the French government passed a law that made it mandatory for all children to go to school. They asked a French psychologist, Alfred Binet, to help decide which students would probably succeed in school and which would most likely have problems learning. Together with a colleague, Binet developed a test with questions that focused on problem-solving skills and ability to concentrate. Using this test, Binet could predict how well children might do at school. This first intelligence test has been adapted through the years, but is still very popular.

interviewer: You know, I remember reading somewhere that eldest children have the highest IQ and that most of the Nobel Prize winners are first-born children. Is there any truth in this?

Dr smallwood: For a start, it’s not all Nobel Prizes – only more Nobel Prizes for Science have been won by eldest children. Now, about first-born children being more intelligent, most research has demonstrated that eldest children do have a slightly higher IQ than their siblings. Some scientists suggest it’s because these children are the focus of their parents’ attention before their brothers and sisters are born. Others say older children remember what they learn more because they explain things to their younger siblings.

interviewer: OK, so let’s say you don’t have the advantage of being first-born. Can adults do something to increase their IQ?

Dr smallwood: Yes, actually. Let’s start with exercise. Now here I want to emphasise that I’m not talking about building big muscles. However, studies do show that exercise that gets your heart and lungs working can make you more intelligent. This kind of exercise does two things. It increases the oxygen in your blood – and that oxygen is like food to the brain! In addition, exercise produces a chemical in your brain that helps create new brain cells.

interviewer: I’m a couch potato, actually. I like sitting down and doing crosswords and Sudoku.

Dr smallwood: Those games aren’t bad, but you won’t become an Einstein by doing Sudoku. Each of these games practices a different skill and certainly will make you better at that skill – but they won’t make you smarter.

interviewer: So crosswords might increase my vocabulary but won’t help me solve maths problems. Well, what about meditating? Apart from decreasing stress, it’s meant to be great for your brain.

Dr smallwood: It is. I recommend meditation techniques where you sit quietly and focus on a word or group of words called a mantra. The mantra is usually made up of simple words – not difficult to remember. But training the brain to focus on one specific thing at a time improves the way your brain functions. And when you’re meditating, you breathe differently too – you take long, slow breaths that put a lot of oxygen into your blood. This, as I’ve already explained, is good for brain cells.

interviewer: Some people say that certain food makes you smarter.

Dr smallwood: There’s quite a bit of information about food and food supplements. For a start, studies that show that if babies and children eat healthy food, they will develop a higher IQ. What’s more, a recent experiment in America also demonstrated that vitamins could increase the IQ in children. Recent research has shown that the popular supplement Omega 3, which is made from fish oil, can improve memory in young adults.

interviewer: Dr Smallwood, I have one last question about the brain. Do we really only use 10% of it?

Dr smallwood: I know a lot of people say this but it’s simply not true. The brain has got a huge job – not just thinking and creating but also just keeping us alive. In fact, the brain is about three percent of the body’s weight and uses 20 percent of the body’s energy. The fact is we use almost every part of the brain, although maybe not all at one time.

interviewer: I wish we had more time, Dr Smallwood, but I’d like to thank you for being with us today. It’s been fascinating.




experiments on the internet

charlie: Hey, Lily, you look upset.

lily: I am, Charlie. I’m just reading a really critical article about the OKCupid dating website. According to this article, they’ve been doing experiments on us. I use this website and I’ve actually met a couple of really nice guys through it, but now I think I might stop using it.

charlie: You know I read that Facebook did something similar. What did OKCupid do?

lily: Three experiments. The first one didn’t actually affect me, I guess, because I just joined in February of this year. This experiment took place on their 10th anniversary, which was on 15th January in 2013. So, on that Tuesday, they deleted all the photos on their posts. After seven hours, they put them up again.

charlie: I guess they wanted to see what effect it had.

lily: Yeah – it says here that when there were no photos, people actually responded to messages 44% more often. That’s not all, either. They said that the conversations were more meaningful and that people gave each other their contact information more quickly. So in a way, the site was actually working well. But then, listen to this, when they put the photos back, 2,200 people stopped exchanging messages right in the middle. It was dramatic.

charlie: What else did they do?

lily: Well, you know how dating site profiles work. They’ve usually got one or more pictures and some content – you know – some general information about your personality. Also, most dating sites have got a system where you can rate a profile you’re looking at. Apparently on OKCupid’s original system, users could rate a profile separately for appearance and for personality. But then, they got rid of the two scales and started using only one for both. In the next experiment, they focused on the posts of a small group of users. Some of the time they showed the picture and the content together on these posts and sometimes just the picture with no other information. After a while, they looked at the rating score and analysed it.

charlie: Don’t tell me – having no personality content didn’t make much difference to the rating.

lily: That’s right. According to this article, it counts for less than 10% of what people think of you! But this last experiment is really the worst. They didn’t just remove information on people’s posts. They lied.

charlie: About how people looked?

lily: No, about something else. The whole idea of these sites is to help you find someone suitable to date, right? They use all the information you give them to try to calculate how good a match two people are. When you look at someone’s profile, it’ll give you a match percentage. For example, if it says 90%, you’re a good match with this person and 30% means not so good. The site managers wanted to see if people were just responding to the suggestion that they were a good or bad match.

charlie: How’d they do that?

lily: They took couples who were bad matches and told them they were exceptionally good for each other.

charlie: That’s awful – it’s really manipulating people!

lily: Exactly. But what I find really depressing is not what they did, but the result of their experiment. When they matched people who were incompatible and told them they were compatible, the couple responded to the other person as if they were a good match. When couples who were good matches were told they were incompatible, they didn’t get along with each other. It’s all about suggestion. People believe what they’re told! If that’s not depressing, I don’t know what is. What did Facebook do?

charlie: They did an experiment to see how negative or positive posts affect what people write about their own lives. They found that when they reduced the number of negative posts on someone’s page, they were more inclined to write positively about themselves. The opposite happened when they reduced the number of positive posts. They played around with the accounts of 700,000 members for a week and didn’t tell them!

lily: Wow – I think I’m going to close my Facebook account and leave OKCupid too.

ep ara e actice€¦ · i saw this tv programme with derren brown – you know, that great...

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