Finding the Real You

    Psychometric testing—personality testing—has been very popular nowadays as studies show their results to be three times more accurate in predicting your job performance. These tests are now included in almost all graduate recruitment (招聘) and are widely used in the selection of managers.

    The most popular of these personality tests is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It is based on the theory that we are born with a tendency to one personality type which stays more or less fixed throughout life. You answer 88 questions and are then given your “type”, such as Outgoing or Quiet, Feeling or Thinking.

    Critics of personality testing raise doubts about “social engineering”. Psychologist Dr. Colin Gill warns that the “popular” personality traits (特性) have their disadvantages. “People who are extremely open to new experiences can be butterflies, going from one idea to the next without mastering any of them.” However, the psychometric test is here to stay, which may be why a whole sub-industry on cheating personality tests has sprung up. “It's possible to cheat,” admits Gill, “but having to pretend to be the person you are at work will be tiring and unhappy and probably short-lived.”

    So can we change our personality? “Your basic personalities fixed by the time you're 21,”says Gill, “but it can be affected by motivation and intelligence. If you didn't have the personality type to be a doctor but desperately wanted to be one and were intelligent enough to master the skills, you could still go ahead. But trying to go too much against type for too long requires much energy and is actually to be suffered for long. I think it's why we're seeing this trend for downshifting—too many people trying to fit into a type that they aren't really suited for.”

    Our interest in personality now exists in every part of our lives. If you ask an expert for advice on anything, you'll probably be quizzed about your personality. But if personality tests have any value to us, perhaps it is to free us from the idea that all of us are full of potential, and remind us of what we are. As they say in one test when they ask for your age: pick the one you are, not the one you wish you were.

    Spell checks are turning us into a nation of idiots with a third of adults failing to reach the expected spelling ability of an 11-year-old child,a shocking study shows.

    A survey involving 1,000 adults aged between 16 and 77 found that 67 percent would reach Level 4 in Standard Assessment Tests (ASTs),while less than half (44 percent) would achieve Level 5.Fifteen percent of the adults tested even failed to reach Level 3,which is below Level 4—the expected level of children at age 11.Experts blamed the poor showing of the adults on the popularity of tools such as spell check and auto-correct,which both play an important role in modem-day living.

    The study asked adults to complete Key Stage 2 spelling tests designed to judge the performance of children aged 10 and 11,as they reach the end of primary school.But the test spelled trouble for many of the adults tested.The study was charged by King Digital Entertainment,makers of popular mobile games such as Candy Crush.People taking part in the test were asked to spell 35 different words taken from SATs spelling papers from the past three years.In a test which imitated real exam conditions."Phenomenon" and "unnecessary" were among the words spelled wrong by more than half of those participants.Other words which fewer than half were able to spell included rhythmic (42 percent) and jewellery (49 percent).

    Susie Dent.Lexicographer（字典编纂者）and resident word expert on TV show Countdown,believed the results were partly down to the popularity of tools such as spell check and auto-correct.She said,"Tho result is disappointing. It suggests that the ability to spell is losing its importance in our daily lives.Modem tools like spell check and auto-correct encourage us to switch off from learning,leading to satisfaction or,at worst,indifference."

    In the past five years, Instagram has taken off faster than anyone would have ever expected. It has become more than just a social media platform; it has become a community. With this community of over 800 million people, there are two distinct sides when it comes to diet culture and weight-loss programs. These two sides are body positivity and body manipulation(操纵）

    I have run a food and lifestyle blog/Instagram for over two years, and I have experienced both of these sides shown through Instagram. I have followed accounts (账户) that have been about strictly counting their calories, and have looked at other people carefully for their food habits

    On the other side of this, the only accounts that I'll follow now are people who support intuitive eating, never calorie counting, and make sure to remind people that their weight is the least interesting thing. They try to remind people that food is fuel, rather than something that will make them lose or gain weight. This side of

    Instagram is what helps people suffering from eating disorders, rather than fueling them.

    The rise of Instagram also led to the rise of what we called" Instagram models. These people have a lot of fans and a very pleasant page on Instagram. Basically, this isn't a bad thing. Humans are attracted to attractive people. Where this does go wrong is when weight-loss programs, weight-loss products, and other people supporting different types of diets get in touch with these people and offer them pay to get their message across.

    We also run into issues with how the public thinks of and admires these people for only their bodies. Not only is it bad for the self-respect of the people viewing the account, but also for the mental health of the person running the Instagram account.

    The people that promote these products are usually attractive, with what we would consider "the perfect body and the products are almost always diet related in some way, which makes consumers believe that in order to reach this ideal body they must use this product.

    As a young adult, Noah Webster was a teacher. At that time, the colonies were fighting for independence from Britain. Yet the books that American children used in school all came from Britain. The books were all about British people and British places. Webster wanted books that would mean more to American children. So he wrote three books that used American examples—a grammar book, a spelling book, and a reader. These books were very popular, and millions of them were sold.

    Webster was interested in changing the spellings of words. He wanted words to be spelled the way they were pronounced. For example, he thought the word "head" should be spelled "hed", and the word "laugh" should be spelled "laf". People liked Webster's suggestions.

    However, few words were actually changed. One group of words that were changed were words in which an unpronounced "u" followed an "o". That is why Americans write "color" and "labor", and the British write "colour" and "labour".

    With the money he made from his books, Webster was able to write. It was the first American English dictionary, published in 1828.Webster's dictionary had over 70，000 words and gave the meaning and origin of each. To this day, Webster's work is the example that most dictionaries of American English follow.

    Picture this: You're searching the Internet and come across a website with interesting articles. Some are news stories. Their goal is to share information. Others only look like news stories. They're actually advertisements, or ads. The goal of an ad is to get you to buy something. How do you, the reader, tell the difference between a news story and an ad?

    Back when I was growing up, it was easier. We got most of our information from newspapers. Big news stories appeared on the front page, and ads were boxed off and clearly labeled. But on the Internet, the two are often presented together. It can be hard to tell which is which.

    That's why the research group I direct conducted a study. My research team showed kids like you the home page of a popular digital magazine. We asked them to tell us what was a news story and what was an ad.

    Most were great at identifying certain types of ads. "It has a coupon (优惠券) code, a big company logo, and the words 'limited time offer'," one student wrote about an ad on the site. So where did kids get stumped (难倒)？

    Some ads seem identical to real news stories. They have headlines and contain information. But they may also include the words "sponsored content". Sponsored means "paid for," and content refers to the information in the story. "Sponsored content" is a way of saying that something is an ad. Most kids in our study, even if they used the Internet often, didn't know this.

    Something sponsored doesn't necessarily mean it's false. It means someone paid money for it to appear. Companies pay so that readers will see their stories, buy their products, and like what the company stands for.

    As a reader, you have a right to know who's behind the information you're consuming. So, look for the phrase sponsored content. (And look carefully. Sometimes, it will be written in tiny letters.) The Internet is a vast sea of information. To use it well, we not only have to know how to swim but also how to avoid the sharks.

You've probably heard it a dozen times by now. But here it goes again: Sleep is important. Your mental health and immune (免疫时)system are connected to your sleeping habits. So are your grades, a new study finds. Sleep accounts for nearly one-fourth of the difference among students' grades in a class. So even if you spend hours studying for a test but get too little sleep, you might still do poorly.

Typically, people's sleep schedules are messy and can not be known in advance. Professor Jeffrey Grossman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge wanted to see if sleep links to people's learning performance even when a study was done with people who kept such true-to-life schedules at home. So he turned to Fitbits, which can check how long people sleep and how frequently they wake up. And the researchers looked for 100 students. They focused on these students' sleep patterns in the days and weeks before exams and then compared them to these students' test scores.

"How much time a person sleeps the night. before an exam doesn't affect that person's grade," Grossman says. "A student who sleeps 7 hours every night will do better than a student who sleeps 7.5 hours one night and 6.5 hours another night."

"It's important for people to know that if their Fitbits tell them that they have terrible sleep, that may not actually be so," Michael Scullin, a sleep scientist at Baylor University says. Grossman also raises this point. Fitbit, Inc. makes this advanced tool. But it doesn't share how its tool works. This leaves a question about whether the tool is really correct when checking a student's sleep. Even so, Scullin emphasizes that there are enough data supporting ties between sleep and how well someone performs.

"Students need more sleep and less late evening use of phones and other screens. Even with after-school activities and schoolwork, they need to get enough sleep," Grossman says.