Before I studied psychology, I used to think that people would laugh when funny things occurred. While I was right about that, I discovered there are lots of other psychological factors that make people laugh other than the funny part of a joke. When someone laughs at a joke, there will usually be more than one reason that makes him laugh—and the more reasons there are, the more powerful the joke will be.

    I was attending a stand-up comedy show in Egypt, and when the man started to make fun of pedestrians crossing streets, everyone laughed their hearts out. The main reason those people strongly laughed was that almost all of them felt angry towards pedestrians who crossed streets carelessly. The joke wasn't only funny, it also made the audience feel that they were right about being angry at those pedestrians. That is, people were laughing both because of the funny joke and becauseof the happiness experienced as a result of the psychological support they got.

    The better a joke makes a person feel, and the more it includes other psychological factors, the more the person will like it. For example, if you envy one of your friends, and someone tells a joke that is funny and, at the same time, makes your friend seem stupid, then you will probably laugh at it louder than if you weren't jealous of him.

    In short, we don't laugh only when we hear something funny; we also laugh when we experience some kind of happiness that results from the other psychological factors involved in the joke. I strongly discourage making fun of anyone or be littling someone to make someone elselaug. All I want to explain is that if your joke supports a person's emotions, he will certainly like it a lot.

    Food is one of the necessities in our daily life. It serves as a form of communication in two fundamental ways. Sharing bread or other foods is a common human tradition that can promote unity and trust. Food can also have a specific meaning, and play a significant role in a family or culture's celebrations or traditions. The foods we eat—and when and how we eat them—are often unique to a particular culture or may even differ between countrysides and cities within one country.

    Sharing bread, whether during a special occasion or at the family dinner table, is a common symbol of togetherness. Many cultures also celebrate birthdays and marriages with cakes that are cut and shared among the guests. Early forms of cake were simply a kind of bread, so this tradition hits its roots in the custom of sharing bread.

    Food also plays an important role in many New Year celebrations. In the southern United States, pieces of corn bread represent blocks of gold for prosperity (兴旺) in the New Year. In Greece, people share a special cake called vasilopita. A coin is put into the cake, which signifies (预示) success in the New Year for the person who receives it.

    Many cultures have ceremonies to celebrate the birth of a child, and food can play a significant role. In China, when a baby is one month old, families name and welcome their child in a celebration that includes giving red-colored eggs to guests. In many cultures, round foods such as grapes, bread, and moon cakes are eaten at welcome celebrations to represent family unity.

    Nutrition is necessary for life, so it is not surprising that food is such an important part of different cultures around the world.

    Academic learning is usually in the spotlight at school, but teaching elementary-age students “soft” skills like self-control and how to get along with others might help to keep at-risk kids out of criminal trouble in the future.

    Once a program called Fast Track was started in the early 1990s for more than 7,600 children of 55 schools in America. They were identified by their teachers and parents to be at high risk for developing aggressive behavioral problems. The students were randomly divided into two groups; half took part in the intervention, which included a teacher-led curriculum, parent training groups, academic tutoring and lessons in self-control and social skills. The program, which lasted from first grade through 10th grade, reduced delinquency(少年犯罪), arrests and use of health and mental health services as the students aged through adolescence and young adulthood.

    In another latest study, by looking at the data from nearly 900 students in previous findings, researchers found that about a third of the influence on future crime outcomes was due to the social and self-regulation skills the students learned from ages 6 to 11.

    The academic skills, or hard skills like learning of physics, which were taught as part of Fast Track, turned out to have less of an influence on crime and delinquency rates than did the soft skills, which are associated with emotional(情绪的) intelligence. Soft skills might include teaching kids to work cooperatively in a group or teaching them how to think about the long-term consequences when they make a decision.

    Researchers drew the conclusion that these soft skills should be emphasized even more in our education system and in our system of socializing children. Parents should do all they can to promote these skills with their children as should education policymakers. To the extent we can improve those skills, we can improve outcomes in delinquency.

    I live in the center of the city and there is a largeparking lot full of parking spots nearby. Rain is a rare occurrence in LA,so cars easilycollect pollutants and dust. Together with my friends,I decided it shouldbe a kind gesture to surprise the owners with a car wash.So we bought carwashing supplies and brought out all the bath towels we could find.With all the suppliesin hand, wewere able to convince another roommate to help out as well and we beganwatering down the cars.

    Every once in a while, someone would come by and asked usseemingly stupid men, "Who told you to wash the cars?" or, even better, "who paid you to wash their cars?" Weexplained we just wanted to do something kind. But our response was often me with aneven more confused look.

    As the afternoon went on, some other friends that came byunderstood our goal of the spontaneous event and started helping out with someof the duties. Firstone friend then two, and by the time we had cleaned the entire lot,we had an entire carwashing crew with independent individually assigned tasks and duties.

    I wasn't cleaning cars to be able to afford a new phone.I was cleaning carssimply because I wanted to offer the car owners kindness.There was noequipment to weigh our value created. We couldn't measure our success indollars earned over the time spent washing cars when we could have been earningtwice as much at work.

    I now realize, first hand, that there is a special energy createdwhen you choose to think bigger than yourself and act in service of others andmaybe, likeme, you'llfind it's actually the greatest gift you' you'll ever get.

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A mix of anxiety rising in my chest and a voice at the back of my mind shouting ‘what's wrong with me?'-it's how I've felt about rejection my whole life.

 The earliest rejection I can remember was on my first day of school. I started the term late due to illness and the teacher asked the class who would play with me at break. The silence was deafening. Now, a bit of online dating sees us rejected by half the town before we've even started our day. There's not a break at work. Is there a worse feeling than hitting the final slide on your presentation, boldly asking 'any questions?' and looking around the room to see everyone on their phones?

We need to build resilience. For me, this has come in two stages. First, I spent time listening to the voice of fear that saw each rejection as proof that there was something wrong with me. When I analysed it, I could see it was rarely about me. Perhaps the guy I was talking to was too busy to reply. It was likely that the magazine I'd sent a passage to already had an article on that topic. Now, I assume it's about me 20 per cent of the time-and I can live with that.

 The other thing I do is practice rejecting. Because I hate rejection, I shy away from being the rejector, which means I either please people or avoid tricky situations. Instead, I've come up with a few lines for when I want to say no: 'That sounds great but it's not for me; thank you for asking but I decline; it was lovely but I think we should leave it there.' It's never pleasant to reject a person but there is a kind way to do it. With resilience and clarity, we can see the plus sides of rejection: it frees us up to do something else, be with someone else and be happier. We can't complain about that.