Pathways Rw4 2e U9 Test
Pathways Rw4 2e U9 Test
VOCABULARY PRACTICE 1
VOCABULARY PRACTICE 2
8. Although not as _______________ as Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla was a brilliant inventor and scientist.
10. The mayor was no long able to _______________ the scandal once reporters learned of it.
11. Research suggests that _______________ behavior is most common in 13-17 year olds. After this age, the
number of lies people tell starts to decrease.
12. People with blonde or red hair and fair skin are more _______________ getting sunburned than other
people.
13. Although he was dressed like a police officer, people soon realized that he was a(n) _______________.
14. The lawyer was unable to convince the jury of her client's _______________, and he was sentenced to six
months in jail.
15. My best friend is really _______________. He believes everything he reads on social media.
READING REVIEW
WHY WE LIE
by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
Honesty may be the best policy, but scheming and dishonesty may be part of what makes
us human.
The history of humankind is filled with skilled and practiced liars. Many are criminals who
spin lies and weave deceptive tales to gain unjust rewards. Some are politicians who lie to
gain power, or to cling to it. Sometimes people lie to boost their image, others lie to cover
A up bad behavior. Even the academic science community - a world largely devoted to the
pursuit of truth - has been shown to contain a number of deceivers. But the lies of
impostors, swindlers, and boasting politicians are just a sample of the untruths that have
characterized human behavior for thousands of years.
Lying, it turns out, is something that most of us are very skilled at. We lie with ease, in
ways big and small, to strangers, co-workers, friends, and loved ones. Our capacity for
B
lying is as fundamental to us as our need to trust others. Being deceitful is part of our
nature, so much so that we might say that to lie is human.
Our natural tendency to lie was first systematically documented by Bella DePaulo, a social
psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Two decades ago, DePaulo and
her colleagues asked 147 adults to note down every instance they lied or tried to mislead
someone during one week. The researchers found that the subjects lied on average one or
two times a day. Most of these untruths were harmless, intended to hide one's failings or to
C protect the feelings of others. Some lies were excuses - one person blamed their failure to
take out the garbage on not knowing where it needed to go. Yet other lies - such as a claim
of being a diplomat's son - were told to present a false image. While these were minor
transgressions, DePaulo and other colleagues observed [in a later study] that most people
have, at some point, told one or more "serious lies": hiding an affair from a husband or
wife, for example, or making false claims on a college application.
That human beings should universally possess a talent for deceiving one another shouldn't
surprise us. Researchers speculate that lying as a behavior arose not long after the
emergence of language. The ability to manipulate others without using physical force may
have helped us compete for resources - something similar to the evolution of deceptive
D
strategies like camouflage in the animal kingdom. "Lying is so easy compared to other
ways of gaining power," notes ethicist Sissela Bok of Harvard University, one of the most
prominent thinkers on the subject. "It's much easier to lie in order to get somebody's money
or wealth than to hit them over the head or rob a bank."
F Lying is something of a developmental milestone - like learning to walk and talk. Parents
often find their children's lies troubling, as they signal the beginning of a loss of innocence.
However, Kang Lee, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, sees the emergence of the
behavior in toddlers as a reassuring sign that their cognitive growth is on track.
To study lying in children, Lee and his colleagues use a simple experiment. They ask kids
to guess the identity of hidden toys, based only on an audio clue. For the first few toys, the
clue is obvious - a bark for a dog, a meow for a cat - and the children answer easily. Then
they play a sound that has nothing to do with the toy. "So you play Beethoven, but the toy's
G
a car," Lee explains. The experimenter leaves the room pretending to take a phone call - a
lie for the sake of science - and asks the child not to peek at the toy. Returning, the
experimenter asks the child for the answer, then follows up with the question: "Did you
peek?"
Using hidden cameras, Lee and his researchers have discovered that the majority of
children can't resist peeking. The percentage of children who peek and then lie about it
H depends on their age. Among two-year-olds who peek, only about one third lie about it.
Among three-year-olds, half lie. And by age eight, approximately 80 percent of the children
tested claim they didn't peek.
Kids also get better at lying as they get older. When asked to guess the identity of the toy
(that they have secretly looked at), three- and four-year-olds typically give the right answer
I straightaway - they don't realize that this reveals that they cheated. At seven or eight, kids
learn to deliberately give a wrong answer at first, or they try to make their answer seem like
a reasoned guess.
Five- and six-year-old kids fall in between. In one study, Lee used a Barney the dinosaur
toy. One five-year-old girl denied that she had looked at the toy, which was hidden under a
J cloth. Then she told Lee she wanted to feel it before guessing. "So she puts her hand
underneath the cloth, closes her eyes, and says, ‘Ah, I know it's Barney,'" Lee recalls. "I
ask, ‘Why?' She says, ‘Because it feels purple.'"
What drives this increase in lying sophistication is the development of a child's ability to
put himself or herself in someone else's shoes. Known as "theory of mind," this is the
facility we acquire for understanding the beliefs, intentions, and knowledge of others. Also
K fundamental to lying is the brain's executive function: the abilities required for planning,
making decisions, and self-control. This explains why the two-year-olds who lied and lied
well in Lee's experiments performed better on tests of theory of mind and executive
function than those who didn't.
As we grow older, much of the knowledge we use to navigate the world comes from what
others tell us. Without the implicit trust that we place in human communication, we would
L be paralyzed as individuals and cease to have social relationships. "We get so much from
believing, and there's relatively little harm when we occasionally get duped," says Tim
Levine, a psychologist at the University of Alabama.
Being programmed to trust makes us naturally gullible. "If you say to someone, ‘I am a
pilot,' they are not sitting there thinking: ‘Maybe he's not a pilot. Why would he say he's a
M pilot?' They don't think that way," says Frank Abagnale, Jr. Now a security consultant,
Abagnale's cons as a young man - including forging checks and pretending to be an airline
pilot - inspired the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can. "This is why scams work," he says.
"When the phone rings and the caller ID says it's the Internal Revenue Service, people
automatically believe it is the IRS. They don't realize that someone could manipulate the
caller ID."
Robert Feldman, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, calls that "the liar's
advantage." "People are not expecting lies, people are not searching for lies," he says, "and
a lot of the time, people want to hear what they are hearing." We put up little resistance to
N
the deceptions that please or comfort us - such as false praise or the promise of impossibly
high investment returns. And when we deal with people who have wealth, power, and
status, the lies appear to be even easier to swallow.
Researchers are now learning that we are prone to believe some lies even when they're
clearly contradicted by evidence. These insights suggest that our skill at deceiving others -
combined with our vulnerability to being deceived - is especially consequential in the age
of social media. Research has shown, for example, that we are especially prone to accepting
lies that affirm our worldview. False news stories thrive on the Internet and in social media
O
because of this vulnerability, and disproving them does not tend to lessen their power. This
is because people assess the evidence presented to them through a framework of preexisting
beliefs and prejudices, says George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist at the University of
California, Berkeley. "If a fact comes in that doesn't fit into your frame, you'll either not
notice it, or ignore it, or ridicule it, or be puzzled by it - or attack it if it's threatening."
What then might be the best way to impede the rapid advance of untruths into our collective
lives? The answer isn't clear. Technology has opened up a new frontier for deceit, adding a
P
21st-century twist to the age-old conflict between our lying and trusting selves.
One such individual was Jan Hendrik Schön, whose purported breakthroughs in molecular semiconductor
research proved to be fraudulent.
The history of humankind is filled with skilled and practiced liars. Many are criminals who spin lies and
weave deceptive tales to gain unjust rewards. Some are politicians who lie to gain power, or to cling to it.
[1] Sometimes people lie to boost their image, others lie to cover up bad behavior. [2] Even the academic
science community - a world largely devoted to the pursuit of truth - has been shown to contain a number
of deceivers. [3] But the lies of impostors, swindlers, and boasting politicians are just a sample of the
untruths that have characterized human behavior for thousands of years. [4]
a. [1]
b. [2]
c. [3]
d. [4]
____ 18. The word it in the third sentence of paragraph A refers to _______________.
a. power
b. history
c. lying
d. humankind
____ 19. Which of the following would DePaulo probably consider a "serious lie"?
a. Someone tells a caller that her roommate isn't home because her roommate does not want
to talk to the caller.
b. A student tells his professor that he was unable to study for a test because he was sick, but
he actually was socializing with friends.
c. Someone tells all the people that he meets that he used to play lead guitar in a popular rock
group even though he never did.
d. An applicant for a job as a vice-president claims on his résumé that he has five years'
experience as an executive even though he has no managerial experience.
____ 20. The word instance in the second sentence of paragraph C, is closest in meaning to _______________.
a. occasion
b. example
c. speed
d. second
____ 21. According to Sissela Bok, one reason that people lie is that it is _______________.
Even at 16, kids who were proficient liars outperformed poor liars.
What drives this increase in lying sophistication is the development of a child's ability to put himself or
herself in someone else's shoes. [1] Known as theory of mind, this is the facility we acquire for
understanding the beliefs, intentions, and knowledge of others. [2] Also fundamental to lying is the brain's
executive function: the abilities required for planning, attention, and self-control. [3] The two-year-olds
who lied in Lee's experiments performed better on tests of theory of mind and executive function than
those who didn't. [4]
a. [1]
b. [2]
c. [3]
d. [4]
____ 24. Which of the following is the best paraphrase of the quote from Tim Levine in paragraph L?
"We get so much from believing, and there's relatively little harm when we occasionally get duped."
a. We trust people too much, and this can cause great harm when we find ourselves duped.
b. Most of the time people tell the truth, so when someone lies, we're not expecting it.
c. The benefits of trusting people outweigh the harm caused by believing an occasional lie.
d. While getting duped by someone is extremely rare, a single occasion can cause great
harm.
____ 25. Which of the following researchers explains why many people tend to believe liars?
a. Kang Lee
b. Robert Feldman
c. George Lakoff
d. Bella DePaulo
READING PRACTICE
On a recent morning, I visited Dan Ariely, a psychologist at Duke University and one of the
world's foremost experts on lying. Ariely became fascinated with dishonesty about 15 years
ago. Looking through a magazine on a long-distance flight, he came across a mental
aptitude test. He answered the first question and flipped to the key in the back to see if he
A got it right. He found himself taking a quick glance at the answer to the next question.
Continuing in this vein through the entire test, Ariely, not surprisingly, scored very well.
"When I finished, I thought - I cheated myself," he says. "Presumably, I wanted to know
how smart I am, but I also wanted to prove I'm this smart to myself." The experience led
Ariely to develop a lifelong interest in the study of lying and other forms of dishonesty.
In experiments he and his colleagues have run on college campuses and elsewhere,
volunteers are given a test with 20 simple math problems. They must solve as many as they
can in five minutes and are paid based on how many they get right. They are told to destroy
B the sheets by dropping them into a shredder before reporting the number they solved
correctly. But the sheets don't actually get shredded. A lot of volunteers lie, as it turns out.
On average, volunteers report having solved six problems, when it was really more like
four. The results are similar across different cultures. Most of us lie, but only a little.
The question Ariely finds interesting is not why so many lie, but rather why they don't lie a
lot more. Even when the amount of money offered for correct answers is raised
significantly, the volunteers don't increase their level of cheating. "Here we give people a
chance to steal lots of money, and people cheat only a little bit. So something stops us -
most of us - from not lying all the way," Ariely says. The reason, according to him, is that
C
we want to see ourselves as honest, because we have, to some degree, internalized honesty
as a value taught to us by society. Which is why, unless one is a sociopath, most of us place
limits on how much we are willing to lie. How far most of us are willing to go - Ariely and
others have shown - is determined by social norms arrived at through unspoken consensus,
like the tacit acceptability of taking a few pencils home from the office supply cabinet.
But there are a minority of people who lie without such limits. Patrick Couwenberg was a
well-respected judge in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, United States. His
colleagues and staff also believed him to be an American hero. By his account, he had
received a Purple Heart - a military award given in the name of the president - during his
D
service in Vietnam. He'd participated in undercover operations for the Central Intelligence
Agency. The judge also boasted of an impressive educational background as well - an
undergraduate degree in physics and a master's degree in psychology. But none of it was
true.
When confronted about his lies, Couwenberg's defense was to blame a psychological
E condition called pseudologia fantastica - a tendency to tell stories containing facts
interwoven with fantasy. The argument, however, didn't save him from losing his job.
But is there anything unique about the brains of individuals like Judge Couwenberg who lie
more than others? In 2005, psychologist Yaling Yang and her colleagues compared the
brain scans of three groups: 12 adults with a history of repeated lying, 16 who met the
criteria for antisocial personality disorder but were not frequent liars, and 21 who were
G neither antisocial nor had a lying habit. The researchers found that the liars had at least 20
percent more neural fibers by volume in their prefrontal cortices, suggesting that habitual
liars have greater connectivity within their brains. It's possible this predisposes them to
lying because they can think up lies more readily than others, or it might be the result of
repeated lying.
In another study, psychologists Nobuhito Abe at Kyoto University and Joshua Greene at
Harvard University scanned the brains of subjects using functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI) and found that those who acted dishonestly showed greater activation in
H the nucleus accumbens - a part of the brain that plays a key role in reward processing. "The
more excited your reward system gets at the possibility of getting money - even in a
perfectly honest context - the more likely you are to cheat," explains Greene. In other
words, greed may increase one's predisposition to lying.
It has also been suggested that one lie can lead to another - and another. An experiment by
Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist at University College London, and colleagues showed how the
brain becomes better at dealing with the stress or emotional discomfort that happens when
I we lie, making it easier to tell the next fib. In the fMRI scans of the participants, the team
focused on the amygdala, a region of the brain involved in processing emotions. The
researchers found that the amygdala's response to lies got progressively weaker with each
lie, even as the lies got bigger. "Perhaps engaging in small acts of deception can lead to
bigger acts of deception," she says.
____ 26. What event made Dan Ariely become interested in lying?
____ 31. Which of the following is the most accurate description of pseudologia fantastica?
a. Most psychiatrists agree about the link between mental health and telling lies.
b. Certain psychiatric conditions result in the telling of specific types of lies.
c. Sociopaths are likely to tell lies that boost their image.
d. Narcissists tell mostly manipulative lies.
____ 33. The purpose of Yaling Yang's 2005 study was to _______________.
a. find out how many people with antisocial personality disorder were also frequent liars
b. discover the causes of antisocial personality disorder in adults
c. find out if the brains of people who lie regularly are different to others
d. identify the types of lies that people with antisocial personality disorder tell
____ 34. According to Abe and Greene's study, _______________.
a. there is a link between lying and activity in the nucleus accumbens part of the brain
b. the nucleus accumbens is not a part of the brain associated with reward processing
c. people who act dishonestly have less activity in their brain's nucleus accumbens
d. studying the nucleus accumbens is less effective than studying the prefrontal cortex
____ 35. According to the experiment by Tali Sharot, _______________.
a. if a person tells an increasing number of lies, they stop feeling so bad about doing so.
b. most people tell bigger and bigger lies as they get older
c. the amygdala is a part of the brain that deals with reward processing
d. the more lies that someone tells, the more stress they will have in their life
READING SKILL REVIEW - Understanding a Research Summary
Read the summary of a psychological experiment. Then decide if the sentences taken from the
summary describe the Purpose, Method, Results, or Conclusion of the experiment.
Fantz's experiments were designed to determine if babies have a preference for what they look
at. He did this by creating a setup called the "looking chamber." This chamber looked like an
MRI machine. Babies were placed inside the chamber and shown two images. On one was a
bulls-eye1 and on the other was the sketch of a human face. Fantz viewed the infant's eyes by
looking through a peephole. If the infant was focusing on one of the displays, he could see the
display's reflection in the infant's eyes, and he measured how long the infant looked at each
display. This study showed that a two-month old infant looked twice as much at the human face
as it did at the bulls-eye. Fantz suggested that this is because babies are born with an innate
ability to recognize a human face, knowing that it is a human who is going to feed him/her and
provide care.
1. bulls-eye: the circular spot at the center of a target marked with concentric circles and used in
target practice.
____ 36. Fantz suggested that this is because babies are born with an innate ability to recognize a human face,
knowing that it is a human who is going to feed him/her and provide care.
a. Purpose
b. Method
c. Results
d. Conclusion
____ 37. Fantz viewed the infant's eyes by looking through a peephole. If the infant was focusing on one of the
displays, he could see the display's reflection in the infant's eyes, and he measured how long the infant
looked at each display.
a. Purpose
b. Method
c. Results
d. Conclusion
____ 38. Fantz's experiments were designed to determine if babies have a preference for what they look at.
a. Purpose
b. Method
c. Results
d. Conclusion
____ 39. He did this by creating a setup called the "looking chamber." This chamber looked like an MRI machine.
Babies were placed inside the chamber and shown two images. On one was a bulls-eye and on the other
was the sketch of a human face.
a. Purpose
b. Method
c. Results
d. Conclusion
____ 40. This study showed that a two-month old infant looked twice as much at the human face as it did at the
bulls-eye.
a. Purpose
b. Method
c. Results
d. Conclusion
All of these phrases contain numerical data. Write S if the two phrases have the same meaning.
Write D if they have a different meaning.
_____
_____
_____
_____
WRITING SKILL PRACTICE
The following sentences are parts of a summary of a famous experiment by Dr. Solomon Asch.
a. However, in each group only one person was a true participant. The others were actors - most of whom
had been instructed to give incorrect answers.
b. When part of a group, many of us will feel a temptation to follow the actions of other group members
even when we might think these actions are wrong. In 1951, Dr. Solomon Asch carried out a study to
evaluate the likelihood of a person conforming to a standard while under group pressure.
c. In Asch's study, groups of participants were shown a number of simple pictures which included lines of
various lengths. They were then asked a very simple question: Which line is longest?
d. The findings suggested that pressure to conform to a group is much stronger than we might intuitively
believe.
e. Surprisingly, despite knowing that they were giving the wrong answer, the one true participant almost
always agreed with the majority.
45. Put the parts of the summary in order to follow the sequence.
Purpose: 1. _____
Method: 2. _____
3. _____
Results: 4. _____
Conclusion: 5. _____
WRITING PRACTICE
Read the information about three studies into lying. Then write an essay to answer the question that
follows. Include an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The body paragraphs should
summarize the three studies in your own words.
Study 1
In 2005, psychologist Yaling Yang and her colleagues compared the brain scans of three groups:
12 adults with a history of repeated lying, 16 who met the criteria for antisocial personality
disorder but were not frequent liars, and 21 who were neither antisocial nor had a lying habit.
The researchers found that the liars had at least 20 percent more neural fibers by volume in their
prefrontal cortices, suggesting that habitual liars have greater connectivity within their brains.
It's possible this predisposes them to lying because they can think up lies more readily than
others, or it might be the result of repeated lying.
Study 2
In another study, psychologists Nobuhito Abe at Kyoto University and Joshua Greene at
Harvard University scanned the brains of subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) and found that those who acted dishonestly showed greater activation in the nucleus
accumbens - a part of the brain that plays a key role in reward processing. "The more excited
your reward system gets at the possibility of getting money - even in a perfectly honest context -
the more likely you are to cheat," explains Greene. In other words, greed may increase one's
predisposition to lying.
Study 3
It has also been suggested that one lie can lead to another - and another. An experiment by Tali
Sharot, a neuroscientist at University College London, and colleagues showed how the brain
becomes better at dealing with the stress or emotional discomfort that happens when we lie,
making it easier to tell the next fib. In the fMRI scans of the participants, the team focused on
the amygdala, a region of the brain involved in processing emotions. The researchers found that
the amygdala's response to lies got progressively weaker with each lie, even as the lies got
bigger. "Perhaps engaging in small acts of deception can lead to bigger acts of deception," she
says.
46. In what ways has neurology - the study of the brain - increased our understanding of dishonest behavior
in humans?
Pathways Reading, Writing, and Critical Thinking 2e: Level 4 Unit 9 Test
Answer Section
1. ANS: deceitful