Enhancing Soft Skills and Personality

January 2021 Rerun

Week 6 Assignment

MSQ

1. Which of the following are examples of compliments in good humour?

• You dress like my dentist. Except you are not rich and you do nothing for me.
• Congrats on graduating, I didn’t think you would make it.
• You have impeccable manners.
• You look so good tonight, did you put makeup on?
• Your smile is contagious.
• The way you treasure your loved ones is incredible.

(Compliments in good humour are the ones that are offered without any malignity involved in
it or without passing any negative remarks about somebody.)

2. If a meeting or a presentation is initiated with a joke, then:

• It makes the audience careless
• It creates tension among the audience
• It becomes easy to relate
• It makes the audience misunderstand the presentation
• It gathers the audience’s attention
• It complicates the process of comprehending

(Beginning with a joke makes the audience relate to the presenter very easily and breaks the
animosity among the audience by gathering their attention)

3. Identify good money personality traits.

• Go for dinner with friends and always make them pay
• Even though you are broke, borrow money from others and buy unnecessary
things that you find attractive
 • Maintain moderation in all things
• Plan your finances and maintain a balance sheet
• Hoard money so that you can use it when you become rich
• Live above your means

(Some good money personality traits include maintaining moderation in all things,
maintaining a balance sheet, returning money on time, etc.)

4. Laughter makes one feel—

• positive and optimistic
• lazy and idle
• cheerful and lively
• hopeful and engaged
• gloomy and dull
• mentally depressed

(According to Pamela Gerloff, laughter changes one in the loveliest ways such as it makes one
feel optimistic, positive, hopeful engaged, cheerful, and lively.)

5. Humour at workplace could be improved by:

• Using social media to collect and share interesting jokes
• Having a planned session for humour-based activities during social
gatherings
• Promoting people who make fun of others in the company
• Encouraging the employees to spend a lot of time gossiping and joking
• Poking fun at the employers
• Arranging for comic movie shows occasionally

(Humour at workplace should help break the monotony, reduce stress, and create harmony.
Therefore, it should not be used to devalue others.)

6. Which of the following statements are valid about the positive application of humour?
 • Laughter induced by humour helps relax one’s face muscles
• Creating humour in interviews reveal a light-hearted hidden personality
• Humour during business transactions makes one look foolish
• Inculcating humour at work place indicates the carelessness of the employees
• Humour is the worst strategy that can be used for problem solving in
workplaces
• Humour helps one overcome rigidity of thoughts and ideas and become
adaptable and confident

(Some of the benefits of humour is that it keeps one healthy by relaxing the face muscles
induced by laughter, helps reveal a light-hearted hidden behaviour, eases tension, and makes
one adaptable and confident.)

7. Returning borrowed money on time indicates—

• integrity
• competitive mind-set
• self-esteem
• inferiority complex
• selfishness
• possessiveness

(Returning borrowed money on time without any reminder indicates integrity and self-
esteem.)

8. Which of the following characteristics traits indicate bad money personality?

• Change one’s body language according to the material wealth of the
person one engages in conversation with
• Get aggressive at poor people asking for alms
• Avoid people having high-income
• Forget the money others owe you
• Return the money only after the sender reminds you at least twice
• Maintain good relationships with both the rich and the poor
(A person possessing good money personality would be assertive, exhibit emotional
intelligence by treating the rich and the poor as equals, and return money on time.)

9. Rohan is a shopaholic whose previous experiences have urged him to change his
money personality into a positive one. Which of the following strategies would help
Rohan overcome his shopaholic nature?
• Avoid buying items of no value or low value
• Yield to impulsive urges for purchases
• Write a shopping list of indispensable items and stick to it
• Remind oneself of larger and important goals
• Buy things that you love even if you cannot afford it
• Buy something from every store you visit

(One could overcome the shopaholic nature by planning and spending money diligently on
important things and avoiding unnecessary items)

10. Being detached from one’s wealth would—

• spoil the individual
• help one maintain balance irrespective of huge gain or loss
• make one irresponsible
• help one understand the transient nature of wealth
• make one depressed

(Being detached from one’s wealth would help one maintain balance irrespective of huge gain
or loss and also understand the transient nature of wealth.)

MCQ

11. Suppose you are helping a friend to study a subject that he is not good at. But after an
hour’s discussion he gets bored and restless. How could you draw his attention
effectively without wasting time?
• Engage in outdoor games for an hour
• Use humour to communicate the concepts
 • Gossip and poke fun at others for 15 minutes
• Give one hour break after one hour study
• Use humour to commend on his physiognomy

(Humour is a powerful communication tool. It helps to break the monotony in communication

and aids at effectively communicating complicated concepts and ideas.)

12. Which of the following activities could encourage creativity, ideation, and problem-
solving skills to the maximum extend in an individual?
• Watching a horror film
• Taking 100 push-ups
• Watching a comedy
• 13 hours of sleep
• Always checking social media
• Lying down on the couch and eating junk food

(According to the researchers, watching a comedy would encourage creativity, ideation, and
problem-solving skills to the maximum extend in an individual.)

13. In which of the following ways one could develop good humour?
• Engaging in serious conversations with authorities
• Making a mental map of all the negative things that has happen to one
• Always engaging in sarcastic conversations with everyone you meet
• Reading comic books and sharing interesting funny anecdotes with others
• Approaching everything in a casual, careless manner

(Some of the ways in which one could develop good humour is by reading comic books,
watching comic programmes, sharing funny anecdotes etc.)

14. Given below, are three situations as well as the remarks given by Rina in each of the
context. Identify the remarks said in a good sense of humour.

Context Remark
 a) When a roommate is acting bizarre. Is it time for your medication or
mine?
b) When a friend scores 2/20 for a class test. Is being stupid a profession or are
you just gifted?
c) When a friend’s experiment goes wrong You have not failed the experiment;
for the 5th time. you have just found 5 ways of doing
it wrong.

• Only a
• Only b
• Only c
• Both a and c
• Both a and b
• a, b, and c

(A remark made in good humour implies a comment that is said without offending the
feelings of the other person and therefore it leaves the listener with a positive attitude.)

15. Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist is discussed in the course to convey:

• How alchemy is used to convert base metals into gold
• How Santiago becomes a gold-digger
• How one should hoard money as much as possible
• How one should maintain a balance sheet
• How one should not behave differently to the rich people
• How money is not something that determines a person’s real worth, but it
is one’s hard and soft skills, intelligence, and good qualities

(Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist implies how when a person relies on money than oneself the
person would feel completely devastated. Thus, it conveys how money is not something that
determines a person’s real worth, but it is one’s hard and soft skills, intelligence, and good
qualities.)
 16. According to Ella Wheeler Wilcox, the two kinds of people are:
• The people who lift and lean
• The people who are happy and sad
• The people who are rich and poor
• The people who are sick and healthy
• The people who are active and passive
• The people who are pretentious and genuine

(According to Ella Wheeler Wilcox, the two kinds of people are the people who lift and lean.
The lifters are those who lift the burden from others and the leaners are those who lean and
suck the energy from others.)

17. According to Lance Bass, “You’ve got to have a sense of humor to keep your _____.”
• body
• sanity
• life
• fitness
• happiness
• spirits high

(According to Lance Bass, “You’ve got to have a sense of humor to keep your sanity.)

18. Forming a humour club at workplace would:

• Act against the work ethics
• Nurture a playful attitude towards the work
• Destroy the ambitious attitude of the employees
• Leave the employees with unfinished work
• Kill the precious time

(In workplaces, humour helps break the monotony, boosts brainstorming and helps reduce
stress. Therefore, forming a humour club at workplace would help one not to be overwhelmed
by the enormity of the work and to nurture a playful attitude towards it.)
 19. Laughter originates from the Greek word—
• gelos
• gelous
• gelan
• gelanous
• gelanto
• genlanto

(Laughter originates from the Greek word gelos which means “laughter.” Gelotology refers to
the study of laughter and its effect on the body, from a psychological and physiological
perspective.)

20. Maintaining genuinely good relationship with both poor and rich people is a sign of:
• Undesirable political ambition
• Hypocritical mindset
• High emotional and spiritual instability
• High emotional and spiritual intelligence
• Deceptive attitude
• Duplicity and manipulative nature

(Treating the affluent and the modest or poor people equally and maintaining good
relationship with both imply high emotional and spiritual intelligence.)

True or False

21. It was inappropriate of Shakespeare to have used humour in his tragic play Hamlet.
• True
• False

(The statement is false because Shakespeare brilliantly uses humour to intensify the emotional
content of his plays. In Hamlet humour is mixed at horrifying and tragic moments to make the
pain bearable.)
 22. Humour should be used to comment on the religion of another individual.
• True
• False

(Employing humour to comment on one’s religion is a menial behaviour and hence should be
avoided.)

23. A sarcastic joke shortens the distance between people.

• True
• False

(Sarcasm is the use of irony to mock or convey contempt that actually distances people from
one another.)

24. Humour improves memory retention.

• True
• False

(Humour activates the brain’s dopamine stimulating long-term memory and easy retention.)

25. A humour hall is where people can drop in anytime to share jokes or refresh
themselves by using any of the repositories available.
• True
• False

(The statement is true. A humour hall is where people can drop in anytime to share jokes or
refresh themselves by using any of the repositories available. The aim to make stressed people
get into the hall and to go out freely.)