A Would you describe yourselfas.a relaxed or a nervous person? How would your closest friends describe you? Do the quiz. Do your answers support your self-description? MELLOW © MELODRAMATIC? QUESTION t You arrive home and realize you left your house keys at work, What do you do? ‘QUESTION 2: Over lan, yu tll some frends an embarrassing story about your new boss. As you're leaving, you see her sitting atthe table right behind you. © You get hysterical and start to ry. You © You just want to craw under a rock. You knew she cou shoul hae checked hat you Ra aur keys before yout This a complete dase © Ugh You shoud have given an extra key o toansiottr Youcal rene ul ne of them nes outa stay a the lace © ‘Youre esourcott you can sive tis proiem Aral Yucalla coworker whos orkg ate and ves near. Sho cops of Jour igs ner tuk kori have been havin lunch then, to! Why didnt you look around frst? You smile and say hella. It was just harmless ite story. Sh might not hav been offended by it ‘She may have eve Hked that you were talking aout her, You walk away asf nthing happened. There's no reason to feel dafensive or guilty. She may not have heard you, Positive reaction Negative reaction Context dependent mellow melodramatic flustered gracious harmless mellow resourceful spiteful victorious: 1. After that truck nearly hit us, I was so 2 John has a very particular way he likes to mow the lawn. It's Who cares how he does it as long as he does it? 3. With no money for decorations for the play, we had to be bushes and made flowers from balloons! 4 When our team’s design was chosen for the campaign, we walked around feeling for weeks! 5 His coworker was so angry about Pablo's promotion that he started doing little things just to cause problems. His behavior was really childish and 6 During the presentation, | completely forgot to give Sharon credit for her work. | felt awful, but she was really about it. She said everyone makes mistakes when they're nervous. 7 Big parties are OK, but | usually prefer a more gathering, like a small dinner party. ( that | had to pull over and calm down for a while. 50 I don't try to stop him. We used green paper for the the correct adjectives to complete the paragraph. “Don't take it personally.” When people are looking to you for answers, it can feel lke they're questioning your judgment, which can easily make you feel ‘defensive / victorious about your decisions, Just remember, it’s not about you. The workplace can be tense and stressful, which can cause people to blow things out of proportion and become *harmless / ;hystericalover the smallest problem. Ifyou stay calm and *composed / resourceful, people will follow your lead you're ‘mefodramatic/ spiteful, you'll only add to their anxiety. But nobody's perfect. If you do lose control, admit it and apologize. People are “ustered / forgiving when they believe youre sincere.PAIRWORK] Look at the meme. Do you think it’s funny? In what kinds of situations are you likely to hear “I told you so”? When was the last time someone said it to you? “told you so.” “Wel if you'd mentioned all ths road work, would've gone a different way.” Nee etelle , | told you so, bleach (n) a chemical “Well if you'd been listening, you'd have heard me say that the highway is always better, whitener used for laundry and we wouldn't be sitting in this traffic jam right now!" “Itold you so” - one of the most annoying phrases in the English language, especially when it isnt true! Did she really foresee what was going to happen? No, she just got lucky. This sa classic example of “hindsight bias.” Humans have the ability to review and reconsider past experiences and analyze the decisions we made. This is how we learn from our mistakes. Hindsight bias interferes with this process, making it difficult to accurately evaluate past situations. if youte convinced you knew how something would eventually turn out, then you dismiss any doubts you might have had beforehand, you reject alternative scenarios that might have led to the same outcome, and you fixate on a single explanation, Hindsight bias also makes it easy to presume you know what's going to happen in the future. If you're convinced there was only one way to interpret a past situation, you're less likely to envision creative solutions for new problems. You just go with the first idea that comes to you and disregard the advice of others. And soon, youre the one hearing “Itold you so.” VOCABULARY: Thought processes ©) [EE] Look at the bold verbs in the script. How are they used in context? Match them to the categories. Listen and check. 1. thinking about the future: examining something: re-examining something: notaccepting something: an unproductive way to think: wenWrite the words in the box next to their definitions. analyze disregard _— fixate foresee presume —review 1a be obsessed with a d_ think something is not important particular idea @ look back over something b think that you know f examine something in detail beable to predict the future inorder to understand it dismiss envision evaluate interpret. ~— reconsider —_reject 2 a change your point of view d_ don'taccept something b_ decide something is not because it isn't good enough worth considering e- explain what something means ¢ imagine a future situation f consider the value of something GEircle) the word that is different from the others. 1 analyze evaluate_—interpret_—_ reconsider 2 disregard dismiss —_ fixate reject 3 envision —_ foresee interpret predictPersonality for sale Personality quizzes are all over social media. By now, most people will have taken quite a few of them and probably shared some of their results. Some people will share quiz results every single day! But will we really learn more about ourselves from What historical figure are you? than from What animal would you be? Probably not. In fact, personality quizzes won't ever provide any real insights because their real purpose is data mining. It's easy to imagine the original idea: As a user eagerly takes quiz after quiz and shares the hilarious results across social media, quiz software will be quietly building a detailed profile of their style, tastes, likes, and dislikes. Algorithms will suggest other quizzes in order to fill in gaps. Software companies will then sell the profile to marketing companies. Personality quizzes are the perfect vehicle because they play on our natural desire to be liked. They will nearly always return positive results. You'll be called sincere instead of humorless, fun and chatty instead of childish. Labels like narrow-minded, aloof, and self-centered don't exist in quiz world. Choose red as your favorite color, and you'll be labeled “the life of the party.” You'll also soon see ads for red clothing, red sports equipment, and red cars! Maybe a better test of personality is whether any of this matters to you. Now that you've read this article, will you continue to enjoy online quizzes (open-minded, playful), or will you never take another one (cautious, strong-willed, independent)? VOCABULARY: Describing personality ©| Look at the bold adjectives in the article and match them to their synonyms below. Which two adjective pairs are opposites? 1 talkative 4 tigid 2 genuine 5 insensitive isten and check. 3. antisocial 6 accepting‘Complete the sentences with the words in the box. accepting chatty genuine _— insensitive —rigid-—_ self-centered 1. like that he’s so and sociable, but he has to learn to shut up sometimes. 2. My parents are very - I wish they could relax a little and be a bit more flexible. 3. | thought that question was very |lunderstand why they were offended. 4. Teenagers tend to be pretty - But they grow out of that and start caring about the rest of the world eventually. 5. | think she'll be a good therapist because she's very and notat all judgmental 6 When you're a little child, you're and honest. You don’t hide your feelings at all GEircle) the correct adjectives for the context of the paragraph. My roommate Selma is amazingly sweet. 've never heard her say a negative thing about anyone! There's this guy in our building who never says hello. | think he's ‘antisocial / genuine and unfriendly, but Selma tells me not to be 2narrow-minded / sincere. He's just shy. But there's no reason for him to be so “aloof tafkative,| may be a little “open-minded / talkative at times, but “hello” isn’t much to expect. Selma says I'm a rigid / sincere person who likes to connect with others, which is why it bothers me. think that's her nice way of saying m kind of pushy.