Bаsed оn the infоrmаtiоn in this tаble, what is profit at Q = 8? (Enter only the answer value, exclude Profit =, just enter the number.)
The Age оf Disbelief We аre surrоunded by science аnd technоlogy like never before, yet increаsing numbers of people doubt the claims of scientists. Writer Joel Achenbach investigates the reasons for a rising tide of skepticism. [A] We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge - from the safety of vaccines to the reality of climate change - faces organized and often angry opposition. Doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these controversies these days, you'd think an evil villain had put something in the water to make people argumentative. [B] In a sense all this is not surprising; our lives are affected by science and technology as never before. For many of us this new world is comfortable and rich in rewards - but also more complicated and sometimes unnerving. We now face risks we can't easily analyze. [C] We're asked to accept, for example, that it's safe to eat food containing genetically modified organisms. Experts say there's no evidence that it isn't safe, and no reason to believe that altering genes in a lab is more dangerous than altering them through traditional breeding. But to some people the very idea of transferring genes between species brings up images of mad scientists running wild. [D] The world seems full of real and imaginary hazards, and distinguishing the former from the latter isn't easy. Should we be afraid that the Ebola virus, which is spread only by direct contact with bodily fluids, will mutate into an airborne super-plague? The scientific consensus says that's extremely unlikely: No virus has ever been observed to completely change its mode of transmission in humans. But if you type "airborne Ebola" into an Internet search engine, you'll find that some people believe that this virus has almost supernatural powers. [E] In this often confusing world we have to decide what to believe and how to act accordingly. In principle, that is what science is for. "Science is not a body of facts," says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of the journal Science. "Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not." But that method doesn't come naturally to most of us. Making Sense of the World [F] The trouble goes way back, of course. The scientific method has led us to truths that are less than self-evident, often mind-blowing, and sometimes hard to accept. For example, both the sun and moon appear to cross the sky above the Earth, but while the moon does indeed circle our world, the Earth circles the sun. Although the roundness of the Earth has been known for thousands of years, alternative geographies persisted even after trips around the world had become common. Nineteenth-century flat-Earthers, for example, believed that the planet was centered on the North Pole and bounded by a wall of ice, with the sun and moon traveling only a few hundred kilometers about the Earth. [G] Even when we intellectually accept the precepts of science, we cling to our intuitions - what researchers call our naïve beliefs. As we become scientifically literate, we repress our naïve beliefs, but never eliminate them entirely. They remain hidden in our brains as we try to make sense of the world. [H] Most of us do that by relying on personal experience, anecdotes, or stories rather than statistics. If we hear about a cluster of cancer cases in a town with a hazardous waste dump, we assume pollution caused the cancers. Yet just because two things happened together doesn't mean one caused the other, and just because events are clustered doesn't mean they're not still random. [I] We have trouble comprehending randomness; our brains crave pattern and meaning. Science warns us, however, that we can deceive ourselves. To be confident there's a causal connection between the dump and the cancers, you need statistical analysis showing that there are many more cancers than would be expected randomly, evidence that the victims were exposed to chemicals from the dump, and evidence that the chemicals really can cause cancer. [J] Even for scientists, the scientific method is a hard discipline. Like the rest of us, they're vulnerable to confirmation bias - the tendency to look for and see only evidence that confirms what they already believe. But unlike the rest of us, they submit their ideas to formal peer review before publishing them. Once their results are published, other scientists will try to reproduce them - and, being skeptical and competitive, will be very happy to announce that they don't hold up. Struggling for Truth [K] Sometimes scientists fall short of the ideals of the scientific method. Especially in biomedical research, there's a disturbing trend toward results that can't be reproduced outside the lab that found them. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, worries about the "secret sauce" - specialized procedures and customized software - that researchers don't share with their colleagues. But he still has faith in science. [L] "Science will find the truth," Collins says. "It may get it wrong the first time and maybe the second time, but ultimately it will find the truth." That aspect of science is another thing a lot of people have trouble with. To some climate change skeptics, for example, the fact that a few scientists in the 1970s were worried (quite reasonably, it seemed at the time) about the possibility of a coming ice age is enough to discredit the concern about global warming now. [M] In 2014, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which consists of hundreds of scientists, released its fifth report in the past 25 years. This one repeated louder and clearer than ever the consensus of the world's scientists: The planet's surface temperature has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 130 years. Moreover, human actions - including the burning of fossil fuels - are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the warming since the mid-20th century. Many people, however, retain doubts about that consensus. [N] Americans, for example, fall into two basic camps, says Dan Kahan of Yale University. Those who are more egalitarian and community-minded are generally suspicious of industry. They tend to think it's up to something dangerous that calls for government regulation; they're likely to see the risks of climate change. In contrast, people with a hierarchical and individualistic mindset respect leaders of industry and don't like government interfering in their affairs. They tend to reject warnings about climate change because they know that accepting them could lead to some kind of tax or regulation to limit emissions. [O] In the United States, an individual's view on climate change tends to identify them as belonging to one or the other of these two opposing tribes. When we argue about it, Kahan says, we're actually arguing about who we are, what our crowd is. We're thinking: People like us believe this. People like that do not believe this. For a hierarchical individualist, Kahan says, it's not irrational to reject established climate science. This is because accepting it wouldn't change the world, but it might get them thrown out of their tribe. Science appeals to our rational brain, but our beliefs are motivated largely by emotion - and the biggest motivation is remaining tight with our peers. The Implications of Doubt [P] Doubting science has consequences. The anti-vaccine movement, for example, has been going strong since the respected British medical journal the Lancet published a study in 1998 linking a vaccine to autism. Although the article was discredited, the notion of a vaccine-autism connection has been endorsed by celebrities and reinforced through Internet sources. This has implications for the "herd immunity" of populations. When a significant portion of a population is vaccinated, it provides a measure of protection for individuals who have not developed immunity. Increasing vaccine skepticism threatens to undermine the herd immunity of communities against diseases such as whooping cough and measles. [Q] Investigations into the "science communication problem" have given us insights into how people decide what to believe - and why they so often don't accept the scientific consensus. It's not that they can't grasp it, says Kahan; it's because of confirmation bias - the tendency of people to use scientific knowledge to reinforce beliefs that have already been shaped by their worldview. Meanwhile the Internet has made it easier than ever for climate skeptics and doubters of all kinds to find their own information and experts. Gone are the days when a small number of powerful institutions - elite universities, encyclopedias, major news organizations - served as gatekeepers of scientific information. The Internet has democratized information, which is a good thing, but along with cable TV, it has made it possible to live in a "filter bubble" that lets in only the information you agree with. [R] How to penetrate this bubble? How can scientists convince skeptics? Throwing more facts at people may not be enough. Liz Neeley, who helps train scientists to be better communicators, says that people need to hear from believers they can trust, who share their fundamental values. She has personal experience with this: Her father is a climate change skeptic and gets most of his information on the issue from conservative media. One day she confronted him: "Do you believe them or me?" She told him she believes the scientists who research climate change, and knows many of them personally. "If you think I'm wrong," she said, "then you're telling me that you don't trust me." Her father's position on the issue softened - but it wasn't the facts that did it. According to paragraph P, the anti-vaccine movement was started by ____.
The Age оf Disbelief We аre surrоunded by science аnd technоlogy like never before, yet increаsing numbers of people doubt the claims of scientists. Writer Joel Achenbach investigates the reasons for a rising tide of skepticism. [A] We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge - from the safety of vaccines to the reality of climate change - faces organized and often angry opposition. Doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these controversies these days, you'd think an evil villain had put something in the water to make people argumentative. [B] In a sense all this is not surprising; our lives are affected by science and technology as never before. For many of us this new world is comfortable and rich in rewards - but also more complicated and sometimes unnerving. We now face risks we can't easily analyze. [C] We're asked to accept, for example, that it's safe to eat food containing genetically modified organisms. Experts say there's no evidence that it isn't safe, and no reason to believe that altering genes in a lab is more dangerous than altering them through traditional breeding. But to some people the very idea of transferring genes between species brings up images of mad scientists running wild. [D] The world seems full of real and imaginary hazards, and distinguishing the former from the latter isn't easy. Should we be afraid that the Ebola virus, which is spread only by direct contact with bodily fluids, will mutate into an airborne super-plague? The scientific consensus says that's extremely unlikely: No virus has ever been observed to completely change its mode of transmission in humans. But if you type "airborne Ebola" into an Internet search engine, you'll find that some people believe that this virus has almost supernatural powers. [E] In this often confusing world we have to decide what to believe and how to act accordingly. In principle, that is what science is for. "Science is not a body of facts," says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of the journal Science. "Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not." But that method doesn't come naturally to most of us. Making Sense of the World [F] The trouble goes way back, of course. The scientific method has led us to truths that are less than self-evident, often mind-blowing, and sometimes hard to accept. For example, both the sun and moon appear to cross the sky above the Earth, but while the moon does indeed circle our world, the Earth circles the sun. Although the roundness of the Earth has been known for thousands of years, alternative geographies persisted even after trips around the world had become common. Nineteenth-century flat-Earthers, for example, believed that the planet was centered on the North Pole and bounded by a wall of ice, with the sun and moon traveling only a few hundred kilometers about the Earth. [G] Even when we intellectually accept the precepts of science, we cling to our intuitions - what researchers call our naïve beliefs. As we become scientifically literate, we repress our naïve beliefs, but never eliminate them entirely. They remain hidden in our brains as we try to make sense of the world. [H] Most of us do that by relying on personal experience, anecdotes, or stories rather than statistics. If we hear about a cluster of cancer cases in a town with a hazardous waste dump, we assume pollution caused the cancers. Yet just because two things happened together doesn't mean one caused the other, and just because events are clustered doesn't mean they're not still random. [I] We have trouble comprehending randomness; our brains crave pattern and meaning. Science warns us, however, that we can deceive ourselves. To be confident there's a causal connection between the dump and the cancers, you need statistical analysis showing that there are many more cancers than would be expected randomly, evidence that the victims were exposed to chemicals from the dump, and evidence that the chemicals really can cause cancer. [J] Even for scientists, the scientific method is a hard discipline. Like the rest of us, they're vulnerable to confirmation bias - the tendency to look for and see only evidence that confirms what they already believe. But unlike the rest of us, they submit their ideas to formal peer review before publishing them. Once their results are published, other scientists will try to reproduce them - and, being skeptical and competitive, will be very happy to announce that they don't hold up. Struggling for Truth [K] Sometimes scientists fall short of the ideals of the scientific method. Especially in biomedical research, there's a disturbing trend toward results that can't be reproduced outside the lab that found them. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, worries about the "secret sauce" - specialized procedures and customized software - that researchers don't share with their colleagues. But he still has faith in science. [L] "Science will find the truth," Collins says. "It may get it wrong the first time and maybe the second time, but ultimately it will find the truth." That aspect of science is another thing a lot of people have trouble with. To some climate change skeptics, for example, the fact that a few scientists in the 1970s were worried (quite reasonably, it seemed at the time) about the possibility of a coming ice age is enough to discredit the concern about global warming now. [M] In 2014, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which consists of hundreds of scientists, released its fifth report in the past 25 years. This one repeated louder and clearer than ever the consensus of the world's scientists: The planet's surface temperature has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 130 years. Moreover, human actions - including the burning of fossil fuels - are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the warming since the mid-20th century. Many people, however, retain doubts about that consensus. [N] Americans, for example, fall into two basic camps, says Dan Kahan of Yale University. Those who are more egalitarian and community-minded are generally suspicious of industry. They tend to think it's up to something dangerous that calls for government regulation; they're likely to see the risks of climate change. In contrast, people with a hierarchical and individualistic mindset respect leaders of industry and don't like government interfering in their affairs. They tend to reject warnings about climate change because they know that accepting them could lead to some kind of tax or regulation to limit emissions. [O] In the United States, an individual's view on climate change tends to identify them as belonging to one or the other of these two opposing tribes. When we argue about it, Kahan says, we're actually arguing about who we are, what our crowd is. We're thinking: People like us believe this. People like that do not believe this. For a hierarchical individualist, Kahan says, it's not irrational to reject established climate science. This is because accepting it wouldn't change the world, but it might get them thrown out of their tribe. Science appeals to our rational brain, but our beliefs are motivated largely by emotion - and the biggest motivation is remaining tight with our peers. The Implications of Doubt [P] Doubting science has consequences. The anti-vaccine movement, for example, has been going strong since the respected British medical journal the Lancet published a study in 1998 linking a vaccine to autism. Although the article was discredited, the notion of a vaccine-autism connection has been endorsed by celebrities and reinforced through Internet sources. This has implications for the "herd immunity" of populations. When a significant portion of a population is vaccinated, it provides a measure of protection for individuals who have not developed immunity. Increasing vaccine skepticism threatens to undermine the herd immunity of communities against diseases such as whooping cough and measles. [Q] Investigations into the "science communication problem" have given us insights into how people decide what to believe - and why they so often don't accept the scientific consensus. It's not that they can't grasp it, says Kahan; it's because of confirmation bias - the tendency of people to use scientific knowledge to reinforce beliefs that have already been shaped by their worldview. Meanwhile the Internet has made it easier than ever for climate skeptics and doubters of all kinds to find their own information and experts. Gone are the days when a small number of powerful institutions - elite universities, encyclopedias, major news organizations - served as gatekeepers of scientific information. The Internet has democratized information, which is a good thing, but along with cable TV, it has made it possible to live in a "filter bubble" that lets in only the information you agree with. [R] How to penetrate this bubble? How can scientists convince skeptics? Throwing more facts at people may not be enough. Liz Neeley, who helps train scientists to be better communicators, says that people need to hear from believers they can trust, who share their fundamental values. She has personal experience with this: Her father is a climate change skeptic and gets most of his information on the issue from conservative media. One day she confronted him: "Do you believe them or me?" She told him she believes the scientists who research climate change, and knows many of them personally. "If you think I'm wrong," she said, "then you're telling me that you don't trust me." Her father's position on the issue softened - but it wasn't the facts that did it. According to the passage, what is confirmation bias?
Pаssаge Twо
The Age оf Disbelief We аre surrоunded by science аnd technоlogy like never before, yet increаsing numbers of people doubt the claims of scientists. Writer Joel Achenbach investigates the reasons for a rising tide of skepticism. [A] We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge - from the safety of vaccines to the reality of climate change - faces organized and often angry opposition. Doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these controversies these days, you'd think an evil villain had put something in the water to make people argumentative. [B] In a sense all this is not surprising; our lives are affected by science and technology as never before. For many of us this new world is comfortable and rich in rewards - but also more complicated and sometimes unnerving. We now face risks we can't easily analyze. [C] We're asked to accept, for example, that it's safe to eat food containing genetically modified organisms. Experts say there's no evidence that it isn't safe, and no reason to believe that altering genes in a lab is more dangerous than altering them through traditional breeding. But to some people the very idea of transferring genes between species brings up images of mad scientists running wild. [D] The world seems full of real and imaginary hazards, and distinguishing the former from the latter isn't easy. Should we be afraid that the Ebola virus, which is spread only by direct contact with bodily fluids, will mutate into an airborne super-plague? The scientific consensus says that's extremely unlikely: No virus has ever been observed to completely change its mode of transmission in humans. But if you type "airborne Ebola" into an Internet search engine, you'll find that some people believe that this virus has almost supernatural powers. [E] In this often confusing world we have to decide what to believe and how to act accordingly. In principle, that is what science is for. "Science is not a body of facts," says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of the journal Science. "Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not." But that method doesn't come naturally to most of us. Making Sense of the World [F] The trouble goes way back, of course. The scientific method has led us to truths that are less than self-evident, often mind-blowing, and sometimes hard to accept. For example, both the sun and moon appear to cross the sky above the Earth, but while the moon does indeed circle our world, the Earth circles the sun. Although the roundness of the Earth has been known for thousands of years, alternative geographies persisted even after trips around the world had become common. Nineteenth-century flat-Earthers, for example, believed that the planet was centered on the North Pole and bounded by a wall of ice, with the sun and moon traveling only a few hundred kilometers about the Earth. [G] Even when we intellectually accept the precepts of science, we cling to our intuitions - what researchers call our naïve beliefs. As we become scientifically literate, we repress our naïve beliefs, but never eliminate them entirely. They remain hidden in our brains as we try to make sense of the world. [H] Most of us do that by relying on personal experience, anecdotes, or stories rather than statistics. If we hear about a cluster of cancer cases in a town with a hazardous waste dump, we assume pollution caused the cancers. Yet just because two things happened together doesn't mean one caused the other, and just because events are clustered doesn't mean they're not still random. [I] We have trouble comprehending randomness; our brains crave pattern and meaning. Science warns us, however, that we can deceive ourselves. To be confident there's a causal connection between the dump and the cancers, you need statistical analysis showing that there are many more cancers than would be expected randomly, evidence that the victims were exposed to chemicals from the dump, and evidence that the chemicals really can cause cancer. [J] Even for scientists, the scientific method is a hard discipline. Like the rest of us, they're vulnerable to confirmation bias - the tendency to look for and see only evidence that confirms what they already believe. But unlike the rest of us, they submit their ideas to formal peer review before publishing them. Once their results are published, other scientists will try to reproduce them - and, being skeptical and competitive, will be very happy to announce that they don't hold up. Struggling for Truth [K] Sometimes scientists fall short of the ideals of the scientific method. Especially in biomedical research, there's a disturbing trend toward results that can't be reproduced outside the lab that found them. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, worries about the "secret sauce" - specialized procedures and customized software - that researchers don't share with their colleagues. But he still has faith in science. [L] "Science will find the truth," Collins says. "It may get it wrong the first time and maybe the second time, but ultimately it will find the truth." That aspect of science is another thing a lot of people have trouble with. To some climate change skeptics, for example, the fact that a few scientists in the 1970s were worried (quite reasonably, it seemed at the time) about the possibility of a coming ice age is enough to discredit the concern about global warming now. [M] In 2014, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which consists of hundreds of scientists, released its fifth report in the past 25 years. This one repeated louder and clearer than ever the consensus of the world's scientists: The planet's surface temperature has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 130 years. Moreover, human actions - including the burning of fossil fuels - are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the warming since the mid-20th century. Many people, however, retain doubts about that consensus. [N] Americans, for example, fall into two basic camps, says Dan Kahan of Yale University. Those who are more egalitarian and community-minded are generally suspicious of industry. They tend to think it's up to something dangerous that calls for government regulation; they're likely to see the risks of climate change. In contrast, people with a hierarchical and individualistic mindset respect leaders of industry and don't like government interfering in their affairs. They tend to reject warnings about climate change because they know that accepting them could lead to some kind of tax or regulation to limit emissions. [O] In the United States, an individual's view on climate change tends to identify them as belonging to one or the other of these two opposing tribes. When we argue about it, Kahan says, we're actually arguing about who we are, what our crowd is. We're thinking: People like us believe this. People like that do not believe this. For a hierarchical individualist, Kahan says, it's not irrational to reject established climate science. This is because accepting it wouldn't change the world, but it might get them thrown out of their tribe. Science appeals to our rational brain, but our beliefs are motivated largely by emotion - and the biggest motivation is remaining tight with our peers. The Implications of Doubt [P] Doubting science has consequences. The anti-vaccine movement, for example, has been going strong since the respected British medical journal the Lancet published a study in 1998 linking a vaccine to autism. Although the article was discredited, the notion of a vaccine-autism connection has been endorsed by celebrities and reinforced through Internet sources. This has implications for the "herd immunity" of populations. When a significant portion of a population is vaccinated, it provides a measure of protection for individuals who have not developed immunity. Increasing vaccine skepticism threatens to undermine the herd immunity of communities against diseases such as whooping cough and measles. [Q] Investigations into the "science communication problem" have given us insights into how people decide what to believe - and why they so often don't accept the scientific consensus. It's not that they can't grasp it, says Kahan; it's because of confirmation bias - the tendency of people to use scientific knowledge to reinforce beliefs that have already been shaped by their worldview. Meanwhile the Internet has made it easier than ever for climate skeptics and doubters of all kinds to find their own information and experts. Gone are the days when a small number of powerful institutions - elite universities, encyclopedias, major news organizations - served as gatekeepers of scientific information. The Internet has democratized information, which is a good thing, but along with cable TV, it has made it possible to live in a "filter bubble" that lets in only the information you agree with. [R] How to penetrate this bubble? How can scientists convince skeptics? Throwing more facts at people may not be enough. Liz Neeley, who helps train scientists to be better communicators, says that people need to hear from believers they can trust, who share their fundamental values. She has personal experience with this: Her father is a climate change skeptic and gets most of his information on the issue from conservative media. One day she confronted him: "Do you believe them or me?" She told him she believes the scientists who research climate change, and knows many of them personally. "If you think I'm wrong," she said, "then you're telling me that you don't trust me." Her father's position on the issue softened - but it wasn't the facts that did it. In the second sentence of paragraph M, one refers to ____.
Why Dо We See Sо Mаny Things аs "Us vs. Them"? [A] It is а cоmmon misfortune around the world: People get along well enough for decades, even centuries, across lines of race or religion or culture. Then, suddenly, the neighbors aren't people you respect, invite to dinner, trade favors with, or marry. Those once familiar faces are now Them, the Enemy, the Other. And in that clash of groups, individuality vanishes and empathy dries up, as does trust. It can happen between herders and farmers in Nigeria or between native-born people and immigrants in France or the United States. The situations are very different, and the differences are important. But so is the shared root of their problems: People everywhere are "identity crazed," as the evolutionary psychologist John Tooby has put it. We can't help it: We're wired from birth to tell Us from Them. And we inevitably (and sometimes unconsciously) favor Us - especially when we feel threatened. [B] Of course, humans share that trait with many other creatures, from ants to salmon to macaques. What other creatures almost never do, though, is change their group perceptions and actions. The birds and bees kept to their tribes when Yugoslavs turned into warring Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians. Only humans - Hutu and Tutsi - could decide they are no longer countrymen, after peacefully sharing a homeland for centuries. Only humans can switch from feeling united as one American nation to feeling divided between conservative red states and liberal blue ones. [C] Our capacity to change our perceptions also offers some hope, because it permits people to shift in the direction of more inclusion, more justice, more peace. In Nigeria and other places around the world, communities torn apart by group conflict are putting themselves back together with help from a surprising source: scientists who study the mind. Their methods are also helping to improve community relations with police in Toledo, Indianapolis, and other U.S. cities. [D] I am a leopard. Jay Van Bavel, a neuroscientist at New York University who studies group identity, gave me that label last summer when I was lying in an fMRI scanner near his office. While in the machine I was shown photos of faces - 12 young white men and 12 young black men. The scanner tracked my brain's activity as I connected these individuals to group identities. Having been raised in the United States, I have lived with my country's racial categories all my life, and it wasn't difficult to do one of my experimental tasks: classify each face according to its skin color as either black or white. However, I also had to work with another set of categories. The men in the photos were on one of two teams, I was told: Tigers or Leopards. The screen told me who was on which team and drilled me on the details until I had it down. But I wasn't a neutral observer: I'd been told that I was a Leopard. [E] My scanner tasks allowed Van Bavel to compare my brain's activity as it worked, first with a familiar and consequential group identity (race in America) and then with a group identity that was effectively meaningless. [F] My brain lit up differently depending on whether I perceived an in-group face (for me, a Leopards team member) or an out-group (Tiger) face. For example, my orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region associated with liking, sparked up more when I saw a face from my in-group. So did the fusiform gyrus, a region tied to processing the identity of faces. [G] The experiment - and dozens of others like it during the past 20 years - confirmed several important facts about exactly how the human brain is "identity crazed." The scans show, for one, that a lot of our perceptions and emotions about groups happen outside our awareness or control. I have no conscious preference for white people over black people. On the contrary, like most Americans, I abhor racism. Yet, had I not been told I was a Leopard, I almost certainly would have shown an unconscious preference for white faces over black ones. That I did not illustrates a different important finding in Van Bavel's research: New team identities can easily supplant old ones in our minds. All Van Bavel had to do was tell me about two teams and inform me that I was on one. That was enough for my brain to prefer Leopards over Tigers as quickly and strongly as it normally distinguishes blacks and whites. [H] The scans reflected a key fact about human groupishness: We have keen mental radar that seeks to learn what groups matter around us and which ones we are members of. And this radar is always on. Even as we sit comfortably in our racial, religious, national, and other identities, our minds are alert to the possibility of new coalitions. [I] It's not hard to see why humans should have evolved to care about their teams and their place on those teams. Relying on each other is a sound survival strategy for a frail, noisy creature without a lot of built-in weapons. Living in groups is a ticket to survival, which is why most primates live in them. [J] "This is how person perception generally works," Van Bavel told me. "In the first split second, we judge people on the basis of their group memberships." Caring about your group memberships isn't something you have to learn, like reading or driving. It's something you do automatically, like breathing. [K] In fact, much of our sensitivity to groups begins long before we can speak. Very young babies prefer adults who look like their caretakers over adults who look different; some evidence shows they also prefer the foods their mothers ate while pregnant or breastfeeding over novel ones, and they like the sound of the language they heard in the womb and early in life much better than an alien tongue. These preferences continue. In adulthood most of us are better at recognizing the faces and reading the emotions of people who look and act like us. What were the TWO effectively meaningless group identities mentioned in the article? Make two selections from the answers below.
Why Dо We See Sо Mаny Things аs "Us vs. Them"? [A] It is а cоmmon misfortune around the world: People get along well enough for decades, even centuries, across lines of race or religion or culture. Then, suddenly, the neighbors aren't people you respect, invite to dinner, trade favors with, or marry. Those once familiar faces are now Them, the Enemy, the Other. And in that clash of groups, individuality vanishes and empathy dries up, as does trust. It can happen between herders and farmers in Nigeria or between native-born people and immigrants in France or the United States. The situations are very different, and the differences are important. But so is the shared root of their problems: People everywhere are "identity crazed," as the evolutionary psychologist John Tooby has put it. We can't help it: We're wired from birth to tell Us from Them. And we inevitably (and sometimes unconsciously) favor Us - especially when we feel threatened. [B] Of course, humans share that trait with many other creatures, from ants to salmon to macaques. What other creatures almost never do, though, is change their group perceptions and actions. The birds and bees kept to their tribes when Yugoslavs turned into warring Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians. Only humans - Hutu and Tutsi - could decide they are no longer countrymen, after peacefully sharing a homeland for centuries. Only humans can switch from feeling united as one American nation to feeling divided between conservative red states and liberal blue ones. [C] Our capacity to change our perceptions also offers some hope, because it permits people to shift in the direction of more inclusion, more justice, more peace. In Nigeria and other places around the world, communities torn apart by group conflict are putting themselves back together with help from a surprising source: scientists who study the mind. Their methods are also helping to improve community relations with police in Toledo, Indianapolis, and other U.S. cities. [D] I am a leopard. Jay Van Bavel, a neuroscientist at New York University who studies group identity, gave me that label last summer when I was lying in an fMRI scanner near his office. While in the machine I was shown photos of faces - 12 young white men and 12 young black men. The scanner tracked my brain's activity as I connected these individuals to group identities. Having been raised in the United States, I have lived with my country's racial categories all my life, and it wasn't difficult to do one of my experimental tasks: classify each face according to its skin color as either black or white. However, I also had to work with another set of categories. The men in the photos were on one of two teams, I was told: Tigers or Leopards. The screen told me who was on which team and drilled me on the details until I had it down. But I wasn't a neutral observer: I'd been told that I was a Leopard. [E] My scanner tasks allowed Van Bavel to compare my brain's activity as it worked, first with a familiar and consequential group identity (race in America) and then with a group identity that was effectively meaningless. [F] My brain lit up differently depending on whether I perceived an in-group face (for me, a Leopards team member) or an out-group (Tiger) face. For example, my orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region associated with liking, sparked up more when I saw a face from my in-group. So did the fusiform gyrus, a region tied to processing the identity of faces. [G] The experiment - and dozens of others like it during the past 20 years - confirmed several important facts about exactly how the human brain is "identity crazed." The scans show, for one, that a lot of our perceptions and emotions about groups happen outside our awareness or control. I have no conscious preference for white people over black people. On the contrary, like most Americans, I abhor racism. Yet, had I not been told I was a Leopard, I almost certainly would have shown an unconscious preference for white faces over black ones. That I did not illustrates a different important finding in Van Bavel's research: New team identities can easily supplant old ones in our minds. All Van Bavel had to do was tell me about two teams and inform me that I was on one. That was enough for my brain to prefer Leopards over Tigers as quickly and strongly as it normally distinguishes blacks and whites. [H] The scans reflected a key fact about human groupishness: We have keen mental radar that seeks to learn what groups matter around us and which ones we are members of. And this radar is always on. Even as we sit comfortably in our racial, religious, national, and other identities, our minds are alert to the possibility of new coalitions. [I] It's not hard to see why humans should have evolved to care about their teams and their place on those teams. Relying on each other is a sound survival strategy for a frail, noisy creature without a lot of built-in weapons. Living in groups is a ticket to survival, which is why most primates live in them. [J] "This is how person perception generally works," Van Bavel told me. "In the first split second, we judge people on the basis of their group memberships." Caring about your group memberships isn't something you have to learn, like reading or driving. It's something you do automatically, like breathing. [K] In fact, much of our sensitivity to groups begins long before we can speak. Very young babies prefer adults who look like their caretakers over adults who look different; some evidence shows they also prefer the foods their mothers ate while pregnant or breastfeeding over novel ones, and they like the sound of the language they heard in the womb and early in life much better than an alien tongue. These preferences continue. In adulthood most of us are better at recognizing the faces and reading the emotions of people who look and act like us. In the experiment, that author had to categorize photos of men according to ____.
Why Dо We See Sо Mаny Things аs "Us vs. Them"? [A] It is а cоmmon misfortune around the world: People get along well enough for decades, even centuries, across lines of race or religion or culture. Then, suddenly, the neighbors aren't people you respect, invite to dinner, trade favors with, or marry. Those once familiar faces are now Them, the Enemy, the Other. And in that clash of groups, individuality vanishes and empathy dries up, as does trust. It can happen between herders and farmers in Nigeria or between native-born people and immigrants in France or the United States. The situations are very different, and the differences are important. But so is the shared root of their problems: People everywhere are "identity crazed," as the evolutionary psychologist John Tooby has put it. We can't help it: We're wired from birth to tell Us from Them. And we inevitably (and sometimes unconsciously) favor Us - especially when we feel threatened. [B] Of course, humans share that trait with many other creatures, from ants to salmon to macaques. What other creatures almost never do, though, is change their group perceptions and actions. The birds and bees kept to their tribes when Yugoslavs turned into warring Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians. Only humans - Hutu and Tutsi - could decide they are no longer countrymen, after peacefully sharing a homeland for centuries. Only humans can switch from feeling united as one American nation to feeling divided between conservative red states and liberal blue ones. [C] Our capacity to change our perceptions also offers some hope, because it permits people to shift in the direction of more inclusion, more justice, more peace. In Nigeria and other places around the world, communities torn apart by group conflict are putting themselves back together with help from a surprising source: scientists who study the mind. Their methods are also helping to improve community relations with police in Toledo, Indianapolis, and other U.S. cities. [D] I am a leopard. Jay Van Bavel, a neuroscientist at New York University who studies group identity, gave me that label last summer when I was lying in an fMRI scanner near his office. While in the machine I was shown photos of faces - 12 young white men and 12 young black men. The scanner tracked my brain's activity as I connected these individuals to group identities. Having been raised in the United States, I have lived with my country's racial categories all my life, and it wasn't difficult to do one of my experimental tasks: classify each face according to its skin color as either black or white. However, I also had to work with another set of categories. The men in the photos were on one of two teams, I was told: Tigers or Leopards. The screen told me who was on which team and drilled me on the details until I had it down. But I wasn't a neutral observer: I'd been told that I was a Leopard. [E] My scanner tasks allowed Van Bavel to compare my brain's activity as it worked, first with a familiar and consequential group identity (race in America) and then with a group identity that was effectively meaningless. [F] My brain lit up differently depending on whether I perceived an in-group face (for me, a Leopards team member) or an out-group (Tiger) face. For example, my orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region associated with liking, sparked up more when I saw a face from my in-group. So did the fusiform gyrus, a region tied to processing the identity of faces. [G] The experiment - and dozens of others like it during the past 20 years - confirmed several important facts about exactly how the human brain is "identity crazed." The scans show, for one, that a lot of our perceptions and emotions about groups happen outside our awareness or control. I have no conscious preference for white people over black people. On the contrary, like most Americans, I abhor racism. Yet, had I not been told I was a Leopard, I almost certainly would have shown an unconscious preference for white faces over black ones. That I did not illustrates a different important finding in Van Bavel's research: New team identities can easily supplant old ones in our minds. All Van Bavel had to do was tell me about two teams and inform me that I was on one. That was enough for my brain to prefer Leopards over Tigers as quickly and strongly as it normally distinguishes blacks and whites. [H] The scans reflected a key fact about human groupishness: We have keen mental radar that seeks to learn what groups matter around us and which ones we are members of. And this radar is always on. Even as we sit comfortably in our racial, religious, national, and other identities, our minds are alert to the possibility of new coalitions. [I] It's not hard to see why humans should have evolved to care about their teams and their place on those teams. Relying on each other is a sound survival strategy for a frail, noisy creature without a lot of built-in weapons. Living in groups is a ticket to survival, which is why most primates live in them. [J] "This is how person perception generally works," Van Bavel told me. "In the first split second, we judge people on the basis of their group memberships." Caring about your group memberships isn't something you have to learn, like reading or driving. It's something you do automatically, like breathing. [K] In fact, much of our sensitivity to groups begins long before we can speak. Very young babies prefer adults who look like their caretakers over adults who look different; some evidence shows they also prefer the foods their mothers ate while pregnant or breastfeeding over novel ones, and they like the sound of the language they heard in the womb and early in life much better than an alien tongue. These preferences continue. In adulthood most of us are better at recognizing the faces and reading the emotions of people who look and act like us. According to the information in paragraph B, we can reasonably infer that Hutu and Tutsi are ____.
Why Dо We See Sо Mаny Things аs "Us vs. Them"? [A] It is а cоmmon misfortune around the world: People get along well enough for decades, even centuries, across lines of race or religion or culture. Then, suddenly, the neighbors aren't people you respect, invite to dinner, trade favors with, or marry. Those once familiar faces are now Them, the Enemy, the Other. And in that clash of groups, individuality vanishes and empathy dries up, as does trust. It can happen between herders and farmers in Nigeria or between native-born people and immigrants in France or the United States. The situations are very different, and the differences are important. But so is the shared root of their problems: People everywhere are "identity crazed," as the evolutionary psychologist John Tooby has put it. We can't help it: We're wired from birth to tell Us from Them. And we inevitably (and sometimes unconsciously) favor Us - especially when we feel threatened. [B] Of course, humans share that trait with many other creatures, from ants to salmon to macaques. What other creatures almost never do, though, is change their group perceptions and actions. The birds and bees kept to their tribes when Yugoslavs turned into warring Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians. Only humans - Hutu and Tutsi - could decide they are no longer countrymen, after peacefully sharing a homeland for centuries. Only humans can switch from feeling united as one American nation to feeling divided between conservative red states and liberal blue ones. [C] Our capacity to change our perceptions also offers some hope, because it permits people to shift in the direction of more inclusion, more justice, more peace. In Nigeria and other places around the world, communities torn apart by group conflict are putting themselves back together with help from a surprising source: scientists who study the mind. Their methods are also helping to improve community relations with police in Toledo, Indianapolis, and other U.S. cities. [D] I am a leopard. Jay Van Bavel, a neuroscientist at New York University who studies group identity, gave me that label last summer when I was lying in an fMRI scanner near his office. While in the machine I was shown photos of faces - 12 young white men and 12 young black men. The scanner tracked my brain's activity as I connected these individuals to group identities. Having been raised in the United States, I have lived with my country's racial categories all my life, and it wasn't difficult to do one of my experimental tasks: classify each face according to its skin color as either black or white. However, I also had to work with another set of categories. The men in the photos were on one of two teams, I was told: Tigers or Leopards. The screen told me who was on which team and drilled me on the details until I had it down. But I wasn't a neutral observer: I'd been told that I was a Leopard. [E] My scanner tasks allowed Van Bavel to compare my brain's activity as it worked, first with a familiar and consequential group identity (race in America) and then with a group identity that was effectively meaningless. [F] My brain lit up differently depending on whether I perceived an in-group face (for me, a Leopards team member) or an out-group (Tiger) face. For example, my orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region associated with liking, sparked up more when I saw a face from my in-group. So did the fusiform gyrus, a region tied to processing the identity of faces. [G] The experiment - and dozens of others like it during the past 20 years - confirmed several important facts about exactly how the human brain is "identity crazed." The scans show, for one, that a lot of our perceptions and emotions about groups happen outside our awareness or control. I have no conscious preference for white people over black people. On the contrary, like most Americans, I abhor racism. Yet, had I not been told I was a Leopard, I almost certainly would have shown an unconscious preference for white faces over black ones. That I did not illustrates a different important finding in Van Bavel's research: New team identities can easily supplant old ones in our minds. All Van Bavel had to do was tell me about two teams and inform me that I was on one. That was enough for my brain to prefer Leopards over Tigers as quickly and strongly as it normally distinguishes blacks and whites. [H] The scans reflected a key fact about human groupishness: We have keen mental radar that seeks to learn what groups matter around us and which ones we are members of. And this radar is always on. Even as we sit comfortably in our racial, religious, national, and other identities, our minds are alert to the possibility of new coalitions. [I] It's not hard to see why humans should have evolved to care about their teams and their place on those teams. Relying on each other is a sound survival strategy for a frail, noisy creature without a lot of built-in weapons. Living in groups is a ticket to survival, which is why most primates live in them. [J] "This is how person perception generally works," Van Bavel told me. "In the first split second, we judge people on the basis of their group memberships." Caring about your group memberships isn't something you have to learn, like reading or driving. It's something you do automatically, like breathing. [K] In fact, much of our sensitivity to groups begins long before we can speak. Very young babies prefer adults who look like their caretakers over adults who look different; some evidence shows they also prefer the foods their mothers ate while pregnant or breastfeeding over novel ones, and they like the sound of the language they heard in the womb and early in life much better than an alien tongue. These preferences continue. In adulthood most of us are better at recognizing the faces and reading the emotions of people who look and act like us. What TWO examples are given of people who are making strides towards improving relations with others because of scientific research? Make two selections from the answers below.
The Age оf Disbelief We аre surrоunded by science аnd technоlogy like never before, yet increаsing numbers of people doubt the claims of scientists. Writer Joel Achenbach investigates the reasons for a rising tide of skepticism. [A] We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge - from the safety of vaccines to the reality of climate change - faces organized and often angry opposition. Doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these controversies these days, you'd think an evil villain had put something in the water to make people argumentative. [B] In a sense all this is not surprising; our lives are affected by science and technology as never before. For many of us this new world is comfortable and rich in rewards - but also more complicated and sometimes unnerving. We now face risks we can't easily analyze. [C] We're asked to accept, for example, that it's safe to eat food containing genetically modified organisms. Experts say there's no evidence that it isn't safe, and no reason to believe that altering genes in a lab is more dangerous than altering them through traditional breeding. But to some people the very idea of transferring genes between species brings up images of mad scientists running wild. [D] The world seems full of real and imaginary hazards, and distinguishing the former from the latter isn't easy. Should we be afraid that the Ebola virus, which is spread only by direct contact with bodily fluids, will mutate into an airborne super-plague? The scientific consensus says that's extremely unlikely: No virus has ever been observed to completely change its mode of transmission in humans. But if you type "airborne Ebola" into an Internet search engine, you'll find that some people believe that this virus has almost supernatural powers. [E] In this often confusing world we have to decide what to believe and how to act accordingly. In principle, that is what science is for. "Science is not a body of facts," says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of the journal Science. "Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not." But that method doesn't come naturally to most of us. Making Sense of the World [F] The trouble goes way back, of course. The scientific method has led us to truths that are less than self-evident, often mind-blowing, and sometimes hard to accept. For example, both the sun and moon appear to cross the sky above the Earth, but while the moon does indeed circle our world, the Earth circles the sun. Although the roundness of the Earth has been known for thousands of years, alternative geographies persisted even after trips around the world had become common. Nineteenth-century flat-Earthers, for example, believed that the planet was centered on the North Pole and bounded by a wall of ice, with the sun and moon traveling only a few hundred kilometers about the Earth. [G] Even when we intellectually accept the precepts of science, we cling to our intuitions - what researchers call our naïve beliefs. As we become scientifically literate, we repress our naïve beliefs, but never eliminate them entirely. They remain hidden in our brains as we try to make sense of the world. [H] Most of us do that by relying on personal experience, anecdotes, or stories rather than statistics. If we hear about a cluster of cancer cases in a town with a hazardous waste dump, we assume pollution caused the cancers. Yet just because two things happened together doesn't mean one caused the other, and just because events are clustered doesn't mean they're not still random. [I] We have trouble comprehending randomness; our brains crave pattern and meaning. Science warns us, however, that we can deceive ourselves. To be confident there's a causal connection between the dump and the cancers, you need statistical analysis showing that there are many more cancers than would be expected randomly, evidence that the victims were exposed to chemicals from the dump, and evidence that the chemicals really can cause cancer. [J] Even for scientists, the scientific method is a hard discipline. Like the rest of us, they're vulnerable to confirmation bias - the tendency to look for and see only evidence that confirms what they already believe. But unlike the rest of us, they submit their ideas to formal peer review before publishing them. Once their results are published, other scientists will try to reproduce them - and, being skeptical and competitive, will be very happy to announce that they don't hold up. Struggling for Truth [K] Sometimes scientists fall short of the ideals of the scientific method. Especially in biomedical research, there's a disturbing trend toward results that can't be reproduced outside the lab that found them. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, worries about the "secret sauce" - specialized procedures and customized software - that researchers don't share with their colleagues. But he still has faith in science. [L] "Science will find the truth," Collins says. "It may get it wrong the first time and maybe the second time, but ultimately it will find the truth." That aspect of science is another thing a lot of people have trouble with. To some climate change skeptics, for example, the fact that a few scientists in the 1970s were worried (quite reasonably, it seemed at the time) about the possibility of a coming ice age is enough to discredit the concern about global warming now. [M] In 2014, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which consists of hundreds of scientists, released its fifth report in the past 25 years. This one repeated louder and clearer than ever the consensus of the world's scientists: The planet's surface temperature has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 130 years. Moreover, human actions - including the burning of fossil fuels - are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the warming since the mid-20th century. Many people, however, retain doubts about that consensus. [N] Americans, for example, fall into two basic camps, says Dan Kahan of Yale University. Those who are more egalitarian and community-minded are generally suspicious of industry. They tend to think it's up to something dangerous that calls for government regulation; they're likely to see the risks of climate change. In contrast, people with a hierarchical and individualistic mindset respect leaders of industry and don't like government interfering in their affairs. They tend to reject warnings about climate change because they know that accepting them could lead to some kind of tax or regulation to limit emissions. [O] In the United States, an individual's view on climate change tends to identify them as belonging to one or the other of these two opposing tribes. When we argue about it, Kahan says, we're actually arguing about who we are, what our crowd is. We're thinking: People like us believe this. People like that do not believe this. For a hierarchical individualist, Kahan says, it's not irrational to reject established climate science. This is because accepting it wouldn't change the world, but it might get them thrown out of their tribe. Science appeals to our rational brain, but our beliefs are motivated largely by emotion - and the biggest motivation is remaining tight with our peers. The Implications of Doubt [P] Doubting science has consequences. The anti-vaccine movement, for example, has been going strong since the respected British medical journal the Lancet published a study in 1998 linking a vaccine to autism. Although the article was discredited, the notion of a vaccine-autism connection has been endorsed by celebrities and reinforced through Internet sources. This has implications for the "herd immunity" of populations. When a significant portion of a population is vaccinated, it provides a measure of protection for individuals who have not developed immunity. Increasing vaccine skepticism threatens to undermine the herd immunity of communities against diseases such as whooping cough and measles. [Q] Investigations into the "science communication problem" have given us insights into how people decide what to believe - and why they so often don't accept the scientific consensus. It's not that they can't grasp it, says Kahan; it's because of confirmation bias - the tendency of people to use scientific knowledge to reinforce beliefs that have already been shaped by their worldview. Meanwhile the Internet has made it easier than ever for climate skeptics and doubters of all kinds to find their own information and experts. Gone are the days when a small number of powerful institutions - elite universities, encyclopedias, major news organizations - served as gatekeepers of scientific information. The Internet has democratized information, which is a good thing, but along with cable TV, it has made it possible to live in a "filter bubble" that lets in only the information you agree with. [R] How to penetrate this bubble? How can scientists convince skeptics? Throwing more facts at people may not be enough. Liz Neeley, who helps train scientists to be better communicators, says that people need to hear from believers they can trust, who share their fundamental values. She has personal experience with this: Her father is a climate change skeptic and gets most of his information on the issue from conservative media. One day she confronted him: "Do you believe them or me?" She told him she believes the scientists who research climate change, and knows many of them personally. "If you think I'm wrong," she said, "then you're telling me that you don't trust me." Her father's position on the issue softened - but it wasn't the facts that did it. What is NOT mentioned in the passage as a claim that skeptics doubt?
Vоcаbulаry, Unit 2B Instructiоns: Use the wоrds below to complete the missing word in eаch sentence. Type your answers into each blank. Be sure to spell the answers correctly or they will be marked incorrect. Also, do not use capital letters. artificial plummet ascend scheme contemplate stamina delicate successive devoid of tackle The freshly baked tarts are quite [1] so you have to treat them with care. The baseball team has already had three [2] wins this season and are hoping for a fourth. He doesn't want to sign up for the marathon as he doesn't think he will have the [3] to complete it. It was impossible to guess what she was thinking; her face was [4] any emotion. The interviewer asked the candidate how he intended to [5] the problem of unemployment if he was elected. He invested all his savings in the latest moneymaking [6], but unfortunately it wasn't successful. If the company's CEO is found to be involved in illegal activity, its stock price is sure to [7]. It usually takes a few days to [8] the mountain and reach the summit. Going for the operation would be the most logical choice, but he refuses to even [9] it. Our products are made from all-natural ingredients and contain no [10] flavorings or preservatives.
Why Dо We See Sо Mаny Things аs "Us vs. Them"? [A] It is а cоmmon misfortune around the world: People get along well enough for decades, even centuries, across lines of race or religion or culture. Then, suddenly, the neighbors aren't people you respect, invite to dinner, trade favors with, or marry. Those once familiar faces are now Them, the Enemy, the Other. And in that clash of groups, individuality vanishes and empathy dries up, as does trust. It can happen between herders and farmers in Nigeria or between native-born people and immigrants in France or the United States. The situations are very different, and the differences are important. But so is the shared root of their problems: People everywhere are "identity crazed," as the evolutionary psychologist John Tooby has put it. We can't help it: We're wired from birth to tell Us from Them. And we inevitably (and sometimes unconsciously) favor Us - especially when we feel threatened. [B] Of course, humans share that trait with many other creatures, from ants to salmon to macaques. What other creatures almost never do, though, is change their group perceptions and actions. The birds and bees kept to their tribes when Yugoslavs turned into warring Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians. Only humans - Hutu and Tutsi - could decide they are no longer countrymen, after peacefully sharing a homeland for centuries. Only humans can switch from feeling united as one American nation to feeling divided between conservative red states and liberal blue ones. [C] Our capacity to change our perceptions also offers some hope, because it permits people to shift in the direction of more inclusion, more justice, more peace. In Nigeria and other places around the world, communities torn apart by group conflict are putting themselves back together with help from a surprising source: scientists who study the mind. Their methods are also helping to improve community relations with police in Toledo, Indianapolis, and other U.S. cities. [D] I am a leopard. Jay Van Bavel, a neuroscientist at New York University who studies group identity, gave me that label last summer when I was lying in an fMRI scanner near his office. While in the machine I was shown photos of faces - 12 young white men and 12 young black men. The scanner tracked my brain's activity as I connected these individuals to group identities. Having been raised in the United States, I have lived with my country's racial categories all my life, and it wasn't difficult to do one of my experimental tasks: classify each face according to its skin color as either black or white. However, I also had to work with another set of categories. The men in the photos were on one of two teams, I was told: Tigers or Leopards. The screen told me who was on which team and drilled me on the details until I had it down. But I wasn't a neutral observer: I'd been told that I was a Leopard. [E] My scanner tasks allowed Van Bavel to compare my brain's activity as it worked, first with a familiar and consequential group identity (race in America) and then with a group identity that was effectively meaningless. [F] My brain lit up differently depending on whether I perceived an in-group face (for me, a Leopards team member) or an out-group (Tiger) face. For example, my orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region associated with liking, sparked up more when I saw a face from my in-group. So did the fusiform gyrus, a region tied to processing the identity of faces. [G] The experiment - and dozens of others like it during the past 20 years - confirmed several important facts about exactly how the human brain is "identity crazed." The scans show, for one, that a lot of our perceptions and emotions about groups happen outside our awareness or control. I have no conscious preference for white people over black people. On the contrary, like most Americans, I abhor racism. Yet, had I not been told I was a Leopard, I almost certainly would have shown an unconscious preference for white faces over black ones. That I did not illustrates a different important finding in Van Bavel's research: New team identities can easily supplant old ones in our minds. All Van Bavel had to do was tell me about two teams and inform me that I was on one. That was enough for my brain to prefer Leopards over Tigers as quickly and strongly as it normally distinguishes blacks and whites. [H] The scans reflected a key fact about human groupishness: We have keen mental radar that seeks to learn what groups matter around us and which ones we are members of. And this radar is always on. Even as we sit comfortably in our racial, religious, national, and other identities, our minds are alert to the possibility of new coalitions. [I] It's not hard to see why humans should have evolved to care about their teams and their place on those teams. Relying on each other is a sound survival strategy for a frail, noisy creature without a lot of built-in weapons. Living in groups is a ticket to survival, which is why most primates live in them. [J] "This is how person perception generally works," Van Bavel told me. "In the first split second, we judge people on the basis of their group memberships." Caring about your group memberships isn't something you have to learn, like reading or driving. It's something you do automatically, like breathing. [K] In fact, much of our sensitivity to groups begins long before we can speak. Very young babies prefer adults who look like their caretakers over adults who look different; some evidence shows they also prefer the foods their mothers ate while pregnant or breastfeeding over novel ones, and they like the sound of the language they heard in the womb and early in life much better than an alien tongue. These preferences continue. In adulthood most of us are better at recognizing the faces and reading the emotions of people who look and act like us. In the article, what are THREE examples of preferences people sometimes gain before they are born? Make three selections from the answers below.