2.
Directions: Read the passage and choose the best answer to each question.
One 2013 survey of 485
adults in the U. S. linked travel to enhanced attention, energy, and focus.
Other research suggests that the act of adapting to foreign cultures may also
facilitate creativity. But what about the act of planning a trip?
Planning a trip can be
almost as enjoyable as going on the trip itself. A 2014 Cornell University
study looked into how looking forward to an experience (like a trip) can
increase a person's happiness considerably—much more
so than the anticipation of buying material goods. An earlier study,
published by the University of Surrey in 2002, found that people are at their
happiest when they have a vacation planned.
Amit Kumar, one of the
co-authors of the Cornell study, explains that the benefits are less about
obsessing over the finer points of a journey than they are about connecting
with other people. 44 Travelers end up talking to people more about
their experiences than they talk about material purchases, " he says.
"Compared to possessions, experiences make for better story material.
"
Kumar's co-author Matthew
Killingsworth, now a senior fellow at the Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania, says trip-planning encourages an optimistic outlook.
"As humans, we spend a
lot of our mental lives living in the future," says Killingsworth, whose
work centers on understanding the nature and causes of human happiness.
"Our future-mindedness can be a source of joy if we know good things are
coming, and travel is an especially good thing to look forward to. "
One reason Killingsworth
thinks that planning travel can be such a positive experience is the fact that
trips arc temporary. "Since we know a trip has a defined start and end,
our minds are likely to enjoy it, even before it's started," he says.
"Sometimes people even prefer to delay good experiences like a trip so
they can extend the period of excitement."
There's another reason why
travel planning can produce happiness: We often know enough about a trip to
imagine it and look forward to it—but there's also
enough novelty and uncertainty lo keep our minds interested.
"In a sense, we start
to 'consume' a trip as soon as we start thinking about it, " Killingsworth
says." When we imagine eating gelato, the famous ice cream in Rome or
going water skiing with friends we don't see as much as we'd like, we get to
experience a version of those events in our mind. "
Planning for travel—thinking about it, talking about it, imagining it—may in fact be one of the best things you can do to stay optimistic.