2014考研英语二真题阅读理解整体分析
分析：综合来说今年的阅读理解符合考研英语二大纲的难度水平，或许有些同学会因为第四篇阅读中出现的一些专业词汇和一词多义现象所难到，但只要静心阅读就不太会出现理解上的障碍。
2014年考研英语阅读四篇文章的出处分别是：《经济学人》的《金钱和幸福》(Money and happiness);《星报在线》的《怎样改善自己的相貌》(How we really rate our looks);《劳伦斯日报》的《科学发现情绪会影响眼泪的化学成分》;《英国卫报》的《综合开支审查可能会扭转房市危机》(Comprehensive spending review could turn the housing crisis around)
同样，考研命题组对这四篇文章都有适当的删减和修改，但并没改变原文意思，考生不用担心会有过难理解的句子出现。从以上分析不难看出，考研英语命题的选材依旧偏向于各大外媒报纸中的经典文章，题材多样且具有趣味性。
这就要求考生在平时的复习的过程中多浏览国外著名报纸以扩展自身的知识面，同时提升自己的阅读能力。针对题源出处的总结问题，考研1号系列考研英语一真题书《考研真相》和考研英语二真题书《考研圣经》，对历年真题的出处都有系统的分析总结。考生可参考这两本真题解析书中的详细分析给自己制定一个合适的课外预读计划，这样循序渐进、长期积累定会有意想不到的效果。
Text 1
原文标题：《金钱和幸福》(Money and happiness)
刊登时间：Jun 22nd 2013
原文节选：WHAT would you do with $590m? This is now a question for Gloria MacKenzie, an 84-year-old widow who recently emerged from her small, tin-roofed house inFloridato collect the biggest undivided lottery jackpot in history. The blogosphere is full of advice for this lucky Powerball pensioner. But if she hopes her new-found lucre will yield lasting feelings of fulfilment, she could do worse than read “Happy Money” by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton.
These two academics—she teaches psychology at theUniversityofBritish Columbia; he lectures on marketing atHarvardBusinessSchool—use an array of behavioural research to show that the most rewarding ways to spend money can be counterintuitive. Fantasies of great wealth often involve visions of fancy cars and palatial homes on remote bluffs. Yet satisfaction with these material purchases wears off fairly quickly. What was once exciting and new becomes old-hat; remorse creeps in. It is far better to spend money on experiences, say Ms Dunn and Mr Norton, like interesting trips, unique meals or even going to the cinema. These purchases often become more valuable with time—as stories or memories—particularly if they involve feeling more connected to others.
This slim volume is packed with tips to help wage slaves as well as lottery winners get the most “happiness bang for your buck”. It seems most people would be better off if they could shorten their commutes to work, spend more time with friends and family and less of it watching television (something the average American spends a whopping two months a year doing, and is hardly jollier for it). Buying gifts or giving to charity is often more pleasurable than purchasing things for oneself, and luxuries are most enjoyable when they are consumed sparingly. This is apparently the reason McDonald’s restricts the availability of its popular McRib—a marketing gimmick that has turned the pork sandwich into an object of obsession.
Readers of “Happy Money” are clearly a privileged lot, anxious about fulfilment, not hunger. Money may not quite buy happiness, but people in wealthier countries are generally happier than those in poor ones. Yet the link between feeling good and spending money on others can be seen among rich and poor people around the world, and scarcity enhances the pleasure of most things for most people. Not everyone will agree with the authors’ policy ideas, which range from mandating more holiday time to reducing tax incentives for American homebuyers. But most people will come away from this book believing it was money well spent.
Text 2
原文出处：星报在线(The Star Online)
原文标题：《怎样改善自己的相貌》(How-we-really-rate-our-looks)
刊登时间：June 29, 2013
原文节选：Some advertising would have us believe that we’re more beautiful than we think we are. In fact, the reverse may be true.
WE HAVE a deep-seated need to feel good about ourselves and we naturally employ a number of self-enhancing (to use the psychological terminology) strategies to achieve this.
Social psychologists have amassed oceans of research into what they call the “above-average effect”, or “illusory superiority”, and shown that, for example, 70% of us rate ourselves as above average in leadership, 93% in driving (across the ages and genders) and 85% at getting on well with others – all obviously statistical impossibilities.
We rose-tint our memories and put ourselves into self-affirming situations. We become defensive when criticised, and apply negative stereotypes to others to boost our own self-esteem. We strut around thinking we’re hot stuff.
Psychologist and behavioural scientist Nicholas Epley oversaw a key study into self-enhancement and attractiveness. Rather than have people simply rate their beauty compared with others, he asked them to identify an original photograph of themselves from a line-up, including versions that had been morphed to appear more and less attractive. Visual recognition, reads the study, is “an automatic psychological process, occurring rapidly and intuitively with little or no apparent conscious deliberation”. If the subjects quickly chose a falsely-flattering image – which most did – they genuinely believed it was really how they looked.
Epley found no significant gender difference in responses. Nor was there any evidence that those who self-enhanced the most (that is, the participants who thought the most positively-doctored pictures were real) were doing so to make up for profound insecurities. In fact, those who thought that the images higher up the attractiveness scale were real, directly corresponded with those who showed other markers for having higher self-esteem.
“I don’t think the findings that we have are any evidence of personal delusion,” says Epley. “It’s a reflection simply of people generally thinking well of themselves.” If you are depressed, you won’t be self-enhancing.
Knowing the results of Epley’s study, it makes sense that many people hate photographs of themselves so viscerally – on one level, they don’t even recognise the person in the picture as themselves. Facebook, therefore, is a self-enhancer’s paradise, where people can share only the flukiest of flattering photos, the cream of their wit, style, beauty, intellect and lifestyles. It’s not that people’s profiles are dishonest, says Catalina Toma of Wisconsin-Madison University, “but they portray an idealised version of themselves”. (People are much more likely to out-and-out lie on dating websites, to an audience of strangers.)