People can be addicted to different things,for example,alcohol,drugs,certain foods,or even television. People who have such an addiction are compulsive(强迫的);i. e.,they have a very powerful psychological need that they feel they must satisfy. According to psychologists,many people are compulsive spenders.【小题1】This compulsion,like most others,is impossible to explain reasonably. For compulsive spenders,charge accounts(赊购帐户)are even more exciting than money. 【小题2】Their pleasure in spending enormous amounts is actually greater than the pleasure that they get from the things they buy.

There is even a special psychology of bargain hunting. To save money,of course,most people look for sales,low prices,and discounts. 【小题3】 They want to believe that they are helping their budgets,but they are really playing an exciting game. When they can buy something for less than other people,they feel that they are winning. Most people,experts claim,have two reasons for their behavior: a good reason for the things that they do and the real reason.

It is not only scientists,of course,who understand the psychology of spending habits, but also business people. 【小题4】 They consider people's needs for love, power, or influence, their basic values, their beliefs and opinions, and so on in their advertising and sales methods.

Psychologists often use a method called “behavior therapy” to help individuals solve their personality problems. In the same way, they can help people who feel that they have problems with money.

Large numbers of employees in the United Kingdom will begin a four-day work week from Monday without cutting their pay in the largest trial of its kind. The pilot, which will last for six months, involves 3,300 workers spanning 70 companies, ranging from providers of financial services to a fish-and-chip restaurant.

During the program, workers receive 100% of their pay for working only 80% of their usual week, in exchange for promising to maintain 100% of their productivity. The program is being run by not-for-profit 4 Day Week Global, Autonomy, a think tank, and the 4 Day Week UK Campaign in partnership with researchers from Cambridge University, Oxford3 University and Boston College.

Sienna O’Rourke, brand manager at Pressure Drop Brewing, an independent brewery5 in London, told CNN Business that the company’s biggest goal was to improve the mental health and well-being of its employees. “The pandemic has made us think a great deal about work and how people organize their lives,” she said. “We’re doing this to improve the lives of our staff and be part of a progressive change in the world.” Given the company manufactures and ships products, workers have less flexibility about when and where they work, O’Rourke said. But any difficulties in navigating holiday and sick leave would be tackled as a team.

Until now, Iceland had conducted the biggest pilot of a shorter working week between 2015 and 2019, with 2,500 public sector9 workers involved in two large trials. Those trials found no corresponding drop in productivity among participants, and a dramatic increase in employee well-being.

Calls to shorten the working week have gathered steam in recent years in several countries. As millions of employees switched to remote work during the pandemic — cutting onerous commuting time and costs — calls for greater flexibility have only grown louder.

Government-backed trials are set to take place in Spain and Scotland later this year, the 4 Day Week Campaign said in a press release.Joe O’Connor, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, said that the workers have shown they can work “shorter and smarter.”

As students are discussing their favourite colleges, there’s one thing they can’t control: their race. That’s one reason why voters, courts and politicians in six states have outlawed (取缔) racial preferences in college admissions. But make no mistake: race still matters, depending on the school and the state.

In Texas, public universities have managed to reduce the effect of racial-preference bans by automatically admitting (录取) the top 10% of the graduating class of every high school, including those schools where most students are minorities (少数族裔). But Rice University in Houston, private and highly selective, has had to reinvent its admissions strategies to maintain the school’s minority enrolment (注册入学). Each February, 80 to 90 black, Hispanic (西班牙裔的) and Native American kids visit Rice on an expenses-paid trip. Rice urges counsellors from high schools with large minority populations to recommend qualified students. And in the fall, Rice sends two recruiters (招生人员) on the road to find minority applicants; each recruiter visits about 80 mainly black or Hispanic high schools. Two weeks ago, Rice recruiter Tamara Siler dropped in on Westlake High in Atlanta, where 99% of the 1, 296 students are black. Siler held a meeting to give out advice to those who show interest in Rice University, and though only two kids showed up, she said, “I’m pleased I got two.”

Last spring, admissions officers came across a student whose SAT score was lower than 1, 200 and who did not rank in the top 10% of her class. Numerically speaking, she was far behind most accepted applicants. But her essay and recommendations indicated a strong interest in civil rights and personal experience with racial discrimination (种族歧视). She is now a student on campus. “All the newspapers say affirmative action is done,” says an experienced counsellor at a large New York City high school. “But nothing has changed. I have a (minority) kid at Yale with an SAT score in the high 900s.”