Yuck! Chicken blood splashes onto the floor and insects fly everywhere in the market. The old Indian woman waves the butcher knife. You’re speechless. Your friend who moved to India a few months before you notices your horror. “It’s just something they do,” he clarifies.

You’ve heard living abroad is good for you. Experiences like this one make you say “Seriously?”

Yes. Seriously.

Researchers William Maddux and Hajo Adam have discovered not only that cultural experiences are good for you, but they’ve also discovered why they’re good for you. Cultural experiences can make you more creative.

Maddux and his team discovered that learning about new cultures you encounter deeply is key to obtaining cognitive rewards. The team did a series of experiments with people who had lived abroad for a long time. They asked the sojourners (旅居者) to recall experiences where they: learned something about the culture they lived in abroad; learned something about their own culture; did something unrelated (like visiting a supermarket). Those who recalled learning something about a new culture did much better on a creative problem-solving task immediately afterward.

Maddux and his team wondered, though. Does learning new cultures always help? Is it enough to just notice that another culture is different? In another experiment they had a group of people recall an experience where they learned something new about a foreign culture but hadn’t been able to learn about the reasons for it.

The people who later were made aware of the hidden reasons for the novel, different, or unexpected behaviors they had come across were much more creative afterward than those who weren’t.

This means that even though discovering cultural differences exist is great, it’s not enough to influence how you think in other situations. You have to learn why a cultural difference exists. That’s what helps you spot new connections later, in other aspects of your life.

【小题1】Why is the scene mentioned in the first paragraph?

A．To show us an appropriate example.

B．To prove the advantages of living abroad.

C．To provide evidence for the writer’s viewpoint.

D．To draw readers’ attention to the following exploration.

【小题2】What did the researchers find by asking the sojourners to recall their experience?

A．What is necessary to be creative.

B．What influence creativity has on people.

C．What benefits cultural experiences bring.

D．What they can learn from their own cultures.

【小题3】From the experiment in Paragraph 6, we can conclude ______.

A．learning new cultures is always of great help

B．it’s not enough just to notice similarities between cultures

C．knowing the reasons for the difference is the key to creativity

D．culture difference has an impact on your way of thinking

【小题4】Where is the text probably taken from?

A．A research report.	B．A geography textbook.
C．A travel brochure.	D．A science magazine.