“Is the glass half empty or half full?” This old English saying has long been used to tell a pessimist from an optimist. For most young people today, the answer is usually “half full”, because we have been taught that a positive attitude towards life is one of the primary keys to success.

However, is this necessarily a good thing? Recent studies indicate that it all depends. There is such a thing as too much positivity. It happens when someone remains in a happy and positive state and ignores any bad and negative emotions across all situations. But as a matter of fact, it is normal for us to experience any emotions. The death of a pet or loved one, a low score on a test, or a mountain of new homework should lead to emotions such as sadness, frustration and anger. If we hide these emotions just because we want to look optimistic in front of our friends and family, they can build up inside of us and end up erupting in unexpected ways. There is new evidence to suggest that many of these overly positive people are at a risk of developing drug or alcohol addictions as well as other psychological problems.

Aside from the personal emotional impacts, this attitude can also have a negative effect on the people around you. Imagine having had a bad day, and wanting to talk about it with your friend. However, instead of listening to your problems and sympathizing with you, they simply told you to “be positive” and give you the impression that your problems are being completely ignored. Just take everything as it comes and express how you really feel. This makes you human, and your true friends will always stick by you.

So my simple advice to you is to do what gives you the best “attitude” in life, whatever for you that might be. Regardless of whether a glass is half-empty or half-full, it nonetheless still has space to fill.

Heaven is where the police are English, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything is organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the cooks are English, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians."

Obviously the national stereotypes in this old joke are generalizations(普遍化), but such stereotypes are often said to "exist for a reason". Is there actually a sliver of truth in them? Not likely, an international research team now says.

"National and cultural stereotypes do play an important role in how people see themselves and others, and being aware that these are not dependable is a useful thing," said study author Robert McCrae of the National Institute on Aging. "These are in fact unfounded stereotypes. They don't come from looking around you," McCrae said.

If national stereotypes aren't rooted in real experiences, then where do they come from? One possibility is that they reflect national values, which may become known from historical events. For example, many historians have argued that the spirit of American individualism has its origins in the experiences of the pioneers on the Old West.

Social scientists such as psychologist Richard Robins have given several other possible explanations for stereotypes and why they may be incorrect. Robins notes that some stereotypes may have been correct at one point in history and then remained unchanged while the culture changed.

We may be "hard-wired", to some degree, to keep incorrect stereotypes, since we are less likely to notice and remember information that is different from our stereotypes. Generally, according to Robins, when we meet people who are different from our stereotypes, we see them as unique individuals rather than typical national or cultural groups.

Professor Barry Wellman of the University of Toronto in Canada has invented a term to describe the way many North Americans interact these days. The term is “networked individualism”. This concept is not easy to understand because the words seem to have opposite meanings. How can we be individuals (个人) and be networked at the same time? You need other people for networks.

Here is what Professor Wellman means. Before the invention of the Internet and e-mail, our social networks included live interactions (互动) with relatives, neighbors, and friends. Some of the interaction was by phone, but it was still voice, person to person, in real time.

A recent research study by the Pew Internet and American Life project showed that for a lot of people, electronic interaction through the computer has replaced this person-to-person interaction. However, a lot of people interviewed for the Pew study say that’s a good thing. Why?

In the past, many people were worried that the Internet isolated us and caused us to spend too much time in the imaginary world of the computer. But the Pew study discovered that the opposite is true. The Internet connects us with more real people than expected-helpful people who can give advice on careers, medical problems, raising children, and choosing a school or college. About 60 million Americans told Pew that the Internet plays an important role in helping them make major life decisions.

Thanks to the computer, we are able to be alone and together with other people-at the same time!