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  3. Research now suggests companies that try to make employees happy could benefit from improved levels of productivity. Where Sloug

Research now suggests companies that try to make employees happy could benefit from improved levels of productivity. Where Sloug

admin2012-08-05  57
问题     Research now suggests companies that try to make employees happy could benefit from improved levels of productivity. Where Slough’s most famous office manager leads, eminent (杰出的) economists follow. David Brent’s declaration that he wanted to be remembered as "the man who put a smile on the face of all who he met" may once have been dismissed as management mumbo-jumbo (怪诞的东西).
    But it appears the Brentmeister General may have been on to something. A team of economists has now produced research that suggests there are clear links between workers’ happiness and their productivity. The team, led by Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at Warwick Business School and a leading authority on the relationship between economics and mental health, said its research has important implications for the worlds of politics and business.
    "We find that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity," the team said. "Positive emotions appear to invigorate (鼓舞) human beings, while negative emotions have the opposite effect." The team conducted a range of exercises in their research. In one, students were shown a 10-minute film based on comedy routines performed by a well-known British comedian. The film succeeded in raising the reported happiness levels of those who saw it, compared to those who did not see it. Among the subjects who reported higher happiness levels after seeing the comedy film, productivity was significantly higher than for the other subjects, for both men and women. Significantly, subjects who watched the comedy film but did not report higher levels of happiness were unable to demonstrate higher levels of productivity.
    The findings led the economists to claim: "The increase in productivity seems to be linked to the increase in happiness, not merely to the watching of the comedy movie per se." The team also found that those who had experienced a death or illness in their families within the past two years performed 10 percent worse than others.
    Questioning the students about their family backgrounds also led to interesting results. The researchers, for example, found that subjects whose parents had recently divorced did not appear less happy or less productive. They noted: "One exception to our findings concerns the subject of parental divorce. Students whose parents have recently divorced did not report being less happy than others in the study, and they did not demonstrate reduced productivity."
    Economists have long debated how productivity can be raised through improved skills and the education of workers, or the introduction of new technology. But the Warwick team suggested that their work has opened up a new line of inquiry: "Our recent research investigates an important but often overlooked ingredient—that of human emotion."
    They concluded: "If happiness in the workplace brings increased returns to productivity, then human resource departments, business managers and the architects of promotion policies will want to consider the implications."
For the students who did not report higher happiness levels after seeing the comedy film, what happened to their work performance?
选项 A、They got significantly higher levels of productivity than ever before.
B、Their productivity had been improved a little.
C、Their productivity remained at almost the same level as in the past.
D、Their productivity was reduced greatly.
答案C
解析 细节辨认题。第三段最后一句提到，那些观看了喜剧电影却没有被报道提高了幸福感的受试学生没有取得更好的学习成绩。换句话说，就是学习成绩与过去的成绩水平相当，所以C)为答案。
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