INSTRUCTION: Answer questions 51 to 55 about text 1. 

TEXT 1

1. One stereotype of wisdom is a wizened Zen-master
2. smiling benevolently at the antics of his pupils, while
3. referring to them as little grasshoppers, safe in the
4. knowledge that one day they, too, will have been set
5. on the path that leads to wizened masterhood. ______
6. A study two years ago in North America, by Igor
7. Grossmann of the University of Waterloo, in Canada,
8. suggested that it is. In as much as it is possible to
9. quantify wisdom, Dr. Grossmann found that elderly
10. Americans had more of it than youngsters. Now he
11. has extended his investigation to Asia – the land of
12. the wizened Zen-master – and, in particular, to Japan.
13. There, he found, in contrast to the West, that the
14. grasshoppers are their masters’ equals almost from
15. the beginning.
16. Dr. Grossmann’s study, just published in
17. Psychological Science, recruited 186 Japanese from
18. various walks of life and compared them with 225
19. Americans. Participants were asked to read a series of
20. pretend newspaper articles and then asked “What do
21. you think will happen after that?” The responses were
22. scored on a scale of one to three, to capture the degree
23. to which they discussed what psychologists consider
24. five crucial aspects of wise reasoning: willingness to
25. seek opportunities to resolve conflict; willingness to
26. search for compromise; recognition of the limits of
27. personal knowledge; awareness that more than one
28. perspective on a problem can exist; and appreciation
29. of the fact that things may get worse before they get
30. better.
31. Taken at face value, these results suggest
32. Japanese learn wisdom faster than Americans.
33. Generally, America is seen as an individualistic society,
34. whereas Japan is quite collectivist. Yet Japanese
35. have higher scores than Americans for the sort of
36. interpersonal wisdom you might think would be useful
37. in an individualistic society. Americans, by contrast – at
38. least in the maturity of old age – have more intergroup
39. wisdom than the purportedly collectivist Japanese.
40. Perhaps, then, you need individual skills when society
41. is collective, and social ones when it is individualistic.

(Source: The Economist. Internet site April 11, 2012)

Glossary:

wizened (adj) old and with a lot of wrinkles on the skin. E.g. a wizened old man.

antics (noun) behavior that is funny or silly in an enjoyable way.

pretend (adj) imaginary. E.g. The kids are passing around pretend cookies.

The expression “Taken at face value” (line 31) is used to indicate that something