PASSAGE 1

Ten years ago, former TV news anchor Christine Craft sued a Kansas City station that demoted her for being "too ugly," a
highly publicized and ultimately unsuccessful case that added "lookism" to the growing list of prejudices condemned by social
critics.
Now the first full-blown study on the subject by economists shows that lookism carries a big price for its victims-and handsome
economic rewards for those blessed with good looks.
The earnings gap between attractive and unattractive people, who otherwise share the same education, experience and
other characteristics, rivals that between black and white or male and female workers, reported Daniel Hamernlesh and Jef
Biddle, economists at the University of Texas and Michigan State University.
In a surprising departure from conventional wisdom, their research suggests that men earn even greater rewards for good
looks and pay even greater penalties for ugliness than do women in our beauty-conscious society.
"The biggest efects are on the bad-looking, not the good-looking," said Hamernlesh. "And the efects are if anything bigger
for men than women, a result that's startling to me."
Attractive people tend to earn about 5 per cent more per hour than those with average looks. Homely workers pull in about
7 percent less than average, other things being equal, the researchers found. Men with below-average looks earned 9 percent
less, compared with 5 percent for women.
The researchers also found that women considered to be unattractive are less likely to work than other women and tend to
marry men with lower levels of education.
These earnings gaps could be explained by a variety of factors: employers showing simple favoritism toward attractive job
applicants, a tendency by consumers or fellow employees to favor good-looking workers (thus making them more valuable to
bosses) or the possibility that attractive workers have higher self-esteem and actually produce more.
Psychologists have found that attractive people are widely regarded as being more intelligent, friendly, honest and confident
than others-all traits that could influence employers and customers to discriminate in favor of them.
And attractive children are often rewarded with more praise from parents and teachers, shaping their personality in ways
that may boost their confidence and poise, both valued in the marketplace.
The economists found some evidence that the earnings gap is caused by certain occupations catering to attractive employees
more than others. But favoritism towards good looks and prejudice against homeliness is pervasive in most jobs, they determined.
"It's not just a matter of good-looking people going to work in Hollywood and bad-looking people digging ditches," Hamernlesh
said. "Even within any given occupation, good-looking people make more."
...People can and do infl uence their looks by spending on cosmetics, hair styling and fashionable clothes. In this sense
"lookism" is more easily combatted than racism or sexism.
"People do intuitively understand these results and invest in how well they look," Hamernlesh said. "I fully expect that when
these results are published, Revlon or some company will advertise that you can make 10 percent more if you buy their lipstick."
1.

Which of the following would go best along with the contents of the passage ?
(1)A ttractive people are less likely to work than unattractive ones, as they would concentrate more in improving their
looks.
(2) Looks of the employees hardly matter in determining the productivity level of a person.
(3) Cosmetics, hair styling and fashionable clothes, if properly taken care of, are conducive to the increase in the income
of an employee.
(4) Intelligence and honesty have nothing to do with the looks of a person.

2.

All
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)

of the following, as per the passage, are true except that :

attractive children are more praised by their parents and teachers, as compared to non-attractive children.
good looking workers are more valuable to bosses.
self esteem is higher in attractive workers than in non-attractive ones.
there is bias towards the quality of homeliness in most jobs.

Lookism, as made out by the passage, has :

(1) placed people, who do not look good, in a disadvantageous position.
(2) caused people blessed with good looks to neglect their profession, making them unprofessional.
(3) become a misplaced idea, as all that an employer looks forward to is the productive output of the employee.
resulted
(4)
in expansion of the customer and clientele base, as customers and clients would love to deal with organisations
that employ people with good looks.

3.

4.

The
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)

5.

Which of the following is not in tune with the contents of the passage ?
(1)Psychologists are of the view that looks of a person is least related to qualities like intelligence, friendliness, confidence
and honesty.
(2) Research studies have established that women with less attractive looks are less likely to work.
(3) Attractive people tend to earn about 5 percent more per hour than those with average looks.
(4) None of the above.

6.

The
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)

7.

As per the passage, attractive looks of a person :

(1) are a source of distraction from the main objective and goal.
(2) reflect traits which could influence employers and customers to favour them.
(3) should not be given undue importance as physical beauty is transient.
(4) are deceptive ways to impress and influence the employers, as a cover up for the shortcomings and lapses.

8.

The passage in essence is :

(1) informative
(3) riddled with contradictory findings

9.

passage has come out with lookism as :

a fad which is not going to last long.
a social evil having the same destructive efect as racism and sexism.
a factor responsible for the flourish and progress of the business.
a reason for large number of employees leaving the organisation.

central idea of the passage is best represented by which of the following ?

Cosmetics add to the get-up of a person and increase the chance of prospering further in career.
Productivity level of a person has nothing to do with the looks and is a function of hardwork and skills.
Lookism is not the main criteria for judging an employee, education, experience and hard work matter.
Physical beauty is a stepping stone for ascending higher in profession.

(2)
(4)

boring
full of hypotheses

The passage is most likely an extract from :

(1) an annual report of an MNC, detailing the work culture prevalent in the organisation.
(2) a well-researched article on the latest in the Human Resources area of management in an organisation.
(3) the publicity campaign of a store selling cosmetics and novelty items.
the
(4)private and confidential notings of a divisional head, justifying the policy measures, alleged to be discriminatory in
nature.

10. A suitable title for the passage is :

(1) Hardwork - The Key Factor To Success.
(2)
(3) Lookism - A Decider For The Persons Progress.
(4)

Luck Versus Hardwork.

Physical Attraction-An Impediment To The Rise In Career.

PASSAGE 2
If it's possible for entire personality types to go in and out of fashion (remember when laid- back was in and uptight was out?)
then the Nineties may well go down as the decade of Compulsive Chic.
People who used to go around saying, "I'm so disorganized", a code, as everyone knew, for "I'm so zany and creative and
warm and wonderful" are piping down. The trendy plaint-if you haven't noticed-is "I'm so compulsive" (meaning: "I get things
done"). At a time when being in control has become the mantra of a whole generation, being compulsive is seen as the only way
to achieve all one's goals.
In fact, "compulsive" means a lot of things: ranging from the benign to the bizarre, from garden variety ashtray-emptying to
nonstop shopping to the marathon hand washing of full- blown obsessive-compulsive disorder. All of these, oddly, appear to be
either more in evidence or more talked about these days. Which raises a number of interesting questions.
When are compulsions-the hyper-neat house, the never-missing-an-exercise-class, the need to shopshopshop-helpful and
when are they over the top? Sometimes this is so obvious; sometimes it's a fine line. What might a bout of compulsive behavior
symbolize-about an individual's emotional state? About our society ? And what can be done about compulsiveness when it starts
running amok?

Most experts agree that ordinary, everyday, half-of-us-have-it compulsiveness is a nonproblem. "What we call the compulsive
character style-the perfectly normal but slightly obsessive, meticulous, perfectionistic approach to things-is often quite helpful
and productive. Occasional checking, wondering if one has forgotten something-that's normal," says Dr. Joseph DeVeugh Geiss,
a director of clinical research from Summit, New Jersey.
Maybe a little better than normal. "Compulsiveness correlates with intelligence and perfectionism," says New York psychologist
Loretta Walder, PhD. "It's well-represented in the professions-in surgeons, lawyers, accountants, entrepreneurs, chefs. "The
word is that, 70 percent of medical students have this character style-which may help to explain its good press among those who
succeed in becoming doctors.
Walder claims, "What compulsive behavior' does for a person is to organize chaos and reduce anxiety. If a woman has six
thousand things to do, it helps to make lists, stick to schedules, prioritize; it's okay to be a little rigid. When someone's feeling
overwhelmed, the routines of doing things in a set, ritualistic pattern can prevent confusion and scatteredness. In general, any
high level achievement that requires a person to be compulsive in professional life has a carryover into one's personal.
"Compulsive behavior is about control," asserts Sharon Hymer, an associate professor of psychology at New York University.
"Ironically, the more compulsive the behavior, the more out of control the person probably feels deep down. However, one
doesn't have to be a I compulsive type to act compulsively. Just as even the most frenetically neat people often have little
pockets of chaos in their lives-overfl owing closets or handbags. So the generally laid-back have areas of drivenness. There's
compulsive shopping, compulsive talking, compulsive eating, dieting, exercising, party going you name it and someone has
probably worked up a compulsion around it."
Strictly speaking, most of these urges aren't compulsions in the textbook sense. There's a distinct diference involved: True
compulsions usually involve some form of counting, checking or cleaning-and no fun, only a grim sense of "gotta do it." But some
of the features are similar: low self-esteem, a consequent need to assert control over some facet of one's life, stress acting as
a trigger-and constant uncertainty, so, that whatever one has, does or says, never quite suffi ces.
"Narrowing it down, the symbolism of; one's unconscious choice is almost embarrassingly obvious," says Dr. Hymer. "The
compulsive eater is trying to fill up a void in her life; the, compulsive talker is saying, "I don't think anyone will listen to me, so I
have to control the situation by going on and on. The compulsive cleaner or exerciser is seeking self-esteem through a perfect
body or pristine house. But it doesn't work, because too lean or too clean is never enough,"
Still, one might not be a compulsive shopper, talker, party goer. One might merely be a passionate collector, a brilliant
storyteller, a bon vivant might one not ? Georgia Witkin, Ph. D., assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of
Medicine in NYC and' author of Quick Fixes & Small Comforts, suggests asking these questions: Is the behavior realistic? How does
it leave you feeling afterward? What are the consequences? Is it possible to stop? And-since compulsions often start as anxiety
reducers-is the hobby / passion/ compulsion covering up an underlying problem? If a person gets the feeling, he or she is winning
the game but losing at real life, it's time to rethink.
When compulsiveness goes from being a coping style-for good or ill-and takes over the entire persona, it becomes what
psychiatrists call a compulsive personality. It's the classic condition of someone who is cold, unemotional, rigid, moralistic and an
unbearable perfectionist," so says Michael Liebowitz, M.D., director of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center Anxiety Disorders
Clinic.
"It's rampant right now," says Jay Lefer, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College. "It's really a
consequence of how people adapt to society. The hysteria was nineteenth-century Vienna: the obsessive-compulsive is latetwentieth-centuryAmerica. People feel helpless in urban society-and helplessness leads to a necessity to control oneself and
others. The compulsive personality develops in an attempt to protect self-esteem."
11. Which of the following would best concur with the contents of the passage ?
(1) A compulsive person is liked by all and is a role model for others to emulate.
(2) The urge to protect self-esteem results in the development of compulsive personality.
(3) A compulsive person is not always meticulous and obsessive, a casual approach to things can also be there.
(4) A compulsive behaviour in professional life has no linkage with that of a personal one.
12. All
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)

of the following is true, as per the passage, except that :

a person who is compulsive in professional life invariably becomes so in personal life.
true compulsions do not involve fun but call for seriousness.
being compulsive is the only way to achieve ones goals.
None of the above.

13. As per the passage, compulsiveness :

(1) correlates with intelligence.
(2) is an index of perfectionism.
(3) is necessary for a person to achieve a high level of excellence.
(4) All of the above.

14. According to the passage, through compulsive behaviour, a person :

(1) loses mental balance and becomes hysteric.
(2) loses clarity of thinking on account of anxiety and anger clouding the thought process.
(3) organises chaos and reduces anxiety.
(4) is given and outlet for self-assertion.
15. Which of the following best fits in as the characteristic of compulsive personality, as per the passage ?
(1) Warm, easy going, inspiring and emulatory.
(2) Enigmatic, puzzling, inconclusive and vague.
(3) Cold, unemotional, rigid, moralistic and an unbearable perfectionist.
(4) Imposing, dogmatic, non-secular and unbending.
16. The central idea of the passage is best represented by which of the following ?
(1) Compulsive behaviour is necessary for one to assume power.
(2) For compulsive behaviour to be beneficial, a moderate exhibition of it is needed.
(3) Emotional state of an individual is indexed by compulsive behaviour.
People
(4)
around have to be watchful of the compulsive behavior of a person and should not get disturbed or agitated.
17. The passage has been handled in a manner which is :
(1) objective
(2) biased
(3)

not well-based

(4)

disputable

18. A suitable title for the passage is :

(1) Compulsive Behaviour - A Tool For Acquiring Power.
(2) The Damage Caused By Compulsive Behaviour.
(3) Compulsive Behaviour - Reflection Of A Sick Mind.
(4) Coping With Compulsive Behaviour To Reap Benefits.
19. The passage is most likely an extract from :
(1) the description of eccentric and erratic behaviour of divisional heads, as experienced by the subordinates.
(2) the research and psychological studies on the behaviour of workaholics and go-getters.
an (3)
analytical, well documented and well researched article on the tendency for one to become meticulous, perfectionist,
a go-getter and safeguard self esteem.
the
(4) review of a book probing the mentality of persons, who have sufered from nervous breakdowns and are wrecks.
20. Which of the following can be correctly inferred from the passage ?
(1) A balance is required for a person to behave responsibly with all members of the society.
(2) Mental stability is called for to cope with extreme situations.
(3) Unless the urge and the drive is not powerful or strong, things would not move.
(4) Being compulsive is the only way to achieve all goals, as being in control is necessary for todays generations.

1.