You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 on the following pages.
FOUR TEMPERAMENTS
Section A
The human community can be regarded as a system, holistic in nature, seeking survival. Throughout the ages, observers of human behaviour have repeatedly identified four major patterns or configurations of behaviour. Such holistic sorting of behaviour patterns has been recorded for at least twenty-five centuries.
In 450 B.C., Hippocrates described four such dispositions he called temperaments — a choleric temperament with an ease of emotional arousal and sensitivity, a phlegmatic temperament with cool detachment and impassivity, a melancholic temperament with a very serious, dour, and downcast nature, and a sanguine temperament full of impulsivity, excitability, and quick reactivity. During the Middle Ages, Philippus Paracelsus described four natures whose behaviours were said to be influenced by four kinds of spirits: nymphs, sylphs, gnomes, and salamanders.
Most twentieth-century psychologists abandoned holistic observation of human behaviour for a microscopic examination of parts, fragments, traits, and so on. To them, all human beings were basically alike, and individual differences were due to chance or conditioning.
Two German psychologists, Ernst Kretschmer and Eduard Spränger, were among the few to continue to view individuals holistically in terms of patterns. Inspired by their work, a modern psychologist, David Keirsey, noted common themes in the various observations and the consistent tendency of human behaviour to sort itself into four similar patterns. Linda Berens continues to expand our understanding of the four temperaments through the unique contributions, including the core needs, values, talents, and behaviours of the four temperament patterns — as illustrated by The Temperament Targets™.
These four major patterns are referred to as temperaments. They describe the ways human personality interacts with the environment to satisfy its needs. Each of the four types of humours corresponded to a different personality type.
Section B
The Sanguine temperament personality is fairly extroverted. People of a sanguine temperament tend to enjoy social gatherings and making new friends. They tend to be creative and often day dream. However, some alone time is crucial for those of this temperament. Sanguine can also mean very sensitive, compassionate and thoughtful. Sanguine personalities generally struggle with the following tasks all the way through. They are chronically late, and tend to be forgetful and sometimes a little sarcastic. Often, when pursuing a new hobby, interest is lost quickly when it ceases to be engaging or fun. A sanguine person is happy, friendly, warm, eager and has an ability to sympathize with others. He has lots of friends and everyone thinks he is a fun company. But he is often very self-centred and he lacks self-control. He has a tendency to exaggerate and he is emotionally unstable.
Section C
A person who is choleric is a doer. They have a lot of ambition, energy and passion, and try to instill it in others. They can dominate people of other temperaments, especially phlegmatic types. Many great charismatic military and political figures were cholerics. They have a strong will. They are independent, practical, efficient and productive. When they get something in their mind, nothing can stop them. Unfortunately, choleric people have to spend a lot of their time alone, as their social side is so poorly-developed. They scare people away with their coldness and their angry and cruel words. They are insensitive and overly dominating.
Section D
A person who is a thoughtful ponder has a melancholic disposition. Often very kind and considerate, melancholics can be highly creative — as in poetry and art — and can become occupied with the tragedy and cruelty in the world. A melancholic is also often a perfectionist. They are often self-reliant and independent. A melancholic person is often extremely talented. He can analyse things very deeply. He has an eye for beauty. He is disciplined and diligent. But he has a whole load of dark sides. He is often pessimistic and is depressed easily. He is too critical of himself and of others. He is revengeful and easily offended.
Section E
Phlegmatics tend to be self-content and kind. They can be very accepting and affectionate. They may be very receptive and shy and often prefer stability to uncertainty and change. They are very consistent, relaxed, rational, curious, and observant, making them good administrators and diplomats. Unlike the Sanguine personality, they may be more dependable.
It's easiest to get along with a phlegmatic person. He is calm and easygoing. His carefree attitude and good sense of humour attract people. He is stable and reliable and very diplomatic. But he is not perfect, either. He is often irritatingly slow and unable to make up his mind. He is selfish and stingy. Sometimes he is totally indifferent to everything around him. All he's interested in is his daydreams.
Section F
The concept of temperament can generally be defined as a behavioural or emotional trait that differs across individuals, appears early in life, is relatively stable over the life-span, and is, at least to some degree, influenced by biology. One common defining characteristic of temperament is that it appears quite early in development and is relatively stable over the life-span. It is for this reason that the study of temperament has often focused on infancy and early-childhood. The assumption has been that temperament is not an acquired characteristic; one doesn't learn one's temperament, rather one is simply born with a given temperament profile. Further, these "in-born" traits persist throughout the life span, though they may change form. For example, an infant may have a withdrawal oriented temperament, but lacking the physical capacity to move independently may cry when presented with novel situations or toys or people, etc. The infant's crying then elicits a caregiver to either remove the infant from the stimulus or the stimulus from the infant. In either case it effectively increases the distance between the infant and that which makes him or her uncomfortable. As the child ages through early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence and so on, he or she no longer needs to rely exclusively on others to control their environment. They can themselves retreat from situations that make them uncomfortable and/or they may actively seek out environments that are of low stimulus intensity. In adolescence they may begin to use depressant drugs such as alcohol, narcotics, or nicotine to effectively withdraw from situations that make them uncomfortable, but for which there is strong social pressure to pursue (parties, school functions, etc.). These behaviours are quite different in form, but yield the same functional effect.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
CARBOLIC SMOKE BALL: FAKE OR CURE?
The curious case of the carbolic smoke ball forced companies to treat customers honestly and openly and still has impact today.
The 1892 case of Carlill and the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company is an odd tale set against the backdrop of the swirling mists and fog of Victorian London, a terrifying Russian flu pandemic, and a forest of unregulated quack medicines offering cures for just about everything.
It is a case known to legal students the world over. It is also seen by some as the birth of modern consumer protection as it helped to define in law the trading relationship between a company and its customers.
The carbolic smoke ball was a peculiar device marketed as a cure for various ailments including influenza. It consisted of a rubber ball, filled with powdered carbolic acid. You squeezed the ball sending a puff of acidic smoke right up a tube inserted into your nose. The idea was that your nose would run and the cold would be flushed out.
The company making the ball advertised it in the Pall Mall Gazette offering a £100 reward to anyone using it correctly who then contracted influenza. They deposited £1,000 in the Alliance Bank in Regent Street to show the money was there. The advertisement also contained testimonials from a raft of aristocrats and clergy - the Victorian equivalent of today's celebrity endorsement.
It was seen by one Mrs Louisa Elizabeth Carlill. She bought a ball and used it, as directed, three times daily for nearly two months, then promptly caught the flu. Not surprisingly she claimed her reward from the company.
The manufacturers ignored two letters from her husband who had trained as a solicitor. They finally replied saying that if used properly they had total confidence in their product. In order to protect themselves against a fraudulent claim they stated Mrs Carlill would have to attend their offices at 27 Princess Street, Hanover Square, London each day and have her use of the ball checked by their secretary.
Mrs Carlill sued, claiming there was a contract between her and the company. The company denied there was one. She won her case in the High Court. The company and its proprietor, Mr Frederick Rowe, appealed. They raised almost every conceivable reason why there was no contract between themselves and Mrs Carlill. Among their arguments were the following: First, they said the advertisement was "mere puff", like a modern toothpaste which claims to leave your teeth "whiter than white". Claims like these are not meant to have any legal consequences and are understood not to by the public. The company failed largely because they had deposited £1,000 to show that they were serious. Second, they maintained there was no way of knowing whether Mrs Carlill had followed the instructions correctly. That would have been a good argument that had the court not simply dismissed it out of hand. Next they said an offer could not be understood to have been made to the entire world.
Again the court disagreed. It said that if the offer was clear and to a group, anyone fulfilling the terms could be deemed to have accepted it. There was no need for those accepting to say who they were when they accepted the offer.
One of the judges, Lord Bowen, put it like this: "If I advertise to the world that my dog is lost, and that anybody who brings the dog to a particular place will be paid some money, are all the police or other persons whose business it is to find lost dogs to be expected to sit down and write me a note saying that they have accepted my proposal?" The company also argued there was no "consideration" or "thing of value" passing between Mrs Carlill and themselves. To be valid all contracts must have consideration. The court decided any use of the smoke ball would be likely to promote sales, and would thus be of value to the company. Mrs Carlill's use of the smoke ball was therefore deemed to be good or "valuable" consideration.
Mrs Carlill won the appeal, and so significantly helped to define the relationship between companies, their products and their customers. However, it was not until the Thalidomide scandal in 1961, which led to the Medicines Act of 1968 and the Trade Descriptions Act of the same year, that there was a clear statutory improvement in consumer rights.
The carbolic smoke ball case helped ordinary people to fight big companies. In 1992, Hoover came unstuck when it offered customers free flights – initially to Europe and then to the United States – if they bought over £100 worth of its appliances. Thousands of people took up the offer.
The company simply could not keep up with demand. Customers claimed Hoover was not keeping its promises. Hoover found itself fighting legal battles up and down the country and ended up losing nearly £50 million. It was one of the biggest marketing disasters of all time.
And what of Mrs Carlill who set the consumer rights ball rolling? She died on 10 March 1942 at the age of 96. Clearly her considerable age contributed to her death. But on the death certificate, there was only one cause stated: influenza.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Donation of Human Tissues
A Donation of organs like hearts and livers are regulated zealously, but when it comes to human tissues – ligaments, tendons, bones, skin and other body parts – there is little oversight. This situation worries a growing number of experts, who fear that improperly handled tissue can transmit dangerous or even lethal infections.
B A 23-year old student in Minnesota, Brian Lykins, died in November, after being given a donor's knee tissue, which the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention later determined was caused by Clostridium sordellii infection, a close relative of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. Since his death, the centres have turned up six more cases of clostridial infections in knee surgery patients around the country. Dr. Warren King, an orthopedic surgeon in Palo Alto, California, said he knew of four people in Calif., alone who developed life-threatening clostridial, infections after surgery involving donor tissue. One was a patient referred to him, Alan Minvielle of Aptos, Calif., who almost died of gangrene after an earlier operation to repair an injured knee. Antibiotics saved him, but Mr. Minvielle now has a limp and cannot handle the big cement trucks he once drove for a living. His only hope for a full recovery is a knee replacement, but doctors advise against it – the bacteria that caused his gangrene may be dormant in his tissue, and more surgery might activate them and kill him.
C Officials from companies that provide donor tissue generally attribute the infections to ambient bacteria in hospital operating rooms. But other experts say the cases point to serious holes in the system to monitor the trade in donor tissue. Whole organs like hearts, kidneys and livers can be taken from only a small number of donors who are brain-dead but on life support. Organ procurement organisations work closely with hospitals to match donors and recipients, following strict federal guidelines. By contrast, tissue banks obtain bone, skin, blood vessels and valves, corneas and other body parts from many organisations, including universities, hospitals, morgues and even funeral homes. Many of the banks are highly reputable national or regional organisations, which take great care to recover tissue from donors who are free of diseases. Some are small local charities working with a single hospital or university. But, increasingly, donor tissue is being collected, processed and sold by subsidiaries of for-profit companies, in a rapidly growing industry that is largely unregulated.
D There is no central registry of people who receive this tissue, so it is not clear how many tissue transplant recipients are being harmed. Last year, tissue banks distributed more than 750,000 grafts, and there were few reports of serious complications. Donor tissue unquestionably saves lives and helps thousands of people each year with a growing list of life-enhancing products like knee ligaments and bone cement.
E But the lack of oversight is worrisome, according to experts like Dr. George F. Grob, a deputy inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, who testified on the issue before Congress last year. Though an industry group sets voluntary guidelines, most tissue banks are not members and many set their own guidelines. As a result, Dr. King of Palo Alto said, tissue may be obtained by poorly trained technicians who may not keep it germ-free. Some of the standard treatments used to kill bacteria in processed tissues are not effective against Clostridia, the major problem in knee surgery cases.
F It is illegal to sell body parts. But it is legal to charge "reasonable" fees for collecting, shipping, processing, marketing and implanting them. Reasonable fees are nowhere defined by any federal agency, but a typical human body is now widely estimated to be worth as much as $220,000 in useful parts. According to Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who was chairwoman of a hearing on tissue-bank practices in May, a decade ago tissue industry revenues were $20 million a year. By 2003, she said, revenues are expected to reach $1 billion. In 1994, 6,000 people became tissue donors; in 1999 there were 20,000. Tissue from one donor, she said, can be used by 50 to 100 people. The engine driving this growth is biomedical innovation. A handful of companies have patented techniques for turning tissues into extremely useful products, like bones that are tooled into special shapes or ground into powders and pastes. Manufacturers market these products aggressively to hospital purchasing agents, said Dr. Theodore Malinin, director of the University of Miami Tissue Bank, who is critical of the path the field is taking. Surgeons using them do not always know where they come from, he said.
G Federal oversight of tissue banking remains limited. In 1997, the Food and Drug Administration made final a rule requiring tissue banks to test for H.I.V. and hepatitis B and C, take the donor's medical history and keep records. But the agency does not set standards for donor age or health, and does not limit how long after death tissues may be procured, nor does it set minimum training standards for people who recover tissue. At some tissue banks, only pathologists or physicians are allowed to recover tissue in sterile operating rooms. At others, local technicians are trained by the bank, which sets its own standards, to remove tissue in settings like funeral homes. In several states, funeral homes have gone into partnership with tissue banks, said John Carmon of Hartford, Conn., the past president of the National Funeral Directors Association. If a family agrees to donate tissue, technicians trained by the tissue bank remove tissue at the funeral home. The level of training varies, but critics of the practice say many such technicians cannot identify problems like undiagnosed tuberculosis or cancer in donor bodies.