全國英語等級考試PETS-3閱讀練習(xí)1

Faced with amission.criticaldecision，who would you turn to for advice?Someone you had great confidence in，surely.But several lines of research show thatour instincts about where to mm to for counsel are often not completely correct.

My research looksat prejudices that affect how people use advice，including why theyoften blindly follow recommendations from people who—as far as they know—are as knowledgeable as they are.In studies I conducted with Don Moore of Carnegie MellonUniversity，for example，I found matpeople tend to overvalue advice when the problem they’readdressing is hard and to undervalue it when the problem iseasy.

In our experiments.subjects were asked to guess the weight of people in various pictures，some of which werein focus and some of which were unclear.For each picture，subjects guessed twice：the first time without advice and the second time with input from another participant.When me pictures were in focus，wefound，subjects tended to discount theadvice;apparently，theywere confident in their ability to guesscorrectly.When the pictures were unclear，subjectsleaned heavily on me advice ofothers and seemed less secure about their initialopinion.Becausethey misjudged the value 0f the advice theyreceived--consistently overvaluing orundervaluing it depending on the difficulty of the problem—our subjectsdid not make the best guesses overall.Theywould have done better if they’dconsidered the advice equally，and to a moderate degree，on both hard andeasy tasks.

Another advice—related prejudice I've found compels people toovervalue advice that they pay for.n one study Iconducted，subjectsanswered different sets of questions about American history.Beforeanswering some of the questions.theycould get advice on the correct answer from another subject whom they knew was nomore expert than they were.In one version of the experiment，people could get advice for free，while in another version，they paid for it.When they paid forad’vice，peopletended to have firm belief in it，Isuspect，by a combination of sunk—costprejudice and the nearly instinctual belief that cost and quality are linked.

1、The twoexperiments mentioned in the text reveal __.

A.howto follow others’advice

B.howto understand others’advice

C.whatcauses people to seek advice

D.whataffects people’s attitude to advice

參考答案：D

參考解析：推理題。從文章中得知，第1個實驗是為了測試客觀條件對人們是否依賴他人建議的影響，第二個是為了判斷付費對人們是否依賴他人建議的影響。故選D。

2、In theface of a mission—critical decision，peopletend to __.

A.trusttheir own efforts

B.relyon research findings

C.getaffected by other’s opinion

D.seekhelp from the more knowledgable

參考答案：C

參考解析：細(xì)節(jié)題。從文章第1段第二句話“Someone you had greatconfidence in，surely!”得知，當(dāng)面臨重大決定時，人們總是受到他人影響。故選C。

3、Researchshows that when faced with difficult problems people often __.

A.discountothers’advice

B.overlookothers’advice

C.disagreewith others‘a(chǎn)dvice

D.over—relyon others’advice

參考答案：D

參考解析：細(xì)節(jié)題。從文章第二段第二句話“people tend to overvalue advice when the problem theyare addressing is hard!”得知，當(dāng)人們處理的問題棘手時，他們總是過于依賴他人建議。故選D。

4、The firstexperiment tries to prove how objective conditions __.

A.strengthenpeople’s initial opinion

B.strengthenpeople’s self-confidence

C.influencepeople’s response to advice

D.influencepeople’s guess of weight loss

參考答案：C

參考解析：推理題。從文章中得知，在第1個試驗中，影像的清晰程度影響了調(diào)查對象對他人意見的依賴程度。故選C。

5、It can beinferred that people are likely to __.

A.undervaluefree advice

B.overvaluepeer’s advice

C.misinterpretspecialist’s advice

D.misjudgetheir instinctual belief

參考答案：A

參考解析：推理題。從文章最后一段得知，人們繳納咨詢費時，往往會對別人的建議堅信不疑，可推知如果免費得到建議，則不太重視。故選A。

參考譯文:

當(dāng)面臨重大決定時，你會向誰求助呢?當(dāng)然是你最信任的人!但是多項研究表明我們向別人求助的本能經(jīng)常不是完全正確的。

我的研究旨在觀察影響人們對待建議的態(tài)度的偏見，包括他們?yōu)槭裁磿?zhí)著于和他們自身見識一樣的人的建議。我與卡內(nèi)基麥隆大學(xué)的頓·摩爾共同進(jìn)行的研究表明，當(dāng)人們處理的問題棘手時，他們傾向于過于重視他人意見，反之則輕視他人意見。

在實驗中，我們要求調(diào)查對象猜測幾幅畫中人物的體重，有的清晰，有的不清晰。對每幅畫，他們都有兩次猜的機會，第1次沒有別人的建議，而第二次則可以依據(jù)另一個參與者的信息。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，當(dāng)圖像清晰的時候，他們傾向于排斥他人的意見，相信自己正確判斷的能力。而當(dāng)圖像模糊的時候，他們則過于依賴他人的建議，對于自己原先的判斷不確定。由于他們對于所接受的建議的價值一直都沒有做出正確的判斷，一直都是高估或低估，所以他們整體上沒有做出最佳的猜測。如果他們在一定程度上平等考慮所有的建議，他們的表現(xiàn)可能會好很多。

我發(fā)現(xiàn)了另一個與建議有關(guān)的傾向性，即人們會高估他們付費的建議。在我開展的一個研究中，調(diào)查對象回答了幾組關(guān)于美國歷史的問題。回答一些問題之前，他們可以從另外一個調(diào)查對象那里得到一個正確答案的建議，他明白這個調(diào)查對象知道的和他一樣多。在一次試驗中，他們無償?shù)玫浇ㄗh。而在另一個實驗中卻要付費。付費時，人們傾向于堅信這個建議。我懷疑，這是由于沉沒成本偏見以及近乎本能的一種信念，即代價與質(zhì)量相關(guān)。