雅思阅读模拟题：TheTriumphofUnreason

雅思阅读模拟题：The Triumph of Unreason

Part I

Reading Passage 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on

Reading Passage1 below.

The Triumph of Unreason?

A.

Neoclassical economics is built on the assumption that humans are rational

beings who have a clear idea of their best interests and strive to extract

maximum benefit (or “utility”, in economist-speak) from any situation.

Neoclassical economics assumes that the process of decision-making is rational.

But that contradicts growing evidence that decision-making draws on the

emotions—even when reason is clearly involved.

B.

The role of emotions in decisions makes perfect sense. For situations met

frequently in the past, such as obtaining food and mates, and confronting or

fleeing from threats, the neural mechanisms required to weigh up the pros and

cons will have been honed by evolution to produce an optimal outcome. Since

emotion is the mechanism by which animals are prodded towards such outcomes,

evolutionary and economic theory predict the same practical consequences for

utility in these cases. But does this still apply when the ancestral machinery

has to respond to the stimuli of urban modernity?

C.

One of the people who thinks that it does not is George Loewenstein, an

economist at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. In particular, he

suspects that modern shopping has subverted the decision-making machinery in a

way that encourages people to run up debt. To prove the point he has teamed up

with two psychologists, Brian Knutson of Stanford University and Drazen Prelec

of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to look at what happens in the

brain when it is deciding what to buy.

D.

In a study, the three researchers asked 26 volunteers to decide whether to

buy a series of products such as a box of chocolates or a DVD of the television

show that were flashed on a computer screen one after another. In

each round of

the task, the researchers first presented the product and then its price, with

each step lasting four seconds. In the final stage, which also lasted four

seconds, they asked the volunteers to make up their minds. While the volunteers

were taking part in the experiment, the researchers scanned their brains using a

technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This measures

blood flow and oxygen consumption in the brain, as an indication of

its

activity.

E.

The researchers found that different parts of the brain were involved at

different stages of the test. The nucleus accumbens was the most active part

when a product was being displayed. Moreover, the level of its

activity

correlated with the reported desirability of the product in question.

F.

When the price appeared, however, fMRI reported more activity in other

parts of the brain. Excessively high prices increased activity in the insular

cortex, a brain region linked to expectations of pain, monetary loss and the

viewing of upsetting pictures. The researchers also found greater activity in

this region of the brain when the subject decided not to purchase an item.

G.

Price information activated the medial prefrontal cortex, too. This part of

the brain is involved in rational calculation. In the experiment its activity

seemed to correlate with a volunteer's reaction to both product and price,

rather than to price alone. Thus, the sense of a good bargain evoked higher

activity levels in the medial prefrontal cortex, and this often preceded a

decision to buy.

H.

People's shopping behaviour therefore seems to have piggy-backed on old

neural circuits evolved for anticipation of reward and the avoidance of hazards.

What Dr Loewenstein found interesting was the separation of the assessment of

the product (which seems to be associated with the nucleus accumbens) from the

assessment of its price (associated with the insular cortex), even though the

two are then synthesised in the prefrontal cortex. His hypothesis is that rather

than weighing the present good against future alternatives, as orthodox

economics suggests happens, people actually balance the immediate pleasure of

the prospective possession of a product with the immediate pain of paying for

it.

I.

That makes perfect sense as an evolved mechanism for trading. If one useful

object is being traded for another (hard cash in modern time), the future

utility of what is being given up is embedded in the object being traded.

Emotion is as capable of assigning such a value as reason. Buying on credit,

though, may be different. The abstract nature of credit cards, coupled with the

deferment of payment that they promise, may modulate the “con” side of the

calculation in favour of the “pro”.

J.

Whether it actually does so will be the subject of further experiments that

the three researchers are now designing. These will test whether people with

distinctly different spending behaviour, such as miserliness and extravagance,

experience different amounts of pain in response to prices. They will also

assess whether, in the same individuals, buying with credit cards eases the pain

compared with paying by cash. If they find that it does, then credit cards may

have to join the list of things such as fatty and sugary foods, and recreational

drugs, that subvert human instincts in ways that seem pleasurable at

the time

but can have a long and malign aftertaste.

Word 是学生和职场人士最常用的一款办公软件之一，99.99%的人知道它，但其实，这个软件背后，还有一大批隐藏技能你不知道。掌握他们，你将开启新世界的大门。

Tab+Enter,在编过号以后，会自动编号段落

Ctrl + D调出字体栏，配合Tab+Enter全键盘操作吧

Ctrl + L 左对齐， Ctrl + R 右对齐， Ctrl + E 居中

Ctrl + F查找， Ctrl + H 替换。然后关于替换，里面又大有学问！

有时候Word文档中有许多多余的空行需要删除，这个时候我们可以完全可以用“查找替换”来轻松解决。打开“编辑”菜单中的“替换”对话框，把光标定位在“查找内容”输入框中，单击“高级”按钮，选择“特殊字符”中的“段落标记”两次，在输入框中会显示“^P^P”，然后在“替换为”输入框中用上面的方法插入一个“段落标记”(一个“^P”)，再按下“全部替换”按钮。这样多余的空行就会被删除。

Ctrl + Z是撤销，那还原呢？就是Ctrl + Y，撤销上一步撤销！

比如我输入abc, 按一下F4, 就会自动再输入一遍abc

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