2. 外语
  3. Towards the end of Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman laments that he and his late collaborator, Amos Tversky, are often c

Towards the end of Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman laments that he and his late collaborator, Amos Tversky, are often c

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问题     Towards the end of Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman laments that he and his late collaborator, Amos Tversky, are often credited with showing that humans make "irrational" choices. That term is too strong, he says, to describe the variety of mental mishaps to which people systematically fall prey. Readers of his book may disagree. Mr. Kahneman, an Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel economics laureate, has delivered a full catalogue of the biases, shortcuts and cognitive illusions to which our species regularly succumbs. In doing so he makes it plain that Homo economicus — the rational model of human behaviour beloved of economists — is as fantastical as a unicorn.
    In one experiment described by Mr. Kahneman, participants asked to imagine that they have been given ￡50 behave differently depending on whether they are then told they can "keep" ￡20 or must "lose" ￡30 — though the outcomes are identical. He also shows that it is more threatening to say that a disease kills "1,286 in every 10,000 people", than to say it kills "24.14% of the population", even though the second mention is twice as deadly. Vivid language often overrides basic arithmetic.
    Some findings are downright peculiar. Experimental subjects who have been "primed" to think of money, perhaps by seeing a picture of dollar bills, will act more selfishly. So if someone nearby drops some pencils, these subjects will pick up fewer than their non-primed counterparts. Even obliquely suggesting the concept of old age will inspire people to walk more slowly — though feeling elderly never crossed their mind, they will later report.
    After all this the human brain looks less like a model of rationality and more like a giddy teenager: flighty, easily distracted and lacking in self-awareness. Yet this book is not a counsel of despair. Its awkward title refers to Mr. Kahneman’s two-tier model of cognition: "System 1" is quick, intuitive and responsible for the quirks and mistakes described above (and many others). "System 2", by contrast, i$ slow, deliberative and less prone to error. System 2 kicks in when we are faced with particularly complex problems, but much of the time it is all too happy to let the impulsive System 1 get its way.
    What, then, is System 1 good for? Rather a lot, it turns out. In a world that often demands swift judgment and rapid decision-making (fight or flight?), a creature who solely relied on deliberative thinking wouldn’t last long. Moreover, System 1 generally works well. As Mr. Kahneman says, "most of our judgments and actions are appropriate most of the time". He urges readers to counteract what he considers to be mistakes of System 1 thinking, such as the "loss aversion" that deters people from accepting favourable gambles (such as a 50-50 chance to win $200 or lose $100). He also recommends checking the performance of an investment portfolio no more than once a quarter, to limit needless anguish over short-term fluctuations and the "useless churning" of shares.
    Mr. Kahneman does not dwell on the possible evolutionary origins of our cognitive biases, nor does he devote much time to considering why some people seem naturally better at avoiding error than others. Still this book, his first for a non-specialist audience, is a profound one. As Copernicus removed the Earth from the centre of the universe and Darwin knocked humans off their biological perch, Mr. Kahneman has shown that we are not the paragons of reason we assume ourselves to be. Often hailed as the father of behavioural economics (with Tversky as co-parent), his work has influenced a range of disciplines and has even inspired some policy. But the true consequences of his findings are only starting to emerge. When he presents the poor victims of his experiments with conclusive proof of their errors, the typical reaction is not a chastened pledge to shape up, but confused silence, followed by business as usual. No one likes to be told he is wrong.
The experiment where people behave differently when the things are told differently but to the same effect demonstrates that
选项 A、anguage is so important as to affect people’s behavior.
B、people may take actions before they think twice.
C、people tend to be more selfish when it comes to money.
D、understanding language is more interesting than doing math.
答案B
解析 推理判断题。题干提到的实验在第二段，上段提到卡尼曼认为完美的理性人不存在，第二段接着介绍他的实验，所以实验目的是为了证明他观点的正确性，即说明人们有时会做出不理智的行为，第二段最后一句也说明了这一结论，[B]与结论接近，所以为答案。虽然第二段中的两个实验都提到语言，但目的是为了说明人们听到语言后，有时会立刻作出非理性的决定，并不是说明语言的重要性，排除[A]。 Vividlanguage often overrides basic arithmetic说明人们往往会受到语言的迷惑，而忘记认真思考，而并不是[D]“语言理解比做题更有趣”。[C]是将第三段的实验内容与第二段的混为一谈，予以排除。
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