The simple act of hand-washing has been shown to help clear a guilty conscience and even make you more forgiving of the moral mi

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问题     The simple act of hand-washing has been shown to help clear a guilty conscience and even make you more forgiving of the moral mistakes of others. It’s known as the Macbeth principle of morality: we make a fundamental, psychological association between physical purity and moral purity, which lets us literally wash away our sins. The trick even works in the opposite direction, with cleanliness prompting moral behavior in one study, people exposed to a clean-smelling environment were induced to act more fairly and charitably toward strangers than people in a neutral-smelling place.
    Now a new study published in Science asks whether hand-washing can wipe the slate clean of any past behavior—even everyday decisions, like, say, choosing Paris over Rome for vacation. When people make choices, especially between two similarly attractive options, they tend to go to great lengths to justify them as psychological assurance they’ve made the right decision.
    The mental exercise reduces post-decisional doubt and the authors of the new study found that handwashing eliminated people’s need to do it. As part of an alleged consumer survey, 40 undergraduates browsed 30 CD covers as if they were in a music store. They selected 10 CDs they would like to own and ranked them by preference. Later, the experimenter offered them a choice between their fifth- and sixth-ranked CDs as a token of appreciation from the sponsor. After the choice, participants completed an seemingly unrelated product survey that asked for evaluations of a liquid soap; half merely examined the bottle before answering, whereas others tested the soap by washing their hands. After a filler task, participants ranked the 10 CDs again.
    "People who merely examined the soap bottle dealt with their doubts about their decision by changing how they saw the CDs: as in hundreds of earlier studies, once they had made a choice, they saw the chosen CD as much more attractive than before, and the rejected CD as much less attractive," said study co-author Norbert Schwarz, a psychologist at University of Michigan. "But hand-washing eliminated this classic effect. Once participants had washed their hands, they no longer needed to justify their choice when they ranked the CDs the second time around."
    The researchers repeated the experiment, this time asking participants to rank the desirability of four kinds of fruit jam. Once again, volunteers who wiped their hands clean after choosing showed the kind of satisfaction with their decision that the non-wipers lacked. Still, there’s no guarantee that a bout of handwashing will avoid post-decision regret in the long run. As far as those big decisions go, however, you’re probably best off engaging in good old-fashioned justification.
The researchers conduct the product survey to see how hand-washing ________.

选项 A、affects post-decisional mentality
B、leads to a second decision making
C、strengthens choice-making ability
D、helps evaluate the quality of the liquid soap

答案A

解析 根据题干中的the product survey可定位到第三段。该段说的是产品调查的过程,而它的结论出现在第四段。第四段说,没有洗手的人怀疑自己的决定,第二次排序有了变化;而洗过手的人在第二次给CD排序时,不再纠结自己的选择,故选A项。“第二次决定”只是实验的一个步骤,并不是实验的目的,故B项错误。洗手并不能增强人们做决定的能力,人们洗过手之后只是不再纠结于自己原先的决定,这与做决定的能力没有关系,故C项属于过度推断。研究人员让实验对象评估洗手液的质量,只是找个理由让他们洗手,并非想真的测试洗手液的质量,这只是实验的一个步骤,而不是实验的目的,故D项错误。
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