新视野三版 读写B2 U6 Text A
Door clor, are you?
1 The next time you're deciding between rival options, one which is primary and the other which is condary, ask yourlf this question: What would Xiang Yu do?
2 Xiang Yu was a Chine imperial general in the third century BC who took his troops across the Zhang River on a raid into enemy territory. To his troops' astonishment, he ordered their cooking pots crushed and their sailing ships burned.
3 He explained that he was imposing on them a necessity for attaining victory over their opponents. What he said was surely motivating, but it wasn't really appreciated by many of his loyal soldiers as they watched their vesls go up in flames. But the genius of General Xiang Yu's conviction would be validated both on the battlefield and in modern social science rearch. General Xiang Yu was a rare exception to the norm, a veteran leader who was highly respected for his many conquests and who achieved the summit of success.
4 He is featured in Dan Ariely's enlightening new publication, Predictably Irrational, a fascinating investigation of emingly irrational human behavior, such as the tendency for keeping multiple options open. Most people can't marshal the will for painful choices, not even students at the Massachutts Institute of Technology (MIT), where Dr. Ariely teaches behavioral economics. In an experiment that investigated decision-making, hundreds of students couldn't bear to let their options vanish, even though it was clear they would profit from doing so.
5 The experiment revolved around a game that eliminated the excus we usually have for refusing to let go. In the real world, we can always say, "It's good to prerve our options." Want a good example? A teenager is exhausted from soccer, ballet, piano, and Chine lessons, but her parents won't stop any one of them becau they might come in handy some day!
6 In the experiment ssions, students played a computer game that provided cash behind three doors appearing on the screen.The rule was the more money you earned, th
e better player you were, given a total of 100 clicks. Every time the students opened a door by clicking on it, they would u
up one click but wouldn't get any money. However, each subquent click on that door would earn a fluctuating sum of money, with one door always revealing more money than the others. The important part of the rule was each door switch, though having no cash value, would also u up one of the 100 clicks. Therefore, the winning strategy was to quickly check all the doors and keep clicking on the one with the emingly highest rewards.
7 While playing the game, students noticed a modified visual element: Any door left un-clicked for a short while would shrink in size and vanish. Since they already understood the game, they should have ignored the vanishing doors. Nevertheless, they hurried to click on the lesr doors before they vanished, trying to keep them open. As a result, they wasted so many clicks rushing back to the vanishing doors that they lost money in the en
d. Why were the students so attached to the lesr doors? They would probably protest that they were clinging to the doors to keep future options open, but, according to Dr. Ariely, that isn't the true factor.
8 Instead of the excu to maintain future options open, underneath it all the students' desire was to avoid the immediate, though temporary, pain of watching options clo. "Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing草莓是怎么生长的 to pay a big price to avoid the emotion of loss," Dr. Ariely says. In the experiment, the price was easily measured in lost cash. In life, the corresponding costs are often less obvious such as wasted time or misd opportunities.
9 水的图片大全"Sometimes the doors are closing too slowly for us to eri过去式 断鹤续凫them vanishing," Dr. Ariely writes. "We may work more hours at our jobs without realizing that the childhood of our sons and daughters is slipping away."
10 So, what can be done to restore balance in our lives? One answer, Dr. Ariely says, is to implement more prohibitions on overbooking. We can work to reduce options on our o
wn, delegating tasks to others and even giving away ideas for others to pursue. He points to marriage as an example, "In marriage, we create a situation where we promi ourlves not to keep options open. We clo doors and announce to others we've clod doors."
总是口渴11 Since conducting the door experiment, Dr. Ariely says he has made a conscious effort to lesn his load. He urges the rest of us to resign from committees, prune holiday card lists, rethink hobbies and remember the lessons of door clors like Xiang Yu.
12 In other words, Dr. Ariely is encouraging us to discard tho things that em to have outward merit in favor of tho things that actually enrich our
lives. We are naturally prejudiced to believe that more is better, but Dr. Ariely's rearch provides a do of reality that strongly suggests otherwi.
16srna13 What price do we pay for trying to have more and more in life? What pleasure and sati
赞美医生的词语sfaction can be derived from focusing our energy and attention in a more concentrated fashion? Surely, we will have our respective 隐忍是什么意思answers.
