2020考研英語閱讀理解精讀100篇：Unit 55

Unit 55

Altruism, according to the text books, has two forms. One is known technically as kin selection, and familiarly as nepotism. This spreads an individual’s genes collaterally, rather than directly, but is otherwise similar to his helping his own offspring. The second form is reciprocal altruism, or “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”. It relies on trust, and a good memory for favours given and received, but is otherwise not much different from simultaneous collaboration (such as a wolf pack hunting) in that the benefit exceeds the cost for all parties involved. Humans, however, show a third sort of altruism—one that has no obvious pay-off. This is altruism towards strangers, for example, charity. That may enhance reputation. But how does an enhanced reputation weigh in the Darwinian balance?

To investigate this question, the researchers made an interesting link. At first sight, helping charities looks to be at the opposite end of the selfishness spectrum from conspicuous consumption. Yet they have something in common: both involve the profligate deployment of resources. That is characteristic of the consequences of sexual selection. An individual shows he（or she）has resources to burn—whether those are biochemical reserves, time or, in the human instance, money—by using them to make costly signals. That demonstrates underlying fitness of the sort favoured by evolution. Viewed this way, both conspicuous consumption and what the researchers call “blatant benevolence” are costly signals. And since they are behaviours rather than structures, and thus controlled by the brain, they may be part of the mating mind.

Researchers divided a bunch of volunteers into two groups. Those in one were put into what the researchers hoped would be a “romantic mindset” by being shown pictures of attractive members of the opposite sex. They were each asked to write a description of a perfect date with one of these people. The unlucky members of the other group were shown pictures of buildings and told to write about the weather. The participants were then asked two things. The first was to imagine they had $5,000 in the bank. They could spend part or all of it on various luxury items such as a new car, a dinner party at a restaurant or a holiday in Europe. They were also asked what fraction of a hypothetical 60 hours of leisure time during the course of a month they would devote to volunteer work.

The results were just what the researchers hoped for. In the romantically primed group, the men went wild with the Monopoly money. Conversely, the women volunteered their lives away. Those women continued, however, to be skinflints, and the men remained callously indifferent to those less fortunate than themselves. Meanwhile, in the other group there was little inclination either to profligate spending or to good works. Based on this result, it looks as though the sexes do, indeed, have different strategies for showing off. Moreover, they do not waste their resources by behaving like that all the time. Only when it counts sexually are men profligate and women helpful.

注（1）：本文選自Economist；

注（2）：本文習(xí)題命題模仿對象為2005年真題Text 1。

1. In the opening paragraph, the author introduces his topic by _______.

A) stating an incident

B) justifying an assumption

C) explaining the forms of a phenomenon

D) making a comparison

2. The statement “helping charities looks to be at the opposite end of the selfishness spectrum from conspicuous consumption”（Lines 1~2, Paragraph 2）means _______.

A) helping charities shows selfishness while conspicuous consumption shows selflessness

B) helping charities shows selflessness while conspicuous consumption shows selfishness

C) both helping charities and conspicuous consumption show selfishness

D) both helping charities and conspicuous consumption show selflessness

3. The main reasons for people’s involving in charities being regarded as “blatant benevolence” are as following, EXCEPT that_______.

A) it helps donators become famous and admired by the public

B) it includes a large amount of deployable resources

C) it provides rich people with a way of showing off their wealth

D) it might be related to mating minds as conspicuous consumption

4. The results of the study found that _______.

A) the reactions of the two groups of volunteers are similar

B) female volunteers of the two groups behave exactly the same

C) men tend to show off their wealth when courting women

D) men and women always show different inclinations of showing off

5. What can we infer from the last two paragraphs?

A) The study aims to demonstrate the universality of the “blatant benevolence” phenomenon in human nature.

B) The researchers divided volunteers into two groups on purpose for comparison.

C) The second group of volunteers consisted of those who had bad luck in real life.

D) Volunteers of the second group showed different strategies of showing off between the sexes.

篇章剖析

本文采用了提出問題——分析問題的模式，主要說明了性別選擇對于人們利他主義行為的影響。第一段提出了三種利他主義行為的概念，提出了問題；第二段是對第三種利他主義的進一步理論分析；第三段介紹了研究人員針對該現(xiàn)象所做的研究；第四段是研究成果的說明。

詞匯注釋

altruism /??ltr??z?m/ n. 利他主義，利他

kin /k?n/ n. 家屬（集合稱謂），親戚，同族

nepotism /?nep?t?z?m/ n. 偏袒，裙帶關(guān)系

collateral /k??l?t?r?l/ adj. 間接的

offspring /??fspr??/ n. 兒女，子孫，后代

reciprocal /r??s?pr?k?l/ adj. 互惠的，相應(yīng)的

simultaneous /?s?m?l?te?nj?s/ adj. 同時的

pay-off /?pe???f/ n. 贏利

spectrum /?spektr?m/ n. 范圍，領(lǐng)域

conspicuous consumption 炫耀性消費

profligate /?pr?fl?g?t/ adj. 放蕩的，揮霍的

blatant /?ble?t?nt/ adj. 吵鬧的，炫耀的

benevolence /b??nev?l?ns/ n. 仁愛心，善行

prime /pra?m/ v. 灌注，填裝

skinflint /?sk?nfl?nt/ n. 吝嗇鬼

callous /?k?l?s/ adj. 無情的，冷淡的

難句突破

It relies on trust, and a good memory for favours given and received, but is otherwise not much different from simultaneous collaboration（such as a wolf pack hunting）in that the benefit exceeds the cost for all parties involved.

主體句式：It relies on trust, and a good memory, but is otherwise not much different from...

結(jié)構(gòu)分析：這個句子由but連接的兩個并列結(jié)構(gòu)構(gòu)成，in that是用于解釋說明的連接詞，其后的內(nèi)容是對前面的補充。

句子譯文：這種利他主義的基礎(chǔ)在于信任，并對自己得到和付出過的幫助保持較好的記憶，但是除此以外，這種利他主義和物種天然的合作關(guān)系（比如狼群共同尋找獵物）沒有什么大的區(qū)別，因為對于所有的參與者來說，他們合作的所得遠遠超過其付出。

題目分析

1. C 細節(jié)題。文章開頭作者以介紹利他主義這一現(xiàn)象為例引出論題，分析了利他主義的兩種形式，因而是屬于對一種現(xiàn)象的具體形式的分析。

2. B 語義題。這句話的字面意思是：慈善和炫耀性消費在自私程度上來看處于兩個極端。結(jié)合常識可以理解句子的意思：慈善是無私的表現(xiàn)，而炫耀性消費是自私的表現(xiàn)。

3. A 細節(jié)題。本題的B、C、D選項都能在文章第二段中找到對應(yīng)信息，而本文所謂的“炫耀性消費”并沒有涉及慈善捐助人希望通過捐贈成名并受人崇拜這一點。

4. C 細節(jié)題。文章最后一段中指出，人們在擇偶時，男人總是傾向于炫耀他們的金錢和財富，因此C選項正確。D選項的錯誤原因在于，最后一段提到男人和女人并不是總會表現(xiàn)不同的炫耀行為，而僅僅是在吸引異性的時候會這樣做。

5. B 推理題。在文章第三段中，研究人員將參與實驗的志愿者們分為了兩組，其一為主實驗組，另一個為參照組，主要為了比較實驗結(jié)果，以使結(jié)論更加有力。A選項的錯誤原因在于該研究的目的是證實吸引異性和“炫耀性善行”的關(guān)系，而不是研究后者的普遍性。C選項的錯誤原因在于參照組的人無法看到漂亮人物的照片，所以作者幽默地認為他們“不幸”，但他們不是真的在生活中不幸。D選項的錯誤原因在于參照組中并沒有顯示出不同性別之間的炫耀行為區(qū)別。

參考譯文

根據(jù)教科書，利他主義有兩種表現(xiàn)形式。一種就是所謂的血緣選擇，即家庭親戚關(guān)系。這種利他主義是通過一個人的基因間接傳播的，而不是直接傳播的，但是另一方面也就像一個人會幫助自己的孩子一樣。第二種形式是互惠的利他主義，或者說“你幫我搓背，我也幫你搓背”。這種利他主義的基礎(chǔ)在于信任，并對自己得到和付出過的幫助保持較好的記憶，但是除此以外，這種利他主義和物種天然的合作關(guān)系（比如狼群共同尋找獵物）沒有什么大的區(qū)別，因為對于所有的參與者來說，他們合作的所得遠遠超過其付出。但是人類卻表現(xiàn)出了第三種利他主義——一種不會有什么顯著贏利的利他主義。這是一種對陌生人的利他主義，比如說慈善事業(yè)，它能夠提升人們的名譽。但是名譽的提升在達爾文平衡中有多大分量呢？

為了探討這一問題，研究者們找到了一個有趣的關(guān)系。乍一看，從自私的角度來說參與慈善事業(yè)好像是炫耀性消費的相反面。但是他們有一點是相同的，即二者都包含了對資源的大規(guī)模調(diào)度。這是性別選擇結(jié)果的一個特點。一個人想要顯示他（或她）擁有的可以揮霍的資源——無論是生化儲備、時間還是對于人類來說的金錢——通過使用這些東西來發(fā)出一些昂貴的信號。這也是進化過程中幫助物種生存下來的適應(yīng)性。如果從這個角度來看問題的話，那么炫耀性消費和研究者們所稱的“炫耀性善行”都是昂貴信號。而且它們都是行為而不是結(jié)構(gòu)，因此是由大腦控制的，也許還是尋偶想法的一部分。

研究者將一群志愿者分成了兩組。他們向第一組的成員展示了一組相反性別的長得很漂亮或很帥的異性的照片，希望志愿者們“浮想聯(lián)翩”。接著研究者要求他們每人寫下關(guān)于自己和某張照片上的人的一次完美約會。而另一組的志愿者就沒有這么幸運了，他們看到的是一組高樓大廈的圖片，并要寫一個關(guān)于天氣的報告。然后研究人員要求參與者們做兩件事情。第一件事情是要求他們想象自己在銀行有5000美元。他們可以把其中一部分或者所有的錢花在各種奢侈品上，比如一輛新車、在餐館的一次晚宴，或者去歐洲度假。第二件事情是，假設(shè)他們一月有60個小時的休閑時間，那么他們愿意花多少休閑時間去做志愿者工作。

研究結(jié)果正如研究人員預(yù)料的那樣。在身處浪漫氣氛的第一組成員中，男人們瘋狂地想完全占有金錢。相反，女人們則把時間花在做志愿者工作上。但是女人們變得更加吝嗇，而男人們?nèi)匀粚ω敻簧儆谒麄兊娜撕芾淠Ｍ瑫r，在另一組成員中，人們既不傾向于大肆揮霍，也沒有做善事的偏好?；谶@一結(jié)果，看起來不同性別的人實際上對于炫耀有不同的策略。此外，他們不會總是把他們的資源浪費在這些行為上。只有當(dāng)吸引異性的時候，男人們才會花更多的錢，女人們才會更加樂于助人。