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  3. Word on the street is that gossip is the worst. An Ann Landers advice column once characterized gossip as "the faceless demon th

Word on the street is that gossip is the worst. An Ann Landers advice column once characterized gossip as "the faceless demon th

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问题    Word on the street is that gossip is the worst. An Ann Landers advice column once characterized gossip as "the faceless demon that breaks hearts and ruins careers. " The Talmud describes it as a "three-pronged tongue" that kills three people; the teller, the listener, and the person being gossiped about. And Blaise Pascal observed, not unreasonably, that "if people really knew what others said about them, there would not be four friends left in the world." Convincing as these indictments (控告) seem, however, a significant body of research suggests that gossip may in fact be healthy.
   Despite gossip’s evil reputation, a surprisingly small share of it—as little as 3 to 4 percent—is actually malicious. And even that portion can bring people together. Researchers at the University of Texas found that if two people share negative feelings about a third person, they are likely to feel closer to each other than they would if they both felt positively about him or her.
   Gossip may even make us better people, and it is pretty pervasive. A team of Dutch researchers reported that positive gossip inspired self-improvement efforts, and negative gossip made people prouder of themselves. Moreover, the worse participants felt upon hearing a piece of negative gossip, the more likely they were to say they had learned a lesson from it.
   By far the most positive assessment of gossip, though, comes from the evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar. In Dunbar’s account, our primate ancestors bonded through grooming (梳理毛发), their mutual back-scratching ensuring mutual self-defense in the event of attack by predators. But as hominids (原始人类 ) grew more intelligent and more social, their groups became too large to unite by grooming alone. That’s where language—and gossip, broadly defined—stepped in.
   So the next time you’re tempted to gossip about others, fear not—you may actually be promoting cooperation, boosting others’ self-esteem, and performing the essential task of the human family.
What do we learn from the report of Dutch researchers?
选项 A、Positive gossip helps people enhance themselves.
B、Negative gossip helps people promote cooperation.
C、The more negative the gossip is, the more useful it will be.
D、Gossip is the worst.
答案A
解析 事实细节题。由定位句可知，积极的流言激励人们自我提高，负面的流言则使人更加骄傲，故答案为A)。B)“消极的流言促进人们的合作”，第五段第一句提到，“所以下次当你忍不住想传播关于别人的流言时，别担心——事实上你可能是在促进合作”，但这并不是荷兰研究者的发现，故排除；C)“流言越消极越有用”，文中没有提到相关内容，故排除；D)“流言最糟糕”，第一段第一句提到，流言是最糟糕的，但这并非荷兰研究者的发现，故排除。
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