A new partner pushes out two close friends on average, leaving lovers with a smaller inner circle of people they can turn to in

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问题     A new partner pushes out two close friends on average, leaving lovers with a smaller inner circle of people they can turn to in times of crisis, a study found.
    The research, led by Robin Dunbar, head of the Institute of Cognitive(认知的)and Evolutionary Anthropology(人类学)at Oxford University, showed that men and women were equally likely to lose their closest friends when they started a new relationship.
    Previous research by Dunbar’s group has shown that people typically have five very close relationships—that is, people whom they would turn to if they were in emotional or financial trouble.
    "If you go into a romantic relationship, it costs you two friends. Those who have romantic relationships, instead of having the typical five ’core set’ of relationships only have four. And of those, one is the new person who’s come into their life," said Dunbar.
    The study, submitted to the journal Personal Relationships, was designed to investigate how people trade off spending time with one person over another and suggests that links with family and closest friends suffer when people start a romantic relationship.
    Dunbar’s team used an internet-based questionnaire to quiz 428 women and 112 men about their relationships. In total, 363 of the participants had romantic partners. The findings suggest that a new love interest has to compensate for the loss of two close friends.
    Speaking at the British Science Festival, Professor Dunbar said: "This was a surprise for us. We hadn’t expected it."
    "What I suspect is that your attention is so wholly focused on the romantic partner you don’t get to see the other folks you had a lot to do with before, and so some of those relationships start to deteriorate(变糟)."
    The questionnaire allowed people to mention whether any of their closest friends were "extra romantic partners". In all, 32 of those quizzed mentioned having an extra love interest in their life, but these people did not lose four friends as might be expected. Instead, the extra person in their life bumped their original romantic partner out of their innermost circle of friends.
What was the new finding of Robin Dunbar’s group?

选项 A、People will turn to their close friends when they are in a crisis.
B、People often become less sociable after they have a new partner.
C、People gain a new partner at the cost of losing two close friends.
D、Women tend to lose their close friends more easily than men.

答案C

解析 文章第1句提到一项研究发现人们谈一次新的恋爱平均会失去两个密友,而由第2段第1句可知,该研究是由Robin Dunbar牵头的,与题干相符,故可确定C为正确答案。C中的at the cost of...意为“以……为代价”。
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