How to jump queue fury? If you find yourself waiting in a long queue at an airport or bus terminus this holiday, will you try to

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问题      How to jump queue fury? If you find yourself waiting in a long queue at an airport or bus terminus this holiday, will you try to analyze what it is about queuing that makes you angry? Or will you just get angry with the nearest official?
     Professor Richard Larson, an electrical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hates queuing but rather than tear his hair out, he decided to study the subject. His first finding, which backs up earlier work at the US National Science Foundation, was that the degree of annoyance was not directly related to the time. He cites an experiment at Houston airport where passengers had to walk for one minute from the plane to the baggage reclaim and then wait a further seven minutes to collect their luggage. Complaints were frequent, especially from those who had spent seven minutes watching passengers with just hand baggage get out immediately.
     The airport authorities decided to lengthen the walk from the aircraft, so that instead of a one minute fast walk, the passengers spent six minutes walking. When they finally arrived at the baggage reclaim, the delay was then only two minutes. The extra walk extended the delay by five minutes for those carrying only hand baggage, but passenger complaints dropped almost to zero.
     The reason? Larson suggests that it all has to do with what he calls" social justice ". If people see others taking a short cut, they will find the wait unbearable. So in the case of the airport, it was preferable to delay everyone.
     Another aspect Larson studied was the observation that people get more fed up if they are not told what is going on. Passengers told that there will be a half-hour delay are less unhappy than those left waiting even twenty minutes without an explanation.
     But even knowing how long we have to wait isn’ t the whole answer. We must also believe that everything is being done to minimize our delay. Larson cites the example of two neighboring American bands. One was highly computerized and served a customer, on average, every 30 seconds. The other band was less automated and took twice as long. But because the tellers at the second band looking extremely busy, customers believed the service was faster and many transferred their accounts to the slower bank. Ultimately, the latter had to introduce time-wasting ways of appearing more dynamic.
Which of the following statements is true with regard to the Houston Airport experiment?

选项 A、Professor Richard Larson hates queuing so much that he tears his hair out.
B、According to Larson’ s study, the long waiting was the cause of annoyance.
C、When all the travelers had to wait for 2 minutes, there were a lot of complaints.
D、When the walking time was extended to 6 minutes, there were hardly any complaints.

答案D

解析 原文是说Professor Richard Larson hates queuing but rather than tear his hair out,而不是Professor Richard Larson hates queuing so much that he tears his hair out.因此A是错的,在上面一句话中tear one’s hair out意思是“悲伤或愤怒时举动狂野”。B的错误也很明显,原文说the degree of annoyance was not directly
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