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  3. Environmental asceticism has created a vogue for upgrading light-bulbs and tweaking thermostats (恒温器). But according to a new pi

Environmental asceticism has created a vogue for upgrading light-bulbs and tweaking thermostats (恒温器). But according to a new pi

admin2012-07-05  70
问题     Environmental asceticism has created a vogue for upgrading light-bulbs and tweaking thermostats (恒温器). But according to a new piece of research, many of these actions—however virtuous—arise from faulty perceptions of energy savings.
    Shahzeen Attari of Columbia University and her colleagues recruit 505 volunteers from across America. Each was asked to estimate the energy consumption of nine household devices as well as the energy savings incurred by six green activities. The researchers then compared the volunteers’ estimates with the actual energy requirements or savings in question.
    Their results suggest that although people do grasp basic energy trends, they are decidedly hazy on the details. On average, participants underestimated both energy use and energy savings by a factor of 2. 8— mostly because they undervalued the requirements of large machines like heaters and clothes dryers. As a result, they failed to recognize the huge energy savings that can come from improving the efficiency of such appliances.
    Miscalculations like these hinder conservation efforts. When asked to rank the single most effective way to save energy, participants typically endorsed activities with small savings, such as turning off lights, while ignoring what they could economize on larger devices. This suggests that people misallocate their efforts, fretting (烦恼) over an unattended lamp (at 100 watts) while neglecting the energy they could save by shifting their washer settings from "hot" to "warm" (4 000 watt-hours for each load of laundry).
    A quirk (怪癖) of human psychology could help to explain these persistent underestimates. When calculating such things, people often adopt a familiar unit as a mental scale and then generate predictions based on that unit. As a side-effect, their estimates cluster too closely around the measure—a phenomenon called "anchoring."
    This suggests an obvious criticism: by providing the light-bulb figure, the researchers primed their subjects to underestimate energy consumption. But the authors argue that rather than introducing a methodological flaw, they simply acknowledged a shared point of reference. When it comes to an accessible, quantitative measure of energy, consumers are uniquely familiar with the 100W bulb. As a result, Dr. Attari expects bulbs to exert an anchoring effect on the general population as well as on her volunteers, contributing to widespread underestimates of the energy demands of large appliances.
What causes the underestimate of energy consumption?
选项 A、People don’t know the related figures of appliances.
B、People incline to be close to mental scales when estimating things.
C、Researchers indicate participants may overestimate consumption.
D、People don’t have the same points of reference.
答案B
解析 综合理解题。本段分析了人们低估电器能耗的原因是一种“心理怪癖”，即一种熟悉的衡量尺度使得自己的估计接近于其参照物。由此可知，B)“人们在估计事物时趋向于心理尺度”为正确答案。
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