2. 外语
  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 is Robin Dunbar’s account about?
选项 A、Gossip comes from our ancestors’ grooming.
B、Gossip unites our ancestors together.
C、Gossip helps our ancestors defend themselves.
D、Gossip is powerful.
答案B
解析 推理判断题。由定位句可知，随着原始人类变得更加聪明和社会化，他们的群体变得太大，以至于不能仅仅通过梳理毛发而使他们聚集在一起。这时语言——广义而言的流言——就应运而生了。由此可知，流言使得我们的祖先聚集在一起，故答案为B)。A)“流言来源于祖先的毛发梳理”，由第四段第二至四句可知，流言跟梳理毛发一样，都是把祖先聚集在一起的方法，而非流言源于祖先的毛发梳理，故排除该项；C)“流言帮助祖先保护自己”，由第四段第二句可知，我们的灵长类祖先通过梳理毛发聚集在一起，他们互相挠背以确保在掠食者攻击时能相互自卫，该项与原文不符，故排除；D)“流言很强大”，第四段中罗宾-邓巴只谈到了流言产生的原因，而未提到流言是否强大，故排除。
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大学英语四级

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