Clearly, a person’ s decisions are determined by circumstances. Experiments conducted over the past few years have revealed that

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问题     Clearly, a person’ s decisions are determined by circumstances. Experiments conducted over the past few years have revealed that giving someone an icy drink at a party leads him to believe he is getting the cold shoulder from fellow guests, that handing over a warm drink gives people a sense of warmth from others.
    The latest of these studies also looks at the effect of furniture. It suggests that something as trivial as the stability of chairs and tables has an effect on perceptions and desires.
    The researchers asked half of their volunteers to sit in a slightly wobbly chair next to a slightly wobbly table while engaged in the task assigned. The others were asked to sit in chairs next to tables that looked physically identical, but were not wobbly.
    Once in their chairs, participants were asked to judge the stability of the relationships of four celebrity couples. They did this by rating on a scale of one to seven, that a couple would break up in the next five years. A score of one meant "extremely unlikely to dissolve". A score of seven meant "extremely likely to dissolve".
    After they had done this, they were asked to rate their preferences for various traits in a potential romantic partner. Traits on offer included some which a pilot study indicated people associate with a sense of psychological stability, some that are associated with psychological instability and some with no real relevance to instability or stability. Participants rated the various traits on another one-to-seven scale, with one indicating "not at all desirable" and seven meaning "extremely desirable".
    The results reveal that just as cold drinks lead to perceptions of social conditions being cold, feelings of physical instability leads to perceptions of social instability. Participants who sat in wob bly chairs at wobbly tables gave the celebrity couples an average stability score of 3.2 while those whose furniture did not wobble gave them 2.5.
    What was particularly intriguing, though, was that those sitting at wonky furniture not only saw instability in the relationships of others but also said that they valued stability in their own relationships more highly. They gave stability-promoting traits in potential romantic partners an average desirability score of 5.0, whereas those whose tables and chairs were stable gave these same traits a score of 4.5. The difference is not huge, but it is statistically significant. Even a small amount of environmental wobbliness seems to promote a desire for an emotional rock to cling to.
The word "wonky"(Para. 7)probably means______.

选项 A、stable
B、safe
C、shaky
D、straight

答案C

解析 根据题干关键词定位到第七段。根据前文信息可知,实验中的人们被分成两组,一组坐在摇晃的椅子上,另一组坐在稳定的椅子上。由本段第二句中的whereas thosewhose tables and chairs were stable gave…(相比之下,桌椅稳当的那一组……)可知,前面讲的是椅子不稳当的一组,故C项shaky"摇晃的"符合题意,为正确答案。stable“稳定的”、safe“安全的”、straight“笔直的”均不合题意,故排除。
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