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The simple act of hand-washing has been shown to help clear a guilty conscience and even make you more forgiving of the moral mi

admin2022-11-05  32
问题     The simple act of hand-washing has been shown to help clear a guilty conscience and even make you more forgiving of the moral mistakes of others. It’s known as the Macbeth principle of morality: we make a fundamental, psychological association between physical purity and moral purity, which lets us literally wash away our sins. The trick even works in the opposite direction, with cleanliness prompting moral behavior in one study, people exposed to a clean-smelling environment were induced to act more fairly and charitably toward strangers than people in a neutral-smelling place.
    Now a new study published in Science asks whether hand-washing can wipe the slate clean of any past behavior—even everyday decisions, like, say, choosing Paris over Rome for vacation. When people make choices, especially between two similarly attractive options, they tend to go to great lengths to justify them as psychological assurance they’ve made the right decision.
    The mental exercise reduces post-decisional doubt and the authors of the new study found that handwashing eliminated people’s need to do it. As part of an alleged consumer survey, 40 undergraduates browsed 30 CD covers as if they were in a music store. They selected 10 CDs they would like to own and ranked them by preference. Later, the experimenter offered them a choice between their fifth- and sixth-ranked CDs as a token of appreciation from the sponsor. After the choice, participants completed an seemingly unrelated product survey that asked for evaluations of a liquid soap; half merely examined the bottle before answering, whereas others tested the soap by washing their hands. After a filler task, participants ranked the 10 CDs again.
    "People who merely examined the soap bottle dealt with their doubts about their decision by changing how they saw the CDs: as in hundreds of earlier studies, once they had made a choice, they saw the chosen CD as much more attractive than before, and the rejected CD as much less attractive," said study co-author Norbert Schwarz, a psychologist at University of Michigan. "But hand-washing eliminated this classic effect. Once participants had washed their hands, they no longer needed to justify their choice when they ranked the CDs the second time around."
    The researchers repeated the experiment, this time asking participants to rank the desirability of four kinds of fruit jam. Once again, volunteers who wiped their hands clean after choosing showed the kind of satisfaction with their decision that the non-wipers lacked. Still, there’s no guarantee that a bout of handwashing will avoid post-decision regret in the long run. As far as those big decisions go, however, you’re probably best off engaging in good old-fashioned justification.
Which of the following could be the most appropriate title for the text?
选项 A、How Physical Purity Affects Mental Purity.
B、How Hand-Washing Eases Post-Decision Mind.
C、How People Deal with Post-Decisional Anxiety.
D、How Physical Purity Promotes Moral Behaviors.
答案B
解析 本文第一段指出生理纯洁与道德纯洁有着根深蒂固的关系。第二、第三、第四段通过实验及结果进行论证：人们做出决定后往往需要努力证明自己所做的选择是正确的，而洗手能使人免去这种行为。第五段说明此研究发现的局限性：不能保证可以长期避免做完决定后的悔恨感。因此主题就是关于“洗手(生理纯洁)消除做决定后心理焦虑”的研究，B项最符合此主题。生理上的纯洁与道德上的纯洁有着根深蒂固的联系，这仅仅出现在文章的第一段第二句，作为引子引出话题，不能涵盖全文的主题，故A项错误。本文主题并不是讲人们应对做决定后焦虑的办法，只是讲洗手会消除这一焦虑，C项过度推断。生理清洁的确能催生道德行为，但这也只是在第一段提及，文章并未对“如何催生道德行为”进行深人讨论，故D项并非本文主题。
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