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  3. What would make a smoker more likely to quit, a big reward for succeeding or a little penalty for failing? That is what research

What would make a smoker more likely to quit, a big reward for succeeding or a little penalty for failing? That is what research

admin2017-01-12  79
问题     What would make a smoker more likely to quit, a big reward for succeeding or a little penalty for failing? That is what researchers wanted to know when they assigned a large group of CVS employees (CVS Caremark is the country’s largest drugstore chain by sales), their relatives and friends to different smoking cessation programs.
    "Adding a bit of a stick was much better than a pure carrot. These large employers are spending an average of $800 to $900 per employee per year, but in ways that are often blind to normal human psychology" said Dr. Scott Halpern, who led the study. The trial was intended to change that. Researchers randomly assigned the participants to a number of program options and let them decide whether they wanted to participate. The penalty program required participants to deposit $150; six months later, those who had quit smoking would get the deposit back, along with a $650 reward. In the reward-only program, participants were simply offered an $800 payment if they stayed off cigarettes for six months.
    The trial, which was described in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, was the largest yet to test whether offering people financial incentives could lead to better health. Researchers found that offering incentives was far more effective in getting people to stop smoking than the traditional approach of giving free smoking cessation help, such as counseling or nicotine replacement therapy like gum, medication or patches. But they also found that requiring a $150 deposit that would be lost if the person failed to stay off cigarettes for six months nearly doubled the chances of success.
    "This is an original set of findings," said Cass R. Sunstein, a Harvard law professor who helped develop some influential ideas in the field of behavioral economics, notably that if the social environment can be changed—for example, by posting simple warnings—people can be nudged into better behavior. "They could be applied to many health issues, like alcoholism, or whenever people face serious self-control problems."
    Over all, success eluded most of the study participants. More than 80 percent of smokers in the most popular pure rewards group were still smoking at the end of the study. Even so, researchers say, their success rate was far greater than for those who got the traditional treatment. Smoking is the largest cause of preventable death in the United States. Diseases linked to it kill more than 480,000 Americans a year. And even a small decline could have a big health effect.
Researchers found that the most effective smoking cessation approach was to______.
选项 A、provide incentives
B、give penalty for failing
C、offer consultation services
D、provide nicotine replacement therapy
答案B
解析 细节题。根据题干关键词effective smoking cessation approach定位到第三段。由该段第二句的offering incentives was far more effective和最后一句可知，“提供奖励的效果要好得多”，但对戒烟失败小施惩戒，“戒烟的成功率几乎可以翻一番”，故B项“对(戒烟)失败给予惩戒”为正确答案。A项“提供奖励”的戒烟效果稍好，但是最后一句句首的But转折了语义，最后一句也说明它不是最好的，故排除。根据第二句可知，C项“提供咨询服务”和D项“提供尼古丁替代疗法”都属于免费帮人戒烟的方式，效果暂且不及A项，故排除。
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