2013年考研英语完形填空原文出处.doc

PsychologyA question of judgmentInterviewers favour those seen firstJun 16th 2012 |From the print edition TweetA NEVER-ENDING flow of information is the lot of most professionals. Whether it comes in the form of lawyers cases, doctors patients or even journalists stories, this information naturally gets broken up into pieces that can be tackled one at a time during the course of a given day. In theory, a decision made when handling one of these pieces should not have much, if any, impact on similar but unrelated subsequent decisions. Yet Uri Simonsohn of the University of Pennsylvania and Francesca Gino at Harvard report in Psychological Science that this is not how things work out in practice.Dr Simonsohn and Dr Gino knew from studies done in other laboratories that people are, on the whole, poor at considering background information when making individual decisions. At first glance this might seem like a strength that grants the ability to make judgments which are unbiased by external factors. But in a world of quotas and limitsin other words, the world in which most professional people operatethe two researchers suspected that it was actually a weakness. They speculated that an inability to consider the big picture was leading decision-makers to be biased by the daily samples of information they were working with. For example, they theorised that a judge fearful of appearing too soft on crime might be more likely to send someone to prison if he had already sentenced five or six other defendants only to probation on that day.In this section Boundary conditions A gene thief Gene therapy A question of judgmentReprintsTo test this idea, they turned their attention to the university-admissions process. Admissions officers interview hundreds of applicants every year, at a rate of 4 a day, and can offer entry to about 40% of them. In theory, the success of an applicant should not depend on the few others chosen randomly for interview during the same day, but Dr Simonsohn and Dr Gino suspected the truth was otherwise.They studied the results of 9,323 MBA interviews conducted by 31 admissions officers. The interviewers had rated applicants on a scale of one to five. This scale took numerous factors, including communication skills, personal drive, team-working ability and personal accomplishments, into consideration. The scores from this rating were then used in conjunction with an applicants score on the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, a standardised exam which is marked out of 800 points, to make a decision on whether to accept him or her.Dr Simonsohn and Dr Gino discovered that their hunch was right. If the score of the previous candidate in a daily series of interviewees was 0.75 points or more higher than that of the one before that, then the score for the next applicant would drop by an average of 0.075 points. This might sound small, but to undo the effects of such a decrease a candidate would need 30 more GMAT points than would otherwise have been necessary.As for why people behave this way, Dr Simonsohn proposes that after accepting a number of strong candidates, interviewers might form the illogical expectation that a weaker candidate “is due”. Alternatively, he suggests that interviewers may be engaging in mental accounting that simplifies the task of maintaining a given long-term acceptance rate, by trying to apply this rate to each daily group of candidates. Regardless of the reason, if this sort of thinking proves to have a similar effect on the judgments of those in other fields, such as law and medicine, it could be responsible for far worse things than the rejection of qualified business-school candidates.A NEVER-ENDING flow of information is the lot of most professionals. Whether it comes in the form of lawyers cases, doctors patients or even journalists stories, this information naturally gets broken up into pieces that can be tackled one at a time during the course of a given day. In theory, a decision made when handling one of these pieces should not have much, if any, impact on similar but unrelated subsequent decisions. Yet Uri Simonsohn of the University of Pennsylvaniaand Francesca Gino at Harvard report in Psychological Science that this is not how things work out in practice.无论是自律师的案子还是医生的患者，甚至是记者的故事，众多专家提供着无尽的信息，这些信息自然地形成很多条信息，其中的某条在某天中的某时会得到处理。理论上，决定处理一条报导不应该对其他决定有太多影响，若有，不但不应该影响到相似的而且不应影响不相关的随后的决定。但是宾夕法尼亚大学的尤里西蒙逊和哈佛大学的弗朗西斯卡吉诺发表在心理科学中的论文认为事实并非如此。Dr Simonsohn and Dr Gino knew from studies done in other laboratories that people are, on the whole, poor at considering background information when making individual decisions. At first glance this might seem like a strength that grants the ability to make judgments which are unbiased by external factors. But in a world of quotas and limitsin other words, the world in which most professional people operatethe two researchers suspected that it was actually a weakness. They speculated that an inability to consider the big picture was leading decision-makers to be biased by the daily samples of information they were working with. For example, they theorised that a judge fearful of appearing too soft on crime might be more likely to send someone to prison if he had already sentenced five or six other defendants only to probation on that day.西蒙逊博士和吉诺博士从其他实验室的研究中得知，总体而言，当人们自己做决定时，并不擅长考虑背景信息。乍看之下这是优势，即能够做出不受外界因素影响的不带偏见的决定。但世界是有条条框框的，我们置身的世界由专家掌控，两名研究人员怀疑这恰恰是个弱点。他们推测，不考虑大局会导致决策者被日常接触的信息影响而带有偏见。例如，他们提出理论，认为法官不敢在罪犯面前表现得太软弱，很可能在已经宣判五六名其他被告的那天，将某人送入监狱结果却是缓刑。To test this idea, they turned their attention to the university-admissions process. Admissions officers interview hundreds of applicants every year, at a rate of 4½ a day, and can offer entry to about 40% of them. In theory, the success of an applicant should not depend on the few others chosen randomly for interview during the same day, but Dr Simonsohn and Dr Gino suspected the truth was otherwise.他们把注意力转向大学录取过程以便一探究竟。面试官每年需面试上百名申请者，平均每天四人半，会录取其中的40%。理论上讲，录取成功不应取决于同一天随机选到的其他几名申请者，西蒙逊博士和吉诺博士认为另有他因。They studied the results of 9,323 MBA interviews conducted by 31 admissions officers. The interviewers had rated applicants on a scale of one to five. This scale took numerous factors, including communication skills, personal drive, team-working ability and personal accomplishments, into consideration. The scores from this rating were then used in conjunction with an applicants score on the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, a standardised exam which is marked out of 800 points, to make a decision on whether to accept him or her.他们研究了31名面试官面试的9323MBA的结果。面试官在1-5等级量表上为申请者打分。测量涉及到很多因素，比如社交技能、主动程度、团队合作能力和个人成就感。量表得分会与GMAT（管理学研究生入学考试，满分为800分）成绩共同决定以为申请者通过与否。Dr Simonsohn and Dr Gino discovered that their hunch was right. If the score of the previous candidate in a daily series of interviewees was 0.75 points or more higher than that of the one before that, then the score for the next applicant would drop by an average of 0.075 points. This might sound small, but to undo the effects of such a decrease a candidate would need 30 more GMAT points than would otherwise have been necessary.西蒙逊博士和吉诺博士发现他们的预测是正确的。如果当日申请人中一位的分数比前一名高出0.75分或更多，那么他后面的人平均会少0.075分。也许看起来少的分数不多，但如果一名申请者要消除这一微小分数的影响，GMAT就要多考出本来不需要多的30分。As for why people behave this way, Dr Simonsohn proposes that after accepting a number of strong candidates, interviewers might form the illogical expectation that a weaker candida