新sat官方指南阅读第二篇全解析.pdf

官方网站： _______________________________________________________________________1新新 SAT 官方指南阅读第二篇全解析官方指南阅读第二篇全解析This passage is adapted from Francis J.Flynn and Gabrielle S. Adams, “Money Can’t Buy Love: AsymmetricBeliefs about Gift Price and Feeling of Appreciation.”○c2008 by Elsevier Inc.Every day, millions of shoppers hit the stores in full force-both online and on foot-searchingfrantically for the perfect gift. Last year, Americans spent over $30 billion at retail stores in themonth of December alone.Aside from purchasing holiday gifts, most people regularly buypresents for other occasions throughout the year, including weddings, birthdays, anniversaries,graduations, and baby showers. This frequent experience of gift-giving can engender ambivalent5feeling in gift-givers. Many relish the opportunity to buy presents because gift-giving offers apowerful means to build stronger bonds with one’s closest peers. At the same time, many dreadthe thought of buying gifts; they worry that their purchases will disappoint rather than delightthe intended recipients.Anthropologistsdescribegift-givingasapositivesocialprocess,servingvarious10political,religious, and psychological functions. Economists, however, offer a less favorable view.According to Waldfogel(1993), gift-giving represents an objective waste of resources. People buygifts that recipients would not choose to buy on their own, or at least not spend as much moneyon to purchase(a phenomenon referred to as “the deadweight loss of Christmas”). To wit, giversare likely to spend $100 to purchase a gift that receivers would spend only $80 to buy themselves.15This “deadweight loss” suggests that gift-givers are not very good at predicting what gifts others官方网站： _______________________________________________________________________2will appreciate. That in itself is not surprising to social psychologists. Research has found thatpeople often struggle to take account of others’ perspectives---their insights are subject toegocentrism, social projection, and multiple attribution errors.What is surprising is that gift-givers have considerable experience acting as both gift-givers20and gift-recipients, but nevertheless tend to overspend each time they set out to purchase ameaningful gift. In the present research, we propose a unique psychological explanation for thisoverspending problem-i.e., that gift-givers equate how much they spend with how muchrecipients will appreciate the gift(the more expensive the gift, the stronger a gift-recipient’sfeeling of appreciation). Although a link between gift price and feeling of appreciation might25seem intuitive to gift-givers, such an assumption may be unfounded. In deed, we propose thatgift-recipients will be less inclined to base their feelings of appreciation on the magnitude of agift than givers assume.Why do gift-givers assume that gift price is closely linked to gift-recipients’ feelings ofappreciation? Perhaps givers believe that bigger (i.e. more expensive) gifts convey stronger30signals of thoughtfulness and consideration. According to Camerer (1988) and others, gift-givingrepresents a symbolic ritual, whereby gift-givers attempt to signal their positive attitudes towardresources in a future relationship. In this sense, gift-givers may be motivated to spend moremoney on a gift in order to send a “stronger signal” to their intended recipient. As forgift-recipients, they may not construe smaller and larger gifts as representing smaller and larger35signals of thoughtfulness and consideration.The notion of gift-givers and gift-recipients being unable to account for the other party’sperspective seems puzzling because people slip in and out of these roles every day, and , in some官方网站： _______________________________________________________________________3cases, multiple times in the course of the same day. Yet, despite the extensive experience thatpeople have as both givers and receivers, they often struggle to transfer information gained from40one role (e.g., as a giver) and apply it in another, complementary role (e.g., as a receiver). Intheoretical terms, people fail to utilize information about their own preferences and experiencesin order to produce more efficient outcomes in their exchange relations. In practical terms,people spend hundreds of dollars each year on gifts, but somehow never learn to calibrate theirgift expenditure according to personal insight.45官方网站： _______________________________________________________________________411. The authors most likely use the examples in lines 1-5 of the passage (“Every…showers”) tohighlight the(A) regularity with which people shop for gifts.(B) recent increase in the amount of money spent on gifts.(C) anxiety gift shoppings causes for consumers.(D) number of special occasions involving gift-giving.正确答案：A分析：第 1-5 行，文章举例说明了有多少人购物（ “millions of shoppers” ）,在购物上花费多少钱 （ “over $30 billion at retail 。