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  3. Why does storytelling endure across time and cultures? Perhaps the answer li

Why does storytelling endure across time and cultures? Perhaps the answer li

游客2025-04-25  23
问题     Why does storytelling endure across time and cultures? Perhaps the answer lies in our evolutionary roots. A study of the way that people respond to Victorian literature hints that novels act as a social glue, reinforcing the types of behaviour that benefit society.
    Literature "could continually condition society so that we fight against base impulses and work in a cooperative way", says Jonathan Gottschall of Washington and Jefferson College, Pennsylvania. He and co-author Joseph Carroll at the University of Missouri. St Louis, study how Darwin’s theories of evolution apply to literature. Along with John John-son, an evolutionary psychologist at Pennsylvania State University in DuBois, the researchers asked 500 people to fill in a questionnaire about 200 classic Victorian novels. The respondents were asked to define characters as protagonists or antagonists and then to describe their personality and motives, such as whether they were conscientious or power-hungry.
    The team found that the characters fell into groups that mirrored the egalitarian dynamics of a hunter-gather society in which individual dominance is suppressed for the greater good (Evolutionary Psychology, vol 4, p 716). Protagonists, such as Elizabeth Bennett in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, for example, scored highly on conscientiousness and nurturing, while antagonists like Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula scored highly on status-seeking and social dominance. In the novels, dominant behaviour is "powerfully stigmatized", says Gottschall. "Bad guys and girls are just dominance machines; they are obsessed with getting ahead; they rarely have pro-social behaviours. "
    While few in today’s world live in hunter-gatherer societies, "the political dynamic at work in these novels, the basic opposition between communitarianism and dominance behaviour, is a universal theme", says Carroll Christopher Boehm. A cultural anthropologist whose work Carroll acknowledges was an important influence on the study, agrees. "Modern democracies, with their formal checks and balances, are carrying forward an egalitarian ideal".
    A few characters were judged to be both good and bad, such as Heathcliff in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights or Austen’s Mr. Darcy. "They reveal the pressure being exercised on maintaining the total social order," says Carroll.
    Boehm and Carroll believe novels have the same effect as the cautionary tales told in older societies. "Novels have a function that continues to contribute to the quality and structure of group life," says Boehm. "Maybe storytelling—from TV to folk tales—actually serves some specific evolutionary adaptation," says Gottschall. They’re not just byproducts of evolutionary adaptation. [br] What were the respondents in the research asked to do?
选项 A、To identify protagonists and antagonists in some novels and describe them.
B、To group characters in novels who mirror the egalitarian dynamic of a society.
C、To give scores to literary character in regard to social dominance.
D、To tell the bad guys from the good ones in some novels.
答案 A
解析 根据文章第二段最后一句The respondents were asked to define characters as protagonists or antagonists and then to describe their personality and motives…可知，被调查人要定义角色是主角还是反派，然后再描述他们的个性和动机。所以，正确答案是A。
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