2. 职称英语
  3. As the Titanic was sinking and women and children climbed into lifeboats, the

As the Titanic was sinking and women and children climbed into lifeboats, the

游客2024-01-14  27
问题    As the Titanic was sinking and women and children climbed into lifeboats, the musicians from the ship’ s band stood and played. They died when the ship went down. Men stood on the deck and smoked cigarettes. They died, too. This behavior is puzzling to economists, who like to believe that people tend to act in their own self-interest. " There was no pushing, " says David Savage, an economist at Queensland University in Australia who has studied witness reports from the survivors. It was "very, very orderly behavior.
   Savage has compared the behavior of the passengers on the Titanic with those on the Lusitania, another ship that also sank at about the same time. But when the Lusitania went down, the passengers panicked. There were a lot of similarities between these two events. These two ships were both luxury ones, they had a similar number of passengers and a similar number of survivors.
   The biggest difference, Savage concludes, was time. The Lusitania sank in less than 20 minutes. But for the Titanic, it was two-and-a-half hours. " If you’ ve got an event that lasts two-and-a-half hours, social order will take over and everybody will behave in a social manner, "Savage says. "If you’ re going down in under 17 minutes, basically it’ s instinctual. " On the Titanic, social order ruled, and it was women and children first. On the Lusitania, instinct won out. The survivors were largely the people who could swim and get into the lifeboats.
   Yes, we’ re self-interested, Savage says. But we’ re also part of a society. Given time, social norms can beat our natural self-interest. A hundred years ago, women and children always went first. Men were stoic. On the Titanic, there was enough time for these norms to become forceful. [br] The expression "won out" in the third paragraph is closest in meaning to "______".
选项 A、took the upper hand
B、went out of control
C、ran wild
D、shut down
答案 A
解析 根据文章第三段最后一句可知，在路西塔尼亚号上，大部分幸存者是那些会游泳并且能够逃到救生艇上的人们。这与泰坦尼克号上的情况形成了鲜明的对比，在泰坦尼克号上，社会秩序战胜了本能，而在路西塔尼亚号上本能战胜了社会秩序，因此选择took the upper hand占上风，胜出。故选A。
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