2. 外语
  3. Even the best-intentioned policies can fall prey to the oddity of human behavior, as a new study of credit-card repayment finds.

Even the best-intentioned policies can fall prey to the oddity of human behavior, as a new study of credit-card repayment finds.

admin2012-05-28  55
问题     Even the best-intentioned policies can fall prey to the oddity of human behavior, as a new study of credit-card repayment finds. In order to stop borrowers from being hit by an accumulation of unpaid interest whenever they fail to pay their bill, there are laws requiring credit-card companies to specify a minimum payment in each statement. But these may do more harm than good, suggests Neil Stewart, a psychologist at Warwick University.
    Mr. Stewart was studying a phenomenon known as "anchoring". Psychologists have found that being exposed to numbers, even irrelevant ones, can affect people’s decisions. For example, diners tend to spend more in a restaurant named "Caf6 97" than in one named "Cafe 17". Since minimum payments on credit-card statements are usually small amounts, Mr. Stewart wondered whether seeing an actual amount might make people pay less than they would otherwise have done. That is exactly what he found.
    Mr. Stewart presented 413 people with fake credit-card bills of ￡ 435.76 that were identical — except that only half mentioned a minimum payment of ￡ 5.42. Participants were asked how much they would pay.
    Among those inclined to pay the bill in full, the presence of the minimum payment hardly made any difference. However, those who wanted to pay just part of it handed over 43% less on average when presented with a minimum payment. In the real world, this would roughly double interest charges.
    Economists will be interested in the results. Behavioral economists advocate "nudging (用肘 轻推) people in the right direction by subtly altering the choices that they are presented with. The insistence on minimum payments is a variation on this theme. Supposedly, those confronted by minimum-payment requirements should pay at least that much. In fact Mr. Stewart’s work suggests that people who would have paid a lot, paid less. In economics, as in life, nudging needs to be done carefully.
Nudging needs to be done carefully because humans behave______
选项
答案oddly
解析 题干中的Nudging needs to be done carefully出现在文章的末句。题干问给出这种建议的原因。结合对整篇文章的理解，我们发现，全篇文章基本上都是在解释说明开篇的第一句：“对信用卡还款的一项新调查显示，意图最好的政策也可能沦为人类怪诞行为模式(the oddity of human behavior)的牺牲品。”后面就开始介绍这项新调查，最后在文章末尾给出了建议。了解了这种篇章上的逻辑关系，就很容易做题了。原文中是以名词结构表示的，题干空格处要求填入副词以修饰前面的动词behave。
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