题目内容
It was (and is) common to think that other animals are ruled by "instinct" whereas humans lost their instincts and ruled by "reason," and that this is why we are so much more flexibly intelligent than other animals. William James, in his book Principles of Psychology, took the opposite view. He argued that human behavior. is more flexibly intelligent than that of other animals because we have more instincts than they do, not fewer. We tend to be Mind to the existence of these instincts, however, precisely because they work so well--because they process information so effortlessly and automatically. They structure our thought so powerfully, he argued, that it can be difficult to imagine how things could be otherwise. As a result, we take "normal" behavior. for granted. We do not realize that "normal" behavior. needs to be explained at all. This "instinct blindness" makes the study of psychology difficult. To get past this problem, James suggested that we try to make the "natural seem strange." It takes a mind debauched by learning to carry the process of making the natural seem strange, so far as to ask for the why of any instinctive human act.
In our view, William James was right about evolutionary psychology. Making the natural seem strange is unnatural - it requires the twisted outlook seen, for example, in Gary Larson cartoons Yet it is a central part of the enterprise. Many psychologists avoid the study of natural competences, thinking that there is nothing there to be explained. As a result, social psychologists are disappointed unless they find a phenomenon "that would surprise their grandmothers," and cognitive psychologists spend more time studying how we solve problems we are bad at, like learning math or playing chess, than ones we are good at. But our natural competences - our abilities to see, to speak, to find someone beautiful, to reciprocate a favor, to fear disease, to fall in love, to initiate an attack, to experience moral outrage, to navigate a landscape, and myriad others - are possible only because there is a vast and heterogeneous array of complex computational machinery supporting and regulating these activities. This machinery works so well that we don't even realize that it exists - we all suffer from instinct' blindness. As a result, psychologists have neglected to study some of the most interesting machinery in the human mind.
William James believed that man is more flexibly intelligent than other animals because man is more ______.
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A．English teachers usually like reading a lot.B．The English like to read a lot and lis
Which is NOT mentioned as a cause of American students' casual writing？
The 1920s was the decade of advertising. The advertising men went wild: everything from salt to household coal was being nationally advertised. Of course, ads had been around for a long time. But something new was happening, in terms of both scale and strategy. For the first time, business began to use advertising as a psychological weapon against consumers. Without their product, the consumer would be left unmarried, fall victim to a terrible disease, or be passed over for a promotion. Ads developed an association between the product and one's very identity. Eventually they came to promise everything and anything—from self-esteem to status, friendship, and love.
This psychological approach was a response to the economic dilemma business faced. Americans in the middle classes and above(to whom virtually all advertising was targeted) were no longer buying to satisfy basic needs—such as food, clothing and shelter. These had been met. Advertisers had to persuade consumers to acquire things they most certainly did not need. In other words, production would have to "create the wants it sought to satisfy." This is exactly what manufacturers tried to do. The normally conservative telephone company attempted to transform. the plain telephone into a luxury, urging families to buy "all the telephones that they can conveniently use, rather than the smallest amount they can get along with." One ad campaign targeted fifteen phones as the style. for a wealthy home.
Business clearly understood the nature of the problem. According to one historian, "Business had learned as never before the importance of the final consumer. Unless he or she could be persuaded to buy, and buy extravagantly, the whole stream of new cars, cigarettes, women's make-up, and electric refrigerators would be dammed up at its outlets."
But would the consumer be equal to her task as the foundation of private enterprise？ A top executive of one American car manufacturer stated the matter bluntly: business needs to create a dissatisfied consumer; its mission is "the organized creation of dissatisfaction." This executive led the way by introducing annual model changes for his company's cars, designed to make the consumer unhappy with what he or she already had. Other companies followed his lead. Economic success now depended on the promotion of qualities like waste and self-indulgence.
The campaign to create new and unlimited wants did not go unchallenged. Trade unions and those working for social reform. understood the long-term consequences of materialism for most Americans: it would keep them locked in capitalism's trap. The consumption of luxuries required long hours at work. Business was explicit in its resistance to increases in free time, preferring consumption as the alternative to taking economic progress in the form. of leisure. In effect, business offered up the cycle of work-and-spend.
The 1920s advertising men went wild ______.
A．He might help the woman much.B．The woman shouldn't buy a used car.C．He doesn't know
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