Altruism, according to the text books, has two forms. One is known technically as kin selection, and familiarly as nepotism. This spreads an individual's genes collaterally, rather than directly, but is otherwise similar to his helping his own offspring. The second form is reciprocal altruism, or “you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours”. It relies on trust, and a good memory for favours given and received, but is otherwise not much different from simultaneous collaboration (such as a wolf pack hunting) in that the benefit exceeds the cost for all parties involved. Humans, however, show a third sort of altruism—one that has no obvious pay-off. This is altruism towards strangers, for example, charity. That may enhance reputation. But how does an enhanced reputation weigh in the Darwinian balance?

   To investigate this question, the researchers made an interesting link. At first sight, helping charities looks to be at the opposite end of the selfishness spectrum from conspicuous consumption. Yet they have something in common: both involve the profligate deployment of resources. That is characteristic of the consequences of sexual selection. An individual shows he (or she) has resources to burn—whether those are biochemical reserves, time or, in the human instance, money—by using them to make costly signals. That demonstrates underlying fitness of the sort favoured by evolution. Viewed this way, both conspicuous consumption and what the researchers call “blatant benevolence” are costly signals. And since they are behaviours rather than structures, and thus controlled by the brain, they may be part of the mating mind.

   Researchers divided a bunch of volunteers into two groups. Those in one were put into what the researchers hoped would be a “romantic mindset” by being shown pictures of attractive members of the opposite sex. They were each asked to write a description of a perfect date with one of these people. The unlucky members of the other group were shown pictures of buildings and told to write about the weather. The participants were then asked two things. The first was to imagine they had $5,000 in the bank. They could spend part or all of it on various luxury items such as a new car, a dinner party at a restaurant or a holiday in Europe. They were also asked what fraction of a hypothetical 60 hours of leisure time during the course of a month they would devote to volunteer work.

   The results were just what the researchers hoped for. In the romantically primed group, the men went wild with the Monopoly money. Conversely, the women volunteered their lives away. Those women continued, however, to be skinflints, and the men remained callously indifferent to those less fortunate than themselves. Meanwhile, in the other group there was little inclination either to profligate spending or to good works. Based on this result, it looks as though the sexes do, indeed, have different strategies for showing off. Moreover, they do not waste their resources by behaving like that all the time. Only when it counts sexually are men profligate and women helpful.

   注（1）：本文選自Economist, 08/02/2007

   注（2）：本文習題命題模仿對象為2005年真題Text 1。

   1． In the opening paragraph, the author introduces his topic by _______.

    [A] stating an incident

    [B] justifying an assumption

    [C] explaining the forms of a phenomenon

    [D] making a comparison

   2． The statement “helping charities looks to be at the opposite end of the selfishness spectrum from conspicuous consumption” (Line 1-3, Paragraph 2) means _______.

    [A] helping charities shows selfishness while conspicuous consumption shows selflessness

    [B] helping charities shows selflessness while conspicuous consumption shows selfishness

    [C] both helping charities and conspicuous consumption shows selfishness

    [D] both helping charities and conspicuous consumption shows selflessness

   3． The main reasons for involving in charities being regarded as “blatant benevolence” are as following, EXCEPT that_______.

    [A] it helps donators become famous and admired by the public

    [B] it includes a large amount of deployable resrouces

    [C] it provides rich people with a way of showing off their wealth

    [D] it might be related to mating minds as conspicuous consumption

   4．The results of the study found that _______.

    [A] the reactions of the two groups of volunteers are similar

    [B] female volunteers of the two groups behave exactly the same

    [C] men tend to show off their wealth when courting women

    [D] men and women always show different inclinations of showing off

   5． What we can infer from the last two paragraph?

    [A] The results of the study go against researchers’ hypothesis.

    [B] The researchers divided vonlunteers into two groups for comparison.

    [C] The second group of vonluteers did not cooperate well in the study.

    [D]`The study fails to explain the disuccsed term of “blatant benevolence”.

   篇章剖析

    本文采用了提出問題——分析問題的模式，主要說明了性別選擇對于人們利他主義行為的影響。第一段提出了三種利他主義行為的概念，提出了問題；第二段是對第三種利他主義的進一步理論分析；第三段介紹了研究人員針對該現(xiàn)象所作的研究；第四段是研究成果的說明。

   詞匯注釋

   altruism [`AltruizEm] n. 利他主義, 利他      spectrum [`spektrEm] n. 范圍, 領域

   kin [kin] n. 家屬(集合稱), 親戚, 同族        conspicuous consumption 炫耀性消費

   nepotism [`nepEtizEm] n. 偏袒, 裙帶關系     profligate [`prCfligit] adj. 放蕩, 揮霍

   collateral [kE`lAtErEl] adj.間接的             blatant [`bleitEnt] adj. 吵鬧的, 炫耀

   offspring [`CfspriN] n. 兒女, 子孫, 后代       benevolence [bi`nevElEns] n. 仁愛心, 善行

   reciprocal [ri`siprEkEl] adj. 互惠的, 相應的    prime [praim] v. 灌注, 填裝

   simultaneous [9simEl`teinjEs] adj. 同時的      skinflint [`skinflint] n. 吝嗇鬼

   pay-off n. 贏利                           callous [`kAlEs] adj. 無情的, 冷淡的

   難句突破

   It relies on trust, and a good memory for favours given and received, but is otherwise not much different from simultaneous collaboration (such as a wolf pack hunting) in that the benefit exceeds the cost for all parties involved.

   主體句式  It relies on trust, and a good memory, but is otherwise not much different from…

   結(jié)構(gòu)分析  這個句子由三個并列結(jié)構(gòu)構(gòu)成，分別由and 和but 來連接。in that 是用于解釋說明的連接詞，其后面的內(nèi)容是對前面的補充。

   句子譯文  這種利他主義的基礎在于信任，并對自己得到和付出過的幫助保持較好的記憶，但是除此以外，這種利他主義和物種天然的合作關系（比如狼群共同尋找獵物）沒有什么大的區(qū)別，因為對于所有的參與者來說，他們合作的所得遠遠超過其付出。

   題目分析

   1．C. 細節(jié)題。文章開頭作者以介紹利他主義這一現(xiàn)象為例引出論題。

   2．B. 語義題。這句話的字面意思是，慈善和炫耀性消費是在自私程度上來看是處于兩個極端，結(jié)合我們平時的嘗試可以理解句子的意思是，慈善是無私的表現(xiàn)，而炫耀性消費是自私的表現(xiàn)。

   3．A. 細節(jié)題。本題的B，C，D選項都能在文章第二段中找到對應信息，而本文并沒有提到慈善捐助人想通過捐贈成名、并受人崇拜這一點。

   4．C. 推理題。文章比較后一段中指出，當人們在擇偶的時候，男人們總是傾向于炫耀他們的金錢和財富，因此C選項正確。D選項錯誤的原因是，比較后一段提到男人們和女人們并不是總會表現(xiàn)不同的炫耀行為，而僅僅是在吸引異性的時候。

   5．B. 推理題。在文章第三段中，研究人員將參與實驗的志愿者們分為了兩組，其一為主實驗組，另一個為參照組，主要為了比較實驗結(jié)果，以使得結(jié)論更加有力。

   參考譯文

    根據(jù)我們的教科書，利他主義有兩種表現(xiàn)形式。一種就是所謂的血緣選擇，即家庭親戚關系。這種利他主義是通過一個人的基因間接傳播的，而不是直接的，但是另一方面也就像一個人會無私地幫助自己的孩子一樣。第二種形式是互惠的利他主義，或者說“你幫我搓背我也幫你搓背”。這種利他主義的基礎在于信任，并對自己得到和付出過的幫助保持較好的記憶，但是除此以外，這種利他主義和物種天然的合作關系（比如狼群共同尋找獵物）沒有什么大的區(qū)別，因為對于所有的參與者來說，他們合作的所得遠遠超過其付出。但是人類卻表現(xiàn)出了第三種利他主義—一種不會有什么贏利的利他主義。這是一種對陌生人的利他主義，比如說慈善業(yè)，從而能夠增進人們的名譽。但是名譽的增加如何在達爾文平衡中找到其位置呢？

    為了探討這一問題，研究者們找到了一個有趣的關系。乍一看，從自私角度來說參與慈善事業(yè)好像是炫耀性消費的相反面。但是他們有一點是相同的，即二者都包含了對資源的大規(guī)模調(diào)度。這是性別選擇結(jié)果的一個特點。一個人想要顯示他（或者她）擁有的可以揮霍的資源—無論是生化儲備、時間還是對于人類來說的金錢—通過使用這些東西來發(fā)出一些昂貴的信號。這也是進化過程中幫助物種生存下來的適切性。如果從這個角度來看問題的話，那么炫耀性消費和研究者們所稱的“炫耀性善行”都是昂貴信號。而且它們都是行為而不是結(jié)構(gòu)，因此是由大腦控制的，也許還是尋偶想法的一部分。

    研究者將一群志愿者分成了兩組。他們向第一組的成員展示了一組相反性別的長得很漂亮或很帥的人們的照片，從而希望使志愿者們變得浮想聯(lián)翩。接著研究者要求他們寫一個關于自己和照片上的人的一次完美約會。而另一組的志愿者就沒有這么幸運了，他們看到的是一組高樓大廈的圖片，并要寫一個關于天氣的報告。然后研究人員要求參與者們做兩件事情。第一件事情是要求他們想象自己在銀行有5千美元。他們可以把其中一部分或者所有的錢花在各種奢侈品上，比如一輛新車、在餐館的一次晚宴、或者去歐洲度假。第二件事情是，假設他們一周有60個小時的休閑時間，那么在一個月期間他們愿意花多少百分比的休閑時間在志愿者工作上。

    研究結(jié)果正如研究人員比較初預料的那樣。在充滿浪漫氣氛的第一組成員中，男人們瘋狂地想完全占有金錢。相反，女人們則更愿意做志愿者工作。但是女人們卻更加吝嗇，而男人們卻對財富的減少并不那么在意。同時，在另一組成員中，人們既不傾向于大肆揮霍、也沒有認真工作的偏好�；�于這一結(jié)果，看起來不同性別的人實際上對于炫耀有不同的策略。此外，他們不會總是把他們的資源浪費這些行為上。只有當吸引異性的時候，男人們才會花更多的錢、而女人們會更加樂于助人。