2019年3月23日雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：Decisions, decisions!

本次考试的三篇阅读真题已经集齐，具体前两篇请点击：

2019年3月23日雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：Leaf-cutting ants and fungus

2019年3月23日雅思阅读真题+题目+答案解析+译文：novice and expert

以下为第三篇阅读真题：

2019年3月23日雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：Decisions, decisions!

A widely recognised legend tells us that in Gordium (in what is now Turkey) in the fourth century BC an oxcart was roped to a pole with a complex knot. It was said that the first person to untie it would become the king of Asia. Unfortunately, the knot proved impossible to untie. The story continues that when confronted with this problem, rather than deliberating on how to untie the Gordian knot. Alexander, the famous ruler of the Greeks in the ancient world, simply took out his sword and cut it in two - then went on to conquer Asia. Ever since, the notion of a'Gordian solution' has referred to the attractiveness of a simple answer to an otherwise intractable problem.

Among researchers in the psychology of decision making, however, such solutions have traditionally held little appeal. In particular, the 'conflict model' of decision making proposed by psychologists Irving Jams and Leon Mann in their 1977 book, Decision Making, argued that a complex decision making process is essential for guarding individuals and groups from the peril of 'group-think'. Decisions made without thorough canvassing, surveying, weighing, examining and reexamining relevant information and options would be suboptimal and often disastrous. One foreign affairs decision made by a well-known US political leader in the 1960s is typically held us as an example of the perils of inadequate thought, whereas his successful handlihg of a later crisis is cited as an example of the advantages of careful deliberation. However, examination of these historical events by Peter Suedfield, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, and Roderick Kramer, a psychologist at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, found little difference in the two decision-making processes; both crises required and received complex consideration by the political administration, but later only the second one was deemed to be the effective.

In general, however, organizational and political science offer little evidence that complex decisions fare better than simpler ones. In fact, a growing body of work suggests that in many situations simple 'snap' decisions will be routinely superior to more complex ones - an idea that gained widespread public appeal with Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling book Blink (2005).

An article by Ap Dijksterhuis of the University of Amsterdam and his colleagues, Making the Right Choice: the Deliberation-without-attention Effect', runs very much in the spirit of Gladwell's influential text. It's core argument is that to be effective, conscious (deliberative) decision making requires cognitive resources. Because increasingly complex decisions place increasing strain on those resources, the quality of our decisions declines as their complexity increases. In short, complex decisions overrun our cognitive powers. On the other hand, unconscious decision making (what the author more complex decisions.

以下一半雅思阅读真题原文，省略！

雅思阅读真题题目：Questions 27-40

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

27 The legend of the Gordian knot is used to illustrate the idea that

A anyone can solve a difficult problem

B difficult problems can have easy solutions

C the solution to any problem requires a lot of thought

D people who can solve complex problems make good leaders

28 The 'conflict model' of decision making proposed by Jams and Mann requires that

A opposing political parties be involved

B all important facts be considered

C people be encouraged to have different ideas

D previous similar situations be thoroughly examined

29 According to recent thinking reinforced by Malcolm Gladwell, the best decisions

A involve consultation

B involve complex thought

C are made very quickly

D are the most attractive option

30 Dijksterhuis and his colleagues claim in their article that

A our cognitive resources improve as tasks become more complex

B conscious decision making is negative affected by task complexity

C unconscious decision making is a popular approach

D deliberation without attention defines the way we make decisions

31 Dijksterhuis's car study found that, in simple tasks, participants

A were involved in lengthy discussions

B found it impossible to make decisions quickly

C were unable to differentiate between the options

D could make a better choice when allowed to concentrate

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