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  3. Even the best-intentioned policies can fall prey to the oddity of human beha

Even the best-intentioned policies can fall prey to the oddity of human beha

游客2023-09-05  31
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. [br] The minimum-payment law makers try to save people from______if they don’t pay their bill in time.
选项
答案 an accumulation of unpaid interest
解析 根据don’t pay their bill定位在原文第一段第二句。原文中说为了防止借款者因为没有付账单而被积累起来的未付利息(an accumulation of unpaid interest)受到冲击，就有法律要求信用卡公司规定必须分期偿还的最低额度。题干中的save people from对应原文中的stop borrowers from。原文用in order to引导目的状语并前置，题干则用try to do结构进行了转换。
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