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  3. Word on the street is that gossip is the worst. An Ann Landers advice column

Word on the street is that gossip is the worst. An Ann Landers advice column

游客2024-01-21  32
问题     Word on the street is that gossip is the worst. An Ann Landers advice column once characterized gossip as "the faceless demon that breaks hearts and ruins careers. " The Talmud describes it as a "three-pronged tongue" that kills three people: the teller, the listener, and the person being gossiped about. And Blaise Pascal observed, not unreasonably, that "if people really knew what others said about them, there would not be four friends left in the world. " Convincing as these indictments (控告) seem, however, a significant body of research suggests that gossip may in fact be healthy.
    Despite gossip’s evil reputation, a surprisingly small share of it—as little as 3 to 4 percent—is actually malicious. And even that portion can bring people together. Researchers at the University of Texas found that if two people share negative feelings about a third person, they are likely to feel closer to each other than they would if they both felt positively about him or her.
    Gossip may even make us better people, and it is pretty pervasive. A team of Dutch researchers reported that positive gossip inspired self-improvement efforts, and negative gossip made people prouder of themselves. Moreover, the worse participants felt upon hearing a piece of negative gossip, the more likely they were to say they had learned a lesson from it.
    By far the most positive assessment of gossip, though, comes from the evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar. In Dunbar’s account, our primate ancestors bonded through grooming (梳理毛发), their mutual back-scratching ensuring mutual self-defense in the event of attack by predators. But as hominids (原始人类) grew more intelligent and more social, their groups became too large to unite by grooming alone. That’s where language—and gossip, broadly defined—stepped in.
    So the next time you’re tempted to gossip about others, fear not—you may actually be promoting cooperation, boosting others’ self-esteem, and performing the essential task of the human family. [br] What do we learn from the report of Dutch researchers?
选项 A、Positive gossip helps people enhance themselves.
B、Negative gossip helps people promote cooperation.
C、The more negative the gossip is, the more useful it will be.
D、Gossip is the worst.
答案 A
解析 事实细节题。由题干中的Dutch researchers定位到第三段第二、三句。由定位句可知，积极的流言激励人们自我提高，负面的流言则使人更为自己感到骄傲，故答案为A)。
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