Question

The key to getting people to work together effectively could be giving them the freedom to choose their collaborators (合作者) and the comfort of working with established contacts, new research suggests.

In the study, David Melamed, an assistant professor of sociology at the Ohio State University and lead author of the study, and his co-authors found participants through the Amazon Mechanical Turk website — a service that allows researchers to hire people from around the world for a variety of purposes. For this study, all participants were from the United States.

Those who agreed to participate played online games in which each player started out with 1,000 monetary units that translated to $1 in real money they could pocket. If one player agreed to pay another player 50 monetary units, that second person would actually acquire 100 units. Each of the 16-round games included about 25 participants, some of whom participated in multiple games. In all, 810 people participated in the research.

Some of the games included random networks, where certain people could interact. Others included clustered (群集的) networks, in which a small group had multiple connections — an arrangement that was designed to mimic (模拟) real life, where humans often run their lives in packs. And the networks were either static (静态的) or dynamic (动态的). In static networks, a player could interact only with the appointed partners. In dynamic networks, participants could cut their ties with another player and form new connections. Furthermore, some of the games included reputation information. Participants were labeled based on their history of willingness to share money. The idea was to test whether those known to collaborate were favored by other players based on reputation — a factor shown in previous research to play a significant role in whether a person is likely to partner with another.

Melamed and his research partners were surprised to find that whether people are likely to partner with others had nothing to do with reputation in this study. The findings might have departed from previous studies because of the difference in size and study design, he said, explaining that much of the previous work in this area was conducted in groups of 100 or fewer and mostly involved student subjects. The Turk network used for the new study has been shown to be representative of the U.S. population in terms of age, race and other factors and the introduced players had no previous connections.

Cooperation rates overall were high — and highest when the participants were cooperating in clusters and had the ability to drop a partner in favor of another. “What really seems to matter is the ability to change the structure of a network,” Melamed said. “And the patterns of relationships also made a difference. Those in a known cluster with multiple connections cooperated more.”

1.What did David Melamed and his partners do for their study?

A. They hired 810 people globally.

B. They gave each participant $1,000.

C. They designed 16-round online games.

D. They asked each participant to take part in only one game.

2.Compared with previous research, the new study found that _____.

A. reputation played no role in cooperation

B. student subjects were more likely to partner with others

C. players having connections before were more cooperative

D. cooperation rates were influenced by age, race and other factors

3.It can be inferred that the purpose of the study led by David Melamed is to discover _____.

A. how to change the patterns of relationships

B. what leads people to collaborate most willingly

C. what kind of person is the most popular in a team

D. whether it’s proper to drop a partner in favor of another

Answer

1. C

2. A

3. B

【解析】

本文是一篇说明文。一项新的研究表明，让人们有效地合作的关键在于让他们有选择合作者的自由，以及与已建立联系的人一起工作的舒适感。David Melamed领导的这项研究的目的是发现是什么导致人们最愿意合作。

1.细节理解题。根据第三段中Each of the 16-round games included about 25 participants, some of whom participated in multiple games. In all, 810 people participated in the research.可知，David Melamed和他的伙伴们在他们的研究中他们设计了16轮在线游戏。故选C.

2.推理判断题。根据第五段中Melamed and his research partners were surprised to find that whether people are likely to partner with others had nothing to do with reputation in this study. The findings might have departed from previous studies because of the difference in size and study design,可知，与之前的研究相比，新的研究发现声誉在合作中没有作用。故选A。

3.推理判断题。根据最后一段Cooperation rates overall were high — and highest when the participants were cooperating in clusters and had the ability to drop a partner in favor of another. “What really seems to matter is the ability to change the structure of a network,” Melamed said. “And the patterns of relationships also made a difference. Those in a known cluster with multiple connections cooperated more.”可知，由此可以推断，David Melamed领导的这项研究的目的是发现是什么导致人们最愿意合作。故选B。