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       2020考研英语阅读水平想要提升较快，并不容易!需要2020考研者每天有良好的英语阅读习惯，久而久之慢慢进步!接下来，北京文都考研网为助力学子们备考英语阅读，特意整理了考研英语阅读双语经济学人:捡到钱包你会怎么做?供考生参考。

2020考研英语阅读双语经济学人:捡到钱包你会怎么做?

More money in a lost wallet means it is more likely to be returned

钱包里的钱越多，找回来的可能性就越大

Imagine that you found a wallet in the street containing a stranger’s contact details but no cash. Would you go out of your way to return it to its owner? Now imagine that the same wallet contained a few crisp banknotes. Would that alter your response? Does it depend on the amount of money? And how do you think other people would react in similar circumstances?

假如你在街上捡到了一个钱包，钱包里有主人的联系方式但没有钱。你会想办法物归原主吗?又假如在你捡到的这个钱包里有几张崭新的钞票。这会让你的行为有所改变吗?归还与否取决于钱的多少吗?你认为其他人在碰到类似的情况时会有什么反应?

Honesty makes the world go round. Without people trusting in one another, at least to a certain extent, society would fall apart. Honesty is therefore studied academically. Most work in the area, though, takes place under controlled conditions in laboratories.

世界依靠诚信而运转。如果人与人之间不能够相互信任，社会(至少在一定程度上)会分崩离析。因此，人们对诚信进行了学术研究。不过，该领域的研究大都是在实验室的可控条件下进行的。

Moreover, it often features well-off and well-educated Westerners as its subjects. By contrast Alain Cohn of the University of Michigan and his colleagues have taken such behavioural economics around the world. And 40 countries, 355 cities and more than 17,000 people later the results are in for their survey of civic honesty in the wild.

此外，研究对象往往是富裕且受过良好教育的西方人。相比之下，密歇根大学的阿兰·科恩和他的同事们在全球各地对这种行为学进行了研究。他们对全球40个国家、255个城市的超过1.7万人进行了诚信调查。

As the team report this week in Science, from Canada to Thailand and from Russia to Peru Dr Cohn’s research assistants entered public buildings like banks, museums and police stations.

正如研究小组本周发表在《科学》杂志上的报告所述，从加拿大到泰国，再从俄罗斯到秘鲁，科恩博士的研究助理来到了银行、博物馆和警察局等公共场所。

They handed in a dummy wallet to an employee in the reception area, saying they had found it on the street outside, before making a hasty exit. Each wallet was a see-through plastic card case containing three identical business cards (with a unique email address and a fictitious native man’s name), a shopping list (in the local language) and a key.

他们把一个事先准备好的钱包交给接待处的一名员工，并声称是从外面的大街上捡到的，然后匆匆离去。每个钱包都是一个透明的塑料卡片盒，里面装有三张相同的名片(名片上印有一个特定的电子邮箱地址以及一个虚构的当地人的姓名)、一张购物清单(用当地语言书写的)和一把钥匙。

Crucially, some wallets also included $13.45 in the local currency, while some had no cash. Then, the team simply waited to see who would email the “owner” about returning the wallet.

更为关键的是，一些钱包里装有价值13.45美元的当地货币，而另一些钱包里则一分钱都没有。随后，研究小组就等着看谁会发邮件给“失主”以归还钱包。

In 38 of the 40 countries, the wallets with money in them were returned more often than those without (51% of the time, compared with 40% for the cashless). While rates of honesty varied greatly between different places (Scandinavia most honest, Asia and Africa least), the difference within individual countries between the two return rates was quite stable around that figure of 11 percentage points.

在这40个国家中的38个国家，有钱的钱包被归还的比例高于没钱的钱包(有钱的钱包51%被归还，没钱的钱包40%被归还)。尽管不同地区(斯堪的纳维亚地区诚信度最高，亚洲和非洲诚信度最低)的诚信度差异很大，但在各国，有钱钱包和没钱钱包的归还率之差却很稳定，差值基本上都在11%左右。

In addition, wallets containing a larger sum of money ($94.15) were even more likely (by about another ten percentage points) to be returned than those with less, although the “big money” experiment was done in only three countries.

此外，钱包里的钱越多，被归还的可能性就越大(钱多的钱包比钱少的钱包的归还率要高10%)，不过研究小组仅在三个国家做了“大笔钱”的实验。

With greater temptation, then, comes greater honesty—at least when it comes to lost wallets and petty cash. Intriguingly, though, such personal probity is not reflected in people’s expectations of their fellow men and women.

诱惑越大，人们越讲诚信——至少在丢失钱包以及少量现金的问题上如此。不过，有趣的是，人们对于他人是否诚信的预期却与此相异。

When Dr Cohn and his team surveyed a sample of 299 (admittedly exclusively American) volunteers, most respondents predicted that the more money there was in a wallet the more likely it was that it would be kept. They also asked the question of 279 top academic economists, who did only marginally better than the man or woman in the street at getting the answer right.

科恩博士和他的团队对299名志愿者(都是绝对的美国人)进行了调查，大多数受访者认为，钱包里的钱越多，被归还的可能性就越小。他们还向279位顶尖的经济学家提出了这一问题，这些经济学家的作答表现也只是略好于普通民众而已。

A certain cynicism about the motives of others is probably good for survival, so the response of the general population may be understandable. But the warm inner glow derived from “doing the right thing” is also a powerful motivator.

以犬儒主义(即对任何事物都报以怀疑的态度，对他人缺乏信任)的观点来看待他人的行为动机可能会有利于个人生存。但是，“做正确的事”焕发出的温暖的内在光芒也给人一种强大的动力。

How this altruism evolved is much debated by biologists and anthropologists—particularly when it extends, as in Dr Cohn’s experiments, to strangers whom the altruist has no expectation of ever meeting.

生物学家和人类学家一直就利他主义是如何进化而来的问题而争论不休，尤其是当它延伸到可能永远都不会遇见的陌生人身上时(正如科恩博士的实验那样)。

Be that as it may, as this study shows, such altruism is real and universal. The study also suggests, from the responses they gave, that quite a few economists have not yet truly taken this point on board.

但不管怎样，正如这些研究所显示的，这种利他主义是真实而普遍存在的。研究还表明，许多经济学家尚不接受这一观点(从他们的回答中来看)。

 

【重难点词汇】

banknote ['bæŋknot] n. 纸币

dummy ['dʌmi] n. 人体模型;仿制品;蠢货 adj. 假的，仿真的

fictitious [fɪk'tɪʃəs] adj. 虚构的;假想的;编造的;假装的

temptation [tɛmp'teʃən] n. 引诱;诱惑物

       以上是北京文都考研网给出的“2020考研英语阅读双语经济学人:捡到钱包你会怎么做?”，希望2020考研学子们，每天都能坚持抽出时间看经济学人文章，相信大家越努力，越幸运，加油!

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