【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】[听力原文]
(I—Interviewer; K—Miles Kimball)
I:
For almost a year, economists at the University of Michigan have been asking Americans about their happiness
for the school"s widely quoted monthly measure of consumer confidence. Tonight on our show, we have Miles Kimball, an economics professor at Michigan. He says only results from the first three months have been analyzed so far. We asked him how all this works, language-wise. Good evening, Professor Kimball, I"m so glad to have you here.
K: It"s my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me on the show.
I: Professor Kimball, could you please tell us specifically what you and your research group did?
K: What we did was we added to the survey of consumers the following question: "Now think about the past week and the feelings you"ve experienced. Please tell me if each of the following was true for you much of the time this past week:
You were happy. You felt sad. You enjoyed life. You felt depressed." And people are asked to give yes-no answers to each of those four questions.
That takes only about forty-five seconds for people to answer that, so it"s quite quick.
I: Why would you want to know the answers to these questions?
K: Well, actually maybe I could explain how this relates to language because I think that answers the question, too. So, in most languages, the word for happiness is related to the word for good luck. And in English,
for example, we have the word happenstance" or this archaic phrase "as happy has it," which are both about luck and things that happen by chance.
And so that meaning of happiness ends up meaning something like having a good life or the outcome of good fortune. And it"s important to realize this is a different meaning of happiness than just how you feel. They"re obviously related, and that"s important—related but different. One of the striking facts about happiness in the sense of how you feel is that it tends to go back to normal pretty fast.
I: And what have you found so far?
K:
So we found this in our data after-in people"s reaction after Hurricane Katrina.
So we measured the happiness of people across the country—
so almost none of these people are those who are directly affected by the hurricane, and yet their happiness dipped down for a week or two. And then it came back to normal.
So it"s not too surprising that people would react strongly to Katrina. But then that becomes a measuring rod for other things.
How long have the economists been asking Americans about their happiness?
[解析] 本题的出题点在主持人的开场白处。题干问经济学家调查美国人民的幸福度有多长时间了。听音重点在economists以及asking Americans about their happiness处。对话开头主持人介绍说，近一年来，密歇根大学的经济学家一直在调查美国人的幸福程度，故B正确。
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】[听力原文]
How long did it take to answer the questions of Professor Kimball and his group?
[解析] 本题的出题点在数字处。题于问的是人们用多长时间来回答Kimball教授及其团队所提出的问题。对话中提到That takes only about forty-five seconds for people to answer that, so it"s quite quick.即：人们只需要45秒来回答这些问题，时间很短。故答案为B。