单选题
Over the past decade, many companies had perfected the art
of creating automatic behaviors —habits— among consumers. These habits have
helped companies earn billions of dollars when customers cat snacks or wipe
counters almost without thinking, often in response to a carefully designed set
of daily cues. "There are fundamental public health problems,
like dirty hands instead of a soap habit, that remain killers only because we
can't figure out how to change people's habits. "said Dr. Curtis, the director
of the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene ＆ Tropical Medicine. "We
wanted to learn from private industry how to create new behaviors that happen
automatically. " The companies that Dr. Curtis turned to
Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever—had invested hundreds of
millions of dollars finding the subtle cues in consumers' lives that
corporations could use to introduce new routines. If you look
hard enough, you'll find that many of the products we use every day— chewing
gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air fresheners, water purifiers,
health snacks, teeth whiteners, fabric softeners, vitamins—are results of
manufactured habits. A century ago, few people regularly brushed their teeth
multiple times a day. Today, because of shrewd advertising and public health
campaigns, many Americans habit ally give their pearly whites a
cavity—preventing scrub twice a day, often with Colgate, Crest or one of the
other brands. A few decades ago, many people didn't drink water
outside of a meal. Then beverage companies started bottling the production of
far-off springs, and now office workers unthinkingly sip bottled water all day
long. Chewing gum, once bought primarily by adolescent boys, is now featured in
commercials as a breath freshener and teeth cleanser for use after a meal. Skin
moisturizers are advertised as part of morning beauty rituals, slipped in
between hair brushing and putting on makeup. "Our products
succeed when they become part of daily or weekly patterns," said Carol Berning,
a consumer psychologist who recently retired from Procter & Gamble, the
company that sold $ 76 billion of Tide, Crest and other products last year.
"Creating positive habits is a huge part of improving our consumers' lives, and
it's essential to making new products commercially viable. "
Through experiments and observation, social scientists like Dr. Berning have
learned that there is power in tying certain behaviors to habitual cues through
ruthless advertising. As this new science of habit has emerged, controversies
have erupted when the tactics have used to sell questionable beauty creams or
unhealthy foods.
单选题
According to Dr. Curtis, habits like hand washing with soap ______.
A. should be further cultivated
B. should be changed gradually
C. are deeply rooted in history
D. are basically private concerns
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】[解析] 本题关键词Dr. Curtis，定位于第二段，所以，我们就要重点看第二段所描述的意思，因此发现A选项和第二段段尾句“how to create new behaviors that happen automatically”为相同含义。故答案选A。
单选题
Bottled water, chewing gum and skin moisturizers are mentioned in
Paragraph 5 so as to ______.