【正确答案】The professor explains that prophecies can be self-fulfilling, because people tend to change the way they act to fit the prophecy. He describes a study conducted in a classroom to show how this works. According to the lecture, the classroom teacher was told that some students were more promising than others. Even though these so-called promising students were actually chosen randomly, they did much better than the other students because the teacher gave them more special treatment. He thought they were supposed to be better than the other kids, so he tried harder to support them. He gave them more eye contact and that sort of thing.

【答案解析】[听力原文] There was one particularly interesting research paper done on how self- fulfilling prophecies work. What they did was take a bunch of students with roughly the same ability and put them in the same room. They then told the teacher that a select few of the students were about to blossom and become really top students. They came back a few months later and tested the students, and the selected "promising" students had all done exceptionally compared to their peers. Remember, these students were chosen randomly. But they did actually end up performing better than the others. So, why did that happen? Well, when the teacher was told that some of the students were really promising, he went out of his way to help those particular students. He gave them more attention, made more eye contact with them and spoke to them directly more often. And the result was that the prophecy became self-fulfilling. The "promising kids" did better not because they were any more able than the other students, but because the teacher thought they were and gave them special treatment.