单选题 As the Titanic was sinking and women and children climbed into lifeboats, the musicians from the ship"s band stood and played. They died when the ship went down. Men stood on the deck and smoked cigarettes. They died, too. This behavior is puzzling to economists, who like to believe that people tend to act in their own self-interest. "There was no pushing," says David Savage, an economist at Queensland University in Australia who has studied witness reports from the survivors. It was "very, very orderly behavior".
Savage has compared the behavior of the passengers on the Titanic with those on the Lusitania, another ship that also sank at about the same time. But when the Lusitania went down, the passengers panicked (恐慌). There were a lot of similarities between these two events. These two ships were both luxury ones, they had a similar number of passengers and a similar number of survivors.
The biggest difference, Savage concludes, was time. The Lusitania sank in less than 20 minutes. But for the Titanic, it was two-and-a-half hours. "If you"ve got an event that lasts two-and-a-half hours, social order will take over and everybody will behave in a social manner," Savage says. "If you"re going down in under 17 minutes, basically it"s instinctual." On the Titanic, social order ruled, and it was women and children first. On the Lusitania, instinct won out . The survivors were largely the people who could swim and get into the lifeboats.
Yes, we"re self-interested, Savage says. But we"re also part of a society. Given time, social norms (规范) can beat our natural self-interest. A hundred years ago, women and children always went first. Men were stoic (坚忍的). On the Titanic, there was enough time for these norms to become forceful.

单选题 According to the author, economists were confused because ______.

单选题 The expression "won out" in the third paragraph is closest in meaning to "______".

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 根据文章第三段最后一句可知，卢西塔尼亚号上的幸存者大部分是那些会游泳并且能够逃到救生船上的人。这与泰坦尼克号上的情况形成了鲜明的对比，在泰坦尼克号上社会秩序战胜了本能，而在卢西塔尼亚号上本能战胜了社会秩序。因此“won out”的意思与“took the upper hand(占上风，胜出)”相近。故选A。

单选题 According to David Savage, ______ was a critical factor in determining people"s behavior in the sinking of these two ships.

单选题 According to the passage, which of the following is NOT TRUE?

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】[解析] 根据第二段最后一句可知，这两艘船都是豪华巨轮，它们有着相似数量的乘客，有着相似数量的幸存者。因此，A、C和D项描述正确。根据第三段最后一句“The survivors were largely the people who could swim and get into the lifeboats. ”可知，卢西塔尼亚号上的幸存者是那些会游泳的人，而不是选项B中的“妇女和孩子”。故选B。

单选题 Which of the following is an appropriate title for this passage?

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[解析] 文章首段就描述了泰坦尼克号沉没时的情形，并引出经济学家的疑惑。接着通过对泰坦尼克号和卢西塔尼亚号沉没的两个事件的对比，总结出决定人们选择遵守社会秩序或本能自私地逃生的主要原因是沉船时间的长短。最后作者总结，如果时间充足的话，社会秩序就能够打败我们本能的自私自利。在泰坦尼克号上，是因为有足够的时间让这些秩序发挥效力。因此，选项C符合文章的主题。A、B、D项中提到的都是关于乘客的一些细节，并不是对全文的概括。故选C。