If you find yourself waiting in a long queue at an airport or bus terminus this holiday, will you try to analyse what it is about queuing that makes you angry? Or will you just get angry with the nearest official?
Professor Richard Larson, an electrical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hates queuing but rather than tear his hair out, he decided to study the subject. His first finding, which backs up earlier work at the US National Science Foundation, was that the degree of annoyance was not directly related to the time. He cites an experiment at Houston airport where passengers had to walk for one minute from the plane to the baggage reclaim and then wait a further seven minutes to collect their luggage. Complaints were frequent, especially from those who had spent seven minutes watching passengers with just hand baggage get out immediately.
The airport authorities decided to lengthen the walk from the aircraft, so that instead of a one-minute fast walk, the passengers spent six minutes walking. When they finally arrived at the baggage reclaim, the delay was then only two minutes. The extra walk extended the delay by five minutes for those carrying only hand baggage, but passenger complaints dropped almost to zero.
The reason? Larson suggests that it all has to do with what he calls 'social justice'. If people see others taking a short cut, they will find the wait unbearable. So in the case of the airport, it was preferable to delay everyone.
Another aspect Larson studied was the observation that people get more fed up if they are not told what is going on. Passengers told that there will be a half-hour delay are less unhappy than those left waiting even twenty minutes without an explanation.
But even knowing how long we have to wait isn't the whole answer. We must also believe that everything is being done to minimize our delay. Larson cites the example of two neighbouring American banks. One was highly computerised and served a customer, on average, every 30 seconds. The other bank was less automated and took twice as long. But because the tellers at the second bank looked extremely busy, customers believed the service was faster and many transferred their accounts to the slower bank. Ultimately, the first bank had to introduce time-wasting ways of appearing more dynamic.

单选题 Lengthening the walk from the airport to the baggage reclaim is to ______.

单选题 Which of the following statements is TRUE with regard to the Houston Airport experiment? ______

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】 细节判断题。由文章第三段第一句话“The airport authorities decided to lengthen the walk from the aircraft, so that instead of a one-minute fast walk, the passengers spent six minutes walking.”可知，从飞机到行李认领处的走路时间被延长至6分钟，因此B选项正确，同时也可以得知A选项错误。第二段第二句提到“the degree of annoyance was not directly related to the time”，因此C选项不正确。通过第二段第一句可知Professor Richard Larson “hates queuing but rather than tear his hair out”，因此D项也不正确。

单选题 The passage implies that ______.

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】 事实推理题。通过文中所举的例子，以及文章最后一句提到的“Ultimately, the first bank had to introduce time-wasting ways of appearing more dynamic.”(最后，第一家也不得不采用费时但看起来更有动态变化的方式)，可以得知作者认为“people tend to trust their eyes rather than their brain”，人们倾向于相信自己的眼睛而不愿意相信自己的头脑。因此A选项为正确答案。