Yet that’s exactly what a growing group of researchers are advocating today. A steady stream of research has found that rather than encouraging and diminishing performance, “our society is caught in a whopping paradox,” asserts Alfie Kohn, author of the new book published by Rewards (Houghton Mifflin), which surveys recent research on the effectiveness of rewards. “We complain loudly about declining productivity, the crisis of our school and the distorted values of our children. But the very strategy we use to solve those problems damaging rewards like incentive plans and grade and candy bars in front of people is partly responsible for the fix we’re in.”
It’s a tough argument to make in a culture that celebrates the spoils of success. Yet study after study shows that people tend to perform worse, to give up more easily and to lose interest more quickly when a reward is involved. Children who are given treats for doing artwork, for example, lose for tutoring youngsters don’t teach as enthusiastically as tutors offered nothing. And chief executive officers who have been awarded longterm incentive plans have often steered their companies toward lower returns.
31.According to behaviorism, all human actions .
A) are based on stimulus and response
B) have no bearing on human drives
C) are supposed to be highly motivated
D) are of a great mystery
32.Behaviorism basically believes in .
A) motivationB) performanceC) rewardsD) human factors
33. From the passage, it can be inferred that .
A) rewards are highly effective in America
B) rewards are not much soughtafter in academic circles
C) rewards have long lost their appeal in American society
D) Americans are addicted to rewards
34. The children’s behavior in the last paragraph .
A) can be best explained be behaviorism
B) can be linked to Pavlov’s dogs
C) shows that rewards may well kill desire
D) serve to provided evidence to behaviorism
35. Which of the following in support of the finding that “people tend to perform worse,…when a reward is involved”( last paragraph )?
A) People are not used to being conditioned by prizes.
B) Rewards, like punishments, are attempts to control behavior.
C) Rewards are so indispensable to American cultures.
D) The principle of “positive reinforcement” in not fully enforced.
Passage Four
Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage.
In general, our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic (官僚主义的) management in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, well-ventilated factories and piped music, and by psychologists and “human-relations” experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the fact that man has become power-less, that he does not wholeheartedly participate in his work and that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management.
