2019考研英语阅读理解专项试题1_第2页

来源：华课网校 [2018年3月30日] 【大中小】

　　Text2

　　In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Aladuell argues that social epidemics are driven in large part by the acting of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well-connected. The idea is intuitively compelling, but it doesn’t explain how ideas actually spread.

　　The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible sounding but largely untested theory called the “two step flow of communication”: Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else. Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those selected people will do most of the work for them. The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of people was wearing, promoting or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. Anecdotal evidence of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends.

　　In their recent work, however, some researchers have come up with the finding that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they don’t seem to be required of all.

　　The researchers’ argument stems from a simple observation about social influence, with the exception of a few celebrities like Oprah Winfrey—whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence—even the most influential members of a population simply don’t interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these non-celebring influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected, must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example the cascade of change won’t propagate very far or affect many people.

　　Building on the basic truth about interpersonal influence, the researchers studied the dynamics of populations manipulating a number of variables relating of populations, manipulating a number of variables relating to people’s ability to influence others and their tendency to be.

　　6. By citing the book The Tipping Point, the author intends to

　　[A]analyze the consequences of social epidemics

　　[B]discuss influentials’ function in spreading ideas

　　[C]exemplify people’s intuitive response to social epidemics

　　[D]describe the essential characteristics of influentials.

　　选B. 推理题。文章开头作者介绍The Tipping Point这本书的中心思想是“一小部分名人引领了社会潮流”，但是在段末又表示“书作者的想法并不能解释思想是如何传播的”，由此引出对名人在思想传播中作用的讨论。

　　7.The author suggests that the “two-step-flow theory”

　　[A]serves as a solution to marketing problems

　　[B]has helped explain certain prevalent trends

　　[C]has won support from influentials

　　[D]requires solid evidence for its validity

　　选D.细节题。第二段的首句作者使用“a plausible sounding but largely untested theory”来修饰“two-step-flow theory”，同时第三段整段都是对名人思想传播论的否定。