早稲田政経2012 III
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Read this article and answer the questions
below.
The big social revolution of the last few
years has not been some great political event; but the way our social world has
been redefined by social-networking sites like Facebook. Darwin and his contemporaries
could not have imagined such things, even in their wildest dreams. For a
privileged few like Darwin himself, the geographical scatter of their friends
might have been greatly enlarged by the newly introduced postal service and a
lot of letter-writing. But, in general, the reach of most people's social
worlds was pretty much confined to those they encountered in person. It seems
that the social- networking sites have broken through the limits of time and
geography that ( A ) in Darwin's day.
One of the curious by-products of this
technological revolution has been an odd kind of competition about the number
of friends you have on your personal site. Some of these claims have been, to
say the least, exaggerated, with the number of registered friends running into
the tens of thousands in some cases. However, even a quick glance around this
strange little electronic world immediately tells us two things. First, the
distribution of the number of friends is highly skewed: most people have a
pretty average number of "friends" on their list, with only a handful
having numbers above two hundred. Second, there is an issue about what really
counts as a friend. Those who have very large numbers―that is to say, larger
than about two hundred―invariably know little or nothing about most of the
individuals
on their list.
( B )
Primate societies seem to differ from those
of other animals in two key respects. The first is the dependence on intense
social bonds between individuals, which gives primate groups a highly
structured appearance. Primates cannot join and leave these groups as easily as
animals in the relatively unstructured herds of migrating zebras or the swarms
of many insects. Other species may have groups that are highly structured in
this way―elephants and prairie dogs are two obvious examples―but these animals
differ from primates in another respect. This is that primates use their
knowledge about the social world in which they live to form more complex
alliances with each other than do other animals.
This social-intelligence hypothesis is
supported by a strong connection between the size of the group, and hence
complexity of the social world, and the relative size of the neocortex―the
outer surface layer of the brain that is mainly responsible for conscious
thinking―in various species of nonhuman primates. This result seems to reflect
a limitation on the number and/or quality of relationships that an animal of a
given species can keep track of simultaneously. Just as a computer's ability to
handle complex tasks is limited by the size of its memory and processor, so the
brain's ability to manipulate information about the constantly changing social
domain may be limited by the size of its neocortex.
This relationship between neocortex and
group size in the nonhuman primates raises an obvious question. What size of
group would we predict for humans, given our larger neocortex? Using the relationship
for monkeys and apes as our basis, we arrive at a group size of about 150―the
limit on the number of meaningful social relationships that humans can have, a
figure that has been given the title Dunbar's Number.
Is this apparent cognitive limit on the
size of human groups a reflection of a memory overload problem (we can only
remember 150 individuals, or only keep track of all the relationships involved
in a community of 150), or is the problem a more subtle one―perhaps something
to do with the complexity of the relationships involved?
The ( C ) the more likely, pushing us
toward the view that it is something about the quality of the relationships
that is important, not just their absolute number. We find an upper limit on
group size because this is the limit of the number of relationships that an
animal can maintain at a high level of complexity. It is not just a matter of
remembering who is who, or how x relates to y and both relate to me, but rather
how I can use my knowledge of the individuals involved to manage those
relationships when I need to call on them.
Source: Robin Dunbar, How Many Friends Does One Person
Need.?
1 Choose the most suitable answer from
those below to fill in blank space (A).
(a) inspired people to invent social
technologies
(b) prevented people from leaving their
homes
(c) reduced the importance of written
communication
(d) restricted people's range of social
contacts
(e) rewarded those in higher social
positions
2 Choose the most suitable answer from
those below to complete the following sentence.
The writer points out that as far as online
friendships are concerned,
(a) a realistic upper limit would not
exceed a couple of hundred.
(b) individuals usually register as friends
less often than do small groups.
(c) it is very difficult to register large
numbers of friends at the same time.
(d) no one actually claims to have
thousands of friends.
(e) there is no way to determine the real
names of online friends.
3 Choose the most suitable order of
sentences from those below to fill in blank space (B).
(a) And this, in turn, is because primates
have much bigger brains for body size than any other
group of animals.
(b) By the standards of more sensible
mammals and birds, they are unusually tangled and interdependent.
(c) This heritage is one of deep social
complexity involving personal relationships.
(d) To investigate what this means, we must
begin with our evolutionary heritage as members, along with monkeys and apes,
of the primate family.
4 Choose the most suitable answer from
those below to complete the following sentence.
The writer uses the underlined expression
"highly structured appearance" to
(a) contrast primate societies with those
of elephants and prairie dogs.
(b) defend primates against the charge of
poor social behavior.
(c) describe the complexity of social
relationships among primates.
(d) emphasize the safety enjoyed by
primates that live in groups.
(e) explain the tendency of primates to
want to leave the group.
5 Choose the most suitable answer from
those below to complete the following sentence.
The size of the human neocortex seems to be
the reason that
(a) conscious thinking is a characteristic
unique to human beings.
(b) humans are more resistant to change
than monkeys are.
(c) humans can manage a larger number of
relationships than monkeys and apes.
(d) neither humans nor other primates
developed highly organized societies.
(e) the social-intelligence hypothesis
applies only to human beings.
6 Use six of the seven words below to fill
in blank space (C) in the best way. Indicate your choices for the second,
fourth, and sixth positions.
(a) as (b) evidence (c) points (d) second (e)
sets (f) the (g) to
7 Choose the most suitable answer from
those below to complete the following sentence.
The writer concludes that
(a) a higher number of personal
relationships results in a higher quality of friendship.
(b) Dunbar's Number should be increased
when social groups grow more complex.
(c) it is time to remove artificial limits
on the size of human communities.
(d) managing social relationships goes
beyond establishing a certain number of friends.
(e) the larger the social group, the less
intelligent are the members.
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