四、閱讀測驗
        In an intriguing study, Dutch psychologists followed up on some earlier work on male height to find out moreabout what leads women to prefer taller guys. They were also curious to learn how and why people are satisfiedwith their own height. Evolutionarily speaking, one might argue that a tall man would be preferred by womenbecause, if you follow the argument, he’ll be stronger and better able to keep off physical threats to his family.However, unless taller equals stronger, faster, and smarter, height wouldn’t seem to offer any particularly uniqueadvantage. Taller men may only seem stronger because we associate height with weight and strength. And being“looked up to,” quite literally, may at some level lead taller men to feel that they have superior qualities. The ideathat tall man equals power may simply be part of the male-female power differential. Men are taller because ofhormonal influences, to be sure. This then is translated into social attitudes. We’re all conditioned by media imagesto prefer men and women with a certain kind of appearance.
       The psychologists wanted to understand not only who prefers whom in terms of height, but also how peoplefeel about their own height. The participants in this study were 650 first-year psychology students who receivedcourse credit for completing the survey. They estimated their own height and reported on their sex, ethnicity,and sexual orientation. The rest of the questions asked them to report on their relationship status, the height of theirpartner, the satisfaction with their own height, and their satisfaction with the height of their partners. The results onpartner preferences are a bit discouraging if you’re a short man. In general, women were more likely than men tothink that the man should be taller and they tended to not want to be in a relationship in which they were taller thantheir male partners. Men liked being taller than their partners, but they didn’t care about the height difference asmuch as women did.
【題組】21. What is the passage mainly about?
(A) An interesting myth about height equaling intelligence and wealth
(B) An effect of media on women’s ideas about their looks
(C) A study of people’s ideas about height
(D) A surprising finding on men’s height