How Much to Tip
You're out to dinner.The food is delicious and the service is fine.You decide to leave a big fat tip.
Why? The answer may not be as simple as you think.
Tipping, psychologists have found, is not just about service.Instead, studies have shown that tipping
can be affected by psychological reactions to a series of different factors from the waiter's choice of
words, to how they carry themselves while taking orders, to the bill's total.Even how much waiters
remind customers of themselves can determine how much change they pocket by the end of the night.
"Studies before have shown that mimicry (模仿) brings into positive feelings for the mimicker,
"wrote Rick van Baaren, a social psychology professor."These studies show that people who are being
mimicked become more generous toward the person who mimicks them."
So Rick van Baaren divided 59 waiters into two groups.He requested that half serve with a phrase
such as, "Coming up!"Those in the other half were instructed to repeat the orders and preferences back
to the customers.Rick van Baaren then compared their takehome pay.The results were clear-it pays to
mimic your customer.The copycat (模仿者) waiters earned almost double the amount of tips to the other
group.
Leonard Green and Joel Myerson, psychologists at Washington University in St.Louis, found the
generosity of a tipper may be limited by his bill.After research on the 1,000 tips left for waiters,
cabdrivers, hair stylists, they found tip percentages in these three areas dropped as customers' bills went
up.In fact, tip percentages appear to plateau (穩定期) when bills topped $100 and a bill for $200 made
the worker gain no bigger percentage tip than a bill for $100.
"That's also a point of tipping, " Green says."You have to give a little extra to the cabdriver for being
there to pick you up and something to the waiter for being there to serve you.If they weren't there, you'd
never get any service.So part of the idea of a tip is for just being there."
1. Apart from service, how many other factors affecting the customers'tipping are mentioned in the
passage?
A. 1.
B. 2.
C. 3.
D. 4.
2. These studies show that________.
A. tipping can be affected by physical reactions to many different waiters
B. people who are being mimicked usually tip less to the person who mimics them
C. the mimic waiters can get almost twice as much money as those who don't mimick others
D. mimicry makes the mimicker feel bad
3. According to the passage, which of the following will be likely to show the right change of
the tip percentages?
4. We know from the passage that the writer seems to________.
A. object to Mr Green's idea about tipping
B. think part of Mr Green's explanation is reasonable
C. give his generous tip to waiters very often
D. support the opinions of Mr Green and Rick van Baaren about tipping
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