You may not pay much attention to your daily elevator ride. Many of us use a lift several times during the day without really thinking about it. But Lee Gray, PhD of the University of North Carolina, US, has made it his business to examine this overlooked form of public transport. He is known as the “Elevator Guy”.
“The lift becomes this interesting social space where etiquette (禮儀) is sort of odd (奇怪的),” Gray told the BBC. “Elevators are socially very interesting but often very awkward (尷尬的) places.”
We walk in and usually turn around to face the door. If someone else comes in, we may have to move. And here, according to Gray, lift users unthinkingly go through a set pattern of movements. He told the BBC what he had observed.
He explained that when you are the only one inside a lift, you can do whatever you want – it’s your own little box.
If there are two of you, you go into different corners, standing diagonally (對角線地) across from each other to create distance.
When a third person enters, you will unconsciously form a triangle（三角形）. And when there is a fourth person it becomes a square, with someone in every corner. A fifth person is probably going to have to stand in the middle.
New entrants to the lift will need to
size up the situation when the doors slide open and then act according to their decisions. Once in, for most people the rule is simple – look down, or look at your phone.
Why are we so awkward in lifts?
“You don’t have enough space,” Professor Babette Renneberg, a clinical psychologist at the Free University of Berlin, told the BBC. “Usually when we meet other people, we have about an arm’s length of distance between us. And that’s not possible in most elevators.”
In such a small, enclosed space it becomes very important to act in a way that cannot be understood as threatening or odd. “The easiest way to do this is to avoid eye contact(接觸) ,” she said.
小題1:According to Gray, when people enter an elevator, they usually _____.
| A．turn around and greet one another |
| B．look around or examine their phone |
| C．try to keep a distance from other people |
| D．make eye contact with those in the elevator |
小題2:Which of the following describes how people usually stand when there are at least two people in an elevator? (The point in the chart refers to one person.)
小題3:The underlined phrase “size up” in Paragraph 7 is closest in meaning to _____.
| A．ignore | B．judge | C．put up with | D．make the best of |
小題4:According to the article, people feel awkward in lifts because of _____.
| A．the lack of space |
| B．someone’s odd behaviors |
| C．their unfamiliarity with one another |
| D．their eye contact with one another |
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