In our contemporary culture, the prospect of communicating with—or even looking at—a stranger is virtually unbearable. Everyone around us seems to agree by the way they cling to their phones, even without a (1)_____ on a subway.

    It’s a sad reality—our desire to avoid interacting with other human beings—because there’s (2)_____ to be gained from talking to the stranger standing by you. But you wouldn’t know it, (3)_____ into your phone. This universal protection sends the (4)_____ : “Please don’t approach me.”

    What is it that makes us feel we need to hide (5)_____ our screens?

    One answer is fear, according to Jon Wortmann, an executive mental coach. We fear rejection, or that our innocent social advances will be (6)_____ as “weird.” We fear we’ll be (7)_____. We fear we’ll be disruptive.

    Strangers are inherently (8)_____ to us, so we are more likely to feel (9)_____ when communicating with them compared with our friends and acquaintances. To avoid this uneasiness, we (10)_____ to our phones. “Phones become our security blanket,” Wortmann says. “They are our happy glasses that protect us from what we perceive is going to be more (11)_____.”

    But once we rip off the band-aid, tuck our smartphones in our pockets and look up, it doesn’t (12)_____ so bad. In one 2011 experiment, behavioral scientists Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder asked commuters to do the unthinkable: Start a (13)_____. They had Chicago train commuters talk to their fellow (14)_____. “When Dr. Epley and Ms. Schroeder asked other people in the same train station to (15)_____ how they would feel after talking to a stranger, the commuters thought their (16)_____ would be more pleasant if they sat on their own,” The New York Times summarizes. Though the participants didn’t expect a positive experience, after they (17)_____ with the experiment, “not a single person reported having been embarrassed.”

    (18)_____ , these commutes were reportedly more enjoyable compared with those without communication, which makes absolute sense, (19)_____ human beings thrive off of social connections. It’s that (20)_____ : Talking to strangers can make you feel connected.

答案精析：副词辨析题。空格所在句开头说到这是一个可悲的现实，句首的It指的是上文所说的人们通常会避免和陌生人交流，两个破折号之间的内容为插入语，也是对这一可悲现实的解释，后面紧跟because来解释为什么这是一种悲剧。由此可推断，人们和陌生人交流是有好处的，但人们经常避免这样做，所以是一种可悲的现实。根据空格后的内容可知，和站在你身边的陌生人交谈可以获得好处，这种好处应该是很多的，这样才可以和前面的语境形成因果关系。句意为：人们避免和陌生人交谈是一个可悲的现实，因为与周围的陌生人交谈会给人们带来许多好处。故本空应填入much。

错项排除：A、B两项都表示否定含义，和空格前的内容无法构成因果关系，如果避免和陌生人交流不会带来什么好处，那么这样做并不能说明是一种可悲的现实，故排除A、B两项。C项another的出现需要在前文中已经提到过一种事物，后文又出现另一种时才用another表示，C项不符合语义，故排除。