People are, on the whole, poor at considering background information when making individual decisions. At first glance this might seem like a strength that (1)______ the ability to make judgments which are unbiased by (2)______ factors. But Dr. Uri Simonsohn speculated that an inability to consider the big (3)______ was leading decision-makers to be biased by the daily samples of information they were working with. (4)______, he theorised that a judge (5)______ of appearing too soft (6)______ crime might be more likely to send someone to prison (7)______ he had already sentenced five or six other defendants only to forced community service on that day.

    To (9)______ this idea, he turned to the university-admissions process. In theory, the (8)______ of an applicant should not depend on the few others (10)______ randomly for interview during the same day, but Dr. Simonsohn suspected the truth was (11)______.

He studied the results of 9,323 MBA interviews (12)______ by 31 admissions officers. The interviewers had (13)______ applicants on a scale of one to five. This scale (14)______ numerous factors into consideration. The scores were (15)______ used in conjunction with an applicant’s score on the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, a standardised exam which is (16)______ out of 800 points, to make a decision on whether to accept him or her.

    Dr. Simonsohn found if the score of the previous candidate in a daily series of interviewees was 0.75 points or more higher than that of the one (17)______ that, then the score for the next applicant would (18)______ by an average of 0.075 points. This might sound small, but to (19)______ the effects of such a decrease a candidate could need 30 more GMAT points than would otherwise have been (20)______.

答案精析：名词辨析题。题目所在句表示的意思是，理论上，一名申请者的_______不应该取决于……，D选项代入原文意为“申请者的成功”与上下文意思贴切，因此选D。

错项排除：代入A选项，表示申请者的决定不应取决于其他人，但根据原文，做出决定的是面试官而非申请者，主语不对应。代入B选项意为，一名申请者的质量不由其他人决定，但由于全文大意是说这些申请者被录用时，决策者的考虑因素，所以quality在这里与主旨不符，故排除B选项。代入C选项则表示申请者的地位，与上下文无关，因此也排除。