Over the past decade, many companies had perfected the art of creating automatic behaviors—habits—among consumers. These habits have helped companies earn billions of dollars when customers eat snacks or wipe counters almost without thinking, often in response to a carefully designed set of daily cues.

    “There are fundamental public health problems, like dirty hands instead of a soap habit, that remain killers only because we can’t figure out how to change people’s habits,” said Dr. Curtis, the director of the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “We wanted to learn from private industry how to create new behaviors that happen automatically.”

The companies that Dr. Curtis turned to—Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever—had invested hundreds of millions of dollars finding the subtle cues in consumers’ lives that corporations could use to introduce new routines.

    If you look hard enough, you’ll find that many of the products we use every day—chewing gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air fresheners, water purifiers, health snacks, teeth whiteners, fabric softeners, vitamins—are results of manufactured habits. A century ago, few people regularly brushed their teeth multiple times a day. Today, because of shrewd advertising and public health campaigns, many Americans habitually give their pearly whites a cavity-preventing scrub twice a day, often with Colgate, Crest or one of the other brands.

    A few decades ago, many people didn’t drink water outside of a meal. Then beverage companies started bottling the production of far-off springs, and now office workers unthinkingly sip bottled water all day long. Chewing gum, once bought primarily by adolescent boys, is now featured in commercials as a breath freshener and teeth cleanser for use after a meal. Skin moisturizers are advertised as part of morning beauty rituals, slipped in between hair brushing and putting on makeup.

    “Our products succeed when they become part of daily or weekly patterns,” said Carol Berning, a consumer psychologist who recently retired from Procter & Gamble, the company that sold $76 billion of Tide, Crest and other products last year. “Creating positive habits is a huge part of improving our consumers’ lives, and it’s essential to making new products commercially viable.”

    Through experiments and observation, social scientists like Dr. Berning have learned that there is power in tying certain behaviors to habitual cues through ruthless advertising. As this new science of habit has emerged, controversies have erupted when the tactics have been used to sell questionable beauty creams or unhealthy foods.

答案精析：根据题干中的create people’s habits可定位至原文第三段，对应introduce new routines。该段说到，柯蒂斯博士求助于三家公司，希望从这些企业中学习到如何利用消费者在生活中的微妙线索来引入新的生活习惯。Unilever是三家公司其中的一家，可见Unilever并不是产品，故正确答案为D。

错项排除：根据原文第四段最后一句Colgate（高露洁）和Crest（佳洁士）牙膏的例子，以及倒数第二段第一句提到的Tide，Crest and other products（汰渍、佳洁士和其他产品），可知其余三种都是企业生产出来的产品，并且在消费者身上创造了新的生活习惯，故排除A、B、C三项。

长难句分析：The companies that Dr. Curtis turned to—Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever—had invested hundreds of millions of dollars finding the subtle cues in consumers’ lives that corporations could use to introduce new routines.

本句主干为The companies…had invested hundreds of millions of dollars…，为主谓宾结构。句首的that引导定语从句，修饰主语The companies，用于指出柯蒂斯博士求助的公司，破折号中间的内容为插入语，用于解释说明是哪些公司。finding the subtle cues in consumers’ lives是现在分词短语作目的状语，用于解释公司投入庞大资金的目的所在。之后的that引导定语从句，修饰前面的subtle cues。

句意为：柯蒂斯转而求助于宝洁、高露洁-棕榄和联合利华公司，这些公司已经投入了数亿美元来寻找消费者生活中的微妙线索，企业可以利用这些线索来引入新的生活方式。