In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that "social epidemics" are driven in large part by the actions of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well connected. The idea is intuitively compelling--we think we see it happening all the time--but it doesn’t explain how ideas actually spread.
The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible-sounding but largely untested theory called the "two-step flow of communication": Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else. Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those select people will do most of the work for them. The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of certain looks, brands, or neighborhoods. In many such cases, a cursory search for causes finds that some small group of people was wearing, promoting or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. Anecdotal evidence of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends.
In their recent work, however, some researchers have come up with the finding that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they don’t seem to be required at all.
The researchers’ argument stems from a simple observation about social influence, with the exception of a few celebrities like Oprah Winfrey--whose outside presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal influence--even the most influential members of a population simply don’t interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these non-celebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics, by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example, the cascade of change won’t propagate very far or affect many people.
Building on the basic truth about interpersonal influence, the researchers studied the dynamics of populations, manipulating a number of variables relating to people’s ability to influence others and their tendency to be influenced.
The underlined phrase "these people" in paragraph 4 refers to the ones who （）
A. stay outside the network of social influence
B. have little contact with the source of influence
C. are influenced and then influence others
D. are influenced by the initial influential
参考答案：C
解析：
[定位] 根据题干，可以定位于第4段。
文章中，在提到these people之前，说到“每个有影响力的人一定是先影响其熟悉的人，这些熟悉的人又会继续影响他们熟悉的人，以此类推”，而these people所在的部分提到这些人与最初、有影响力的人是无关的，由此看出应该是指没有直接接触influential的人，同时这些人都受到了他人的影响，然后再去影响别人，故选C。
[避错] 选项A：在社会影响的人际网之外的人。选项B：与有影响力的发源处没有联系的人。选项D：是受最初影响者的影响的人。这三项均无法从文章中推出。
[点睛] 该题难度较大，由于文中出现了多处人称词，使得考生对于these people的指代产生疑惑，这时，需要考生仔细分析句子结构，同时要紧扣段落主旨，以便找出答案。