Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word
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 ___8___ this idea, he turned to the university-admissions process. In theory, the ___9___ 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 would need 30 more GMAT points than would otherwise have been ___20___.