Sometimes other people make choices we wouldn't.
有時候,別人和我們的選擇不一樣,
They order vanilla ice cream.
他們點香草冰淇淋,
They quit a perfectly good job to go travel the world.
辭掉了一份非常好的工作去周游世界,
They vote for someone we really, really, really don't want to get elected.
把票投給我們真的,真的,真的不想當選的人。
And if the decision-maker is a close friend or if the choice is one that affects you, you might wonder why they did it.
如果決策者是你的密友,或者這個選擇影響了你,你可能想知道他們為什么做出這樣的選擇。
You might even think you know why.
你甚至可能想知道他們選擇的原因。
But the thing is, you're probably wrong about their motives more often than you think.
但是,關于他們的動機,你的誤解可能比你想的還要深。
People can be good at understanding other people's thoughts and feelings—at times.
人們有時很善于理解別人的想法和感受——有時。
The kind of everyday mind-reading you do when you make inside jokes with your best friends or infer that your partner is upset is called empathetic accuracy.
就像你每天和最好的朋友開玩笑或者推斷你的伙伴不開心的讀心術,這被稱為同理心代入。
But people are much better at empathetic accuracy under certain circumstances,
但在某些情況下——
like in close relationships or when they're really motivated to understand someone.
比如關系親密或者真正帶著動機去理解某人的時候,人們更善于同理心代入,
Generally speaking, though?
一般來說,不過?
Guessing what's going on in other people's heads is tricky.
猜測別人腦子里在想什么是很難的。
That's in part because the same behavior can result from different motivations.
部分原因是因為做出相同行為的動機可能不同。
For example, a 2016 study published in Science found that
例如,2016年發表在《科學》雜志上的一項研究發現:
there were clear differences in brain activity when a person's generous behavior was motivated by empathy as opposed to the desire to pay someone else back.
當慷慨行為是出于同理心,而不是報復別人時,人的大腦活動明顯不同。
But… the end result was the exact same behavior—you couldn't tell the motivation by what the person did.
但是...最終的行為完全相似——你不能通過一個人做了什么來判斷他的動機。
And since we aren't all walking around with brain scanners in our pockets,
既然我們沒有大腦掃描儀,
most of us have to do some inference-making and deductions when we're trying to figure out why people do what they do.
當試圖弄清楚人們為什么這么做時,我們大多數人不得不進行推斷和推理。
And there's a whole bunch of biases that can lead us astray.
有很多偏見會讓我們誤入歧途。
Like the correspondence bias,
比如對應偏差:
which is our tendency to assume people's behaviors have to do with their beliefs and personality rather than the situation they're in.
我們往往認為,人們的行為與他們的信仰和個性有關,而與所處的環境無關。
Researchers demonstrated this in a now-classic 1967 study by having people give speeches about Fidel Castro,
在1967年的一項經典研究中,研究人員通過讓人們說出與菲德爾·卡斯特羅
the communist revolutionary who was governing Cuba at the time.
(當時統治古巴的共產主義革命者)有關的演講證明了這一點。
Subjects watched one of these pro- or anti-Castro speeches,
實驗對象觀看支持或反對卡斯特羅的一篇演講,
and then they were asked to judge the speaker's feelings about Castro.
然后要求就發言人對卡斯特羅的看法做出判斷。
Even when the participants knew the speaker had been assigned their position,
即使參與者知道演講者站在自己的立場,
they still believed they at least partially agreed with their speech.
他們仍然相信,至少部分同意他們的演講。
We just tend to assume that people's behaviors represent who they are,
我們往往認為代表一個人的是行為
not what's happening in their lives, even when we know the context for their decisions.
而非生活中發生的事,即使我們知道這個人決策的背景。
And if the person is outside our cultural group, we do this even more—if we see their behavior as negative.
如果這個人不屬于我們的文化群體,而我們將他的行為定義為消極,我們會更加產生這種想法。
If it's positive, then we suddenly think it's their situation or some external factor driving their good behavior.
如果我們將他的行為定義為積極,那么我們就會突然認為是處境或一些外部因素驅使他們做出良好的行為。
That's a phenomenon known as the ultimate attribution error.
這就是所謂的基本歸因偏差。
Basically, we don't give people we consider "different" from us the benefit of the doubt.
根本上來說,我們不會假定和自己“不同”的人無過失或無罪。
We also can't really cope with the idea that other people are complex and full of contradictions.
我們也無法接受其他人是復雜、充滿矛盾的觀點。
You know you're a multifaceted unicorn:
你要知道自己是一個多面的獨角獸:
sometimes you like to go out and party, and sometimes you just want to sit at home with your cat and binge SciShow episodes.
有時你喜歡出去聚會,有時候你只是想坐在家里和你的貓一起狂看《科學秀》。
But studies have found we tend to view others as more one-dimensional.
但研究發現,我們往往更愿意從一維的角度去看他人。
In a 2016 study, for instance, participants viewing a fictional Facebook page for Joe Smith predicted that he'd prefer vacations similar to the one he just booked.
例如,在2016年的一項研究中,在Facebook上瀏覽虛構的喬·史密斯頁面的參與者預測,史密斯更喜歡的假期和剛剛預訂的假期類似。
Like, if his page mentioned a vacation to a lake, participants rated him as more likely to go to the mountains in the future and much less likely to go to the city.
比如,如果喬·史密斯的頁面提到了去湖上度假,參與者認為他將來更可能去山上,而不太可能去城市度假。
Because nobody's ever enjoyed a lake and a city.
因為沒有人喜歡去城市的湖上度假。
Been camping lately?
最近露營?
Well, no cities for you, then! You don't like them!
那么,你不會選擇去城市露營!你不喜歡城市!
There are a whole bunch of other biases like this one that can affect how we interpret others' behavior.
還有很多其他類似的偏見也會讓我們對他人的行為產生誤解。
The assumed similarity bias is our tendency to assume that people are fundamentally like us—even when they're not.
假設相似性偏見指的是我們往往假設人們本質上和我們一樣——即使他們和我們不一樣。
If we might do something for a particular reason,
如果我們出于某種特定的原因去做某事,
we tend to think other people would do it for the same reason.
我們往往認為其他人也會出于同樣的原因。
Then there's the hostile attribution bias,
接著是敵對歸因偏差:
which is our tendency to interpret other people's behavior as hostile or aggressive to us, even when it's just… not.
我們往往把別人的行為理解為有敵意或有攻擊性,即使它沒有敵意或攻擊性。
And according to what's known as the value-weight heuristic,
按照所謂的價值權重啟發法的說法,
we tend to consider a particular choice's most extreme traits as more influential in someone's decision than they actually are.
我們往往認為,特定選擇的最極端特征對一個人決定的影響比實際更大。
This was demonstrated in a 2017 study where subjects were told that a woman named Julie had decided to move to Fort Lauderdale,
2017年的一項研究中,參與對象被告知一位名叫朱莉的女性決定搬到勞德代爾堡,
Florida—a place that, apparently, the participants largely thought is delightful and sunny all the time.
弗羅里達——很明顯,參與者們一直認為弗羅里達氣候宜人,陽光明媚。
And the more delightful and sunny they thought it was,
他們認為,這個地方越宜人、越陽光燦爛,
the bigger the role they thought the weather had played in Julie's decision to move there.
天氣在朱莉決定搬到弗羅里達所起的作用就越大。
The same study also showed that
同樣的研究也表明,
people made interpersonal judgments based on these biased inferences and then used them to predict people's future choices—often incorrectly.
人們根據這些有偏見的推論做出人際判斷,然后用這些判斷來預測人們未來的選擇——通常是錯誤的。
But the studies did suggest a possible way to overcome some of this bias if you want to make more accurate assessments.
但是,如果你想讓評估更準確的話,這些研究確實提出了可能克服某些偏見的方法。
They found that
他們發現,
being asked to make the same decision before considering why someone else had made it
考慮為什么別人做出決定之前讓受試者做同樣的決定
made the subjects less likely to assume that other people's decisions were based on an extreme attribute.
這樣,受試者不太可能認為他人的決定是極端的。
In other words… walk a mile in their shoes.
換句話說,站在他人的立場上去思考。
Which is something experts recommend across the board for trying to understand other people's motivations.
這是專家們為了解他人的動機而提出的建議。
It might seem a bit trite, but it works. And if all else fails?
這可能看起來有點老套,但確實有效。如果其他方法都失敗了呢?
There's always one sure-fire way to find out what someone's thinking: Just ask them.
總有一種可靠的方法可以讓我們知道一個人在想什么:直接問他們。
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Psych!
感謝收看心理科學秀節目。
If you really want to understand why people make the choices they do,
如果你真的想知道為什么人們會做出這樣的選擇,
you might also like our episode on how the company you keep can influence your opinions.
你可能也會喜歡我們的節目——同伴如何影響你的意見。