評論
打印
Science and technology
科學技術
Animal behaviour
動物行為
Planet of the apes
猩球探秘
Chimpanzees' personas seem more complex than people's
猩猩的行為特征，似乎比人類還要復雜
HUMAN personalities, it is widely agreed by psychologists, can be measured along five dimensions: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience.
大多數心理學家都承認人類性格特征一共可分為五個維度：外向、易相處、善于動手、神經反應和繼承性。
One person may be more extrovert than another, less agreeable, more conscientious and so on, and to an extent how well two people will get on can be predicted from how their personalities mesh.
甲可能比乙更開朗，或者更勤勞，也可能更固執，等等；就這一點說來，兩個人相處是否融洽，取決于二人性格相斥還是相吸。
People who don't get on, though, have the option of avoiding each other.
甲不愿意和乙共處一室，還有選擇的余地。
That is not true of animals in zoos.
而動物園里的動物卻只能逆來順受，
But they too have personalities.
但是重點在于動物們也有自己的個性。
So, to prevent trouble between members of one species—the chimpanzee—Hani Freeman of Lincoln Park Zoo, in Chicago, has developed a way of assessing those personalities.
就拿猩猩來說，為防止其同類間發生摩擦，來自芝加哥林肯公園動物園的哈尼·弗里曼提出一套得以劃定動物性格的方法。
In doing so, she sheds an intriguing light not only on chimpanzee psychology, but also on the mental evolution of Homo sapiens.
此法一經問世，就像點亮了好奇之燈，不僅照亮了黑猩猩心理學研究之路，對于現代智人心理進化探索的影響也不容小覷。
As they report in the American Journal of Primatology, Dr Freeman and her colleagues started by surveying the existing literature on chimpanzee behaviour.
弗里曼和她的同事將研究成果刊登在《美國靈長類動物學學術期刊》上面，其中提到他們正是基于現有有關猩猩行為表現的文獻而展開探索的。
This search threw up 55 terms, ranging from bold and jealous to stingy and sexual, that previous investigators had applied to aspects of chimpanzee character.
之前調查人員將黑猩猩性格劃分之后，得出了55個術語，包括勇敢、嫉妒、吝嗇以及性別差異思維，弗里曼的研究將這55個術語高亮顯示。
The team then asked five experts—a mixture of scientists and zookeepers, all of whom had had years of day-to-day experiences with captive chimpanzees—to provide their own lists of terms.
之后研究小組找來5位專家，其中不乏有科學家，有動物園飼養員，他們都曾與籠子中的動物朝夕相處數年之久。這五位要做的是寫下他們自己認為的黑猩猩性格術語。
These inquiries collected 71 suggestions, 45 of which overlapped with the 55 from the literature search.
他們一共給出71個描述性詞匯，其中有45個與文獻總結的55個術語重疊。
Finally, they compared their results with a review of chimpanzee behaviour carried out in 2008 by a different team. That comparison yielded two further terms.
最后，研究小組又與2008年另一支針對黑猩猩行為研究小組的結論作對比，結論不過增添了兩個新術語。
Once Dr Freeman had gone through the accumulated list and merged into one term any set that seemed to mean the same thing, she was left with 41 that seemed robust descriptions of chimpanzee attitudes.
弗里曼曾認真研讀過這一系列術語表單，然后將可以劃為一類的術語總結出來。
This done, she gave the list to 17 people who work with chimpanzees on a regular basis at a medical-research facility in Texas, and asked them to rate the 99 chimps there for each of the 41 characteristics.
最終她留下了41個能夠很犀利的描述猩猩行為的術語。歸納工作完成之后，弗里曼將41個術語的列表交給德克薩斯針對猩猩的定期健康檢查研究機構，17名工作人員將用41個術語描述99個黑猩猩。
She found that different people rated the same animals in the same way. That suggests their assessments were reliable.
弗里曼發現即使是不同的人，對于同一批動物得出的結論仍然是相同的。
She also found that scores for particular terms tended to cluster together.
也就是說，他們的結論是可靠的。弗里曼還察覺到，一類特殊的詞匯總是集中性的出現。
A chimp that scored highly for irritability, for example, was also likely to score highly for aggression and for jealousy, and to have low scores for calmness and relaxation.
比如，一只黑猩猩在易怒一欄得分較高，那么在富有攻擊性和嫉妒分欄中得分也較高，相反在穩定和緩和分欄得分較低。
That let her apply a statistical technique called principal-component analysis to the data, to work out the dimensions of chimpanzee personality.
從而弗里曼在數據整理中獲得一項稱之為優先分析部分的統計技術，提高界定黑猩猩性格維度的工作效率。
It is analysis of this sort which showed that human personas have five dimensions.
此類分析得出的人類性格有五個維度，
Chimps' personas, by contrast, seem to have six.
但是黑猩猩性格維度似乎卻達到六個。
These are extroversion, agreeableness and openness, which match human dimensions, and reactivity, dominance and methodicalness, which do not.
外向、易相處和繼承性這三點能夠對應人類性格特征，而條件反射、統治思維和使用工具卻和人類相異。
Reactivity is similar to the human dimension called neuroticism, though not similar enough, in Dr Freeman's view, to justify the same label.
條件反射與人類的神經反應類似，但在弗里曼看來，明確性格標簽情況下，相似程度是有限的。
And methodicalness, which measures the way animals approach things like using tools and making the nests they sleep in, resembles conscientiousness—though Dr Freeman's raters found this difficult to assess because such activities are not much available to the chimps in Texas.
動物利用外物的傾向性和建造窩巢統稱為使用工具，這一點和人類善于動手是類似的，盡管17位性格劃分人員發現很難去評價，因為這類行為在德克薩斯的黑猩猩身上是不常發生的。
But there is, intriguingly, no human dimension that resembles chimpanzee dominance.
有趣的地方是最后一點，統治思維，這在人類性格維度里毫無對應點。
At the moment, it is possible to do little more than speculate about what all this means.
此時此刻，也應該分析分析這一切的內在意義了。
From a practical point of view it shows that it is probably not a good idea to put two animals with high dominance scores in the same enclosure—a discovery that addresses the question which started the research.
從現實角度看，將兩只在統治思維一欄中得分較高的黑猩猩放在一個屋檐下，不甚明智，這一問題在研究初始階段就已經提出。
From a theoretical point of view it provides a way to study the mental similarities and differences between chimpanzees and humans:
從理論層面看，這給對于人類和黑猩猩之間的心理相似性和差異性研究提供了機會：
what, in other words, is core anthropoid behaviour, and what is species-specific.
換句話說，類人猿的核心行為是什么，還有不同種類的獨有特征是什么？
