評論
打印
Dr Hare and his colleagues took 43 men and 51 women, all of them straight, and gave them two tasks.
Hare博士和他的同事們找了43名男性和51名女性，他們都是異性戀，給了他們兩個任務。
One was to decide whether an androgynous computer-generated face was, on balance, more likely to be female or male.
一個是決定計算機生成的雌雄同體的臉，全面考慮來看，更可能是女性還是男性。
The other was to rate members of the opposite sex shown in photographs for both their sexual attractiveness and their likelihood of being unfaithful.
另一個是評估照片中顯示的異性成員的性吸引力和他們不忠的可能性。
The participants completed both tasks twice, on consecutive days.
參與者在連續幾天兩次完成了兩項任務。
On one day they were exposed to the appropriate molecule (AND for the women; EST for the men) and on the other to a placebo that ought to have had no effect.
一天，讓他們處于適當的分子中（對于女性為AND；對于男性為EST），另一天則暴露于應該沒有作用的安慰劑中。
Crucially, the study was double-blinded, which meant that neither the researchers nor the participants knew which day was which.
至關重要的是，研究是雙盲的，這意味著研究人員和參與者都不知道哪一天是哪一天。
This should have made it impossible for unconscious biases on the part of the experimenters or the subjects to have had any effect on the result.
這應該會使實驗者或受試者的無意識偏差不可能對結果有任何影響。
If AND and EST really are aphrodisiac pheromones, the researchers reasoned, then they ought to make participants more likely to assume that androgynous faces belonged to the opposite sex.
研究人員推論說，如果AND和EST真的是催情信息素，那么它們應該讓參與者更容易認為雌雄同體的面孔屬于異性。
They should also boost the sex appeal of the people in the photographs—and, because of that boost, increase the perception that those people might be unfaithful,
它們還應該提高人們在照片中的性吸引力，并且，由于這種促進，加強了這些人可能不忠的看法，
since the attractive have more opportunities for infidelity than the plain.
因為有吸引力的人比長相普通的人有更多不忠的機會。
In fact, they did none of these things. The study thus found no evidence that either AND or EST is a pheromone.
事實上，他們并沒有像推論假設的那樣表現。因此，研究沒有發現任何證據表明AND和EST都是信息素。
Those who buy pheromone perfumes based on them would therefore appear to be wasting their money.
那些基于它們而購買信息素香水的人似乎是在浪費錢。
Whether the triumph of hope over experience will cause them to carry on doing so anyway is a different question altogether.
是否是希望戰勝經驗的滿足感會使他們繼續這樣做就完全是一個不同的問題了。
英文文本來自經濟學人 譯文來自七呵夫
