時(shí)差N小時(shí):對(duì)扶手說再見 Farewell to Arms

Good afternoon, this is your captain speaking.

下午好，我是這架飛機(jī)的機(jī)長(zhǎng)。

We are atcruising altitude and will be in flight foranother three hours, so you'd better get comfortable.

我們已經(jīng)到達(dá)了巡航高度并且將繼續(xù)飛3個(gè)小時(shí)，所以，請(qǐng)各位乘客確保舒適。

That means figuring out who gets the arm rest-you,or your neighbor in the next seat.

這意味著要確定出誰得到扶手—你，還是你鄰座的人。

Oh, I know the seats are built so that one arm rest isshared by two passengers.

我知道座位的設(shè)置使得兩名乘客公用一個(gè)扶手。

Sure, we could havegiven all the seats their own arm rests, but then airplane flights would beso much less interesting from a social psychology point of view.

當(dāng)然了，我們本可以是所有的乘客都有他們自己的扶手，但是這樣一來，從社會(huì)心理學(xué)的觀點(diǎn)看來，這段飛行的樂趣就將大打折扣。

And hey-you don't really mind, do you?

所以，其實(shí)你們并不介意，對(duì)嗎?

Turns out you do.

結(jié)果證明你們還是很在意的。

In a study conducted by three social psychologists, 426 pairs of people wereobserved on sometwenty flights to see if there is a pattern to who gets the disputed armrest.

3名社會(huì)心理學(xué)家曾做過一個(gè)研究，他們觀察了20次飛行中的426對(duì)乘客，希望能看出誰得到這個(gè)讓人亦喜亦憂的扶手問題上是否有特定的模式。

The subjects observed were always one male seated next to one female.

實(shí)驗(yàn)觀察基本上是基于一名男性和一名女性鄰座的情況下。

Guess who got the armrestmost of the time?

猜一下誰得到扶手的時(shí)間最長(zhǎng)呢?

Men dominated the socialspace that didn't clearly belong to either person.

男人支配著不明確屬于任何人的社會(huì)空間。

Adjusting the experiment to only include peopleof equal size, that number dropped.

把實(shí)驗(yàn)調(diào)整到參與人數(shù)體型相近的時(shí)候，這個(gè)數(shù)字下降了。

But the men still took the arm rest three times as often as the women.

但是占據(jù)扶手的男人的數(shù)量任然是女人的三倍。

In post-flight interviews, 68 percent of the men said they were bothered when the otherpersontook the armrest, while only 42 percent of the women felt annoyed.

在飛行之后的采訪中，68%的男人稱當(dāng)其他人占據(jù)扶手的時(shí)候他們會(huì)感到煩惱，只有42%的女人會(huì)有同樣的感受。

Men under forty reported thestrongest irritation.

對(duì)于40歲以下的男人這種刺激反應(yīng)最為強(qiáng)烈。

So…are all men just pushy cads?

所以，所有的男人都這么有好勝心嗎?

Well, one can debate what these data show. But this much isclear: that little strip of plastic isa mini-battleground.

當(dāng)然，你可以對(duì)這些數(shù)據(jù)提出異議。但是這多少能表明，對(duì)這個(gè)小小的塑料制品的爭(zhēng)奪也是一個(gè)小小的戰(zhàn)場(chǎng)。