两性与心理学：教育之反戈

Psychology and the sexes

两性与心理学

Nurture strikes back 教育之反戈

Sep 6th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Some sex differences that look biological are really cultural

部分看起来属于生物学领域的性别差异实际上属于文化领域。

ONCE upon a time, the only ideologically acceptable explanations of mental differences between men and women were cultural. Any biologist who dared to suggest in public that perhaps evolution might work differently on the sexes, and that this might perhaps result in some underlying neurological inequalities, was likely to get tarred and feathered.

曾经有一段时期，男女两性之间思维上的差异在思想上唯一可接受的解释是文化影响。任何敢公开宣称进化历程可能以不同的方式作用于男女两性，并进而可能产生神经学上的不平等的生物学家，都有可能受到公开的嘲笑和奚落。

Today, by contrast, biology tends to be an explanation of first resort in matters sexual. So it is salutary to come across an experiment which shows that a newly discovered difference which fits easily, at first sight, into the biological-determinism camp, actually does not belong there at all.

现在，与此形成对比的是，生物学通常是解释性别问题的首要手段。无意中发现的一个实验表明，初次发现的差异性乍看起来或许能和生物决定论非常完美地吻合在一起，但是实际上根本就不是那回事儿。此举有益无害。

Writing in Psychological Science, a team led by Ian Spence of the University of Toronto describes a test performed on people's ability to spot unusual objects that appear in their field of vision. Success at spatial tasks like this often differs between the sexes (men are better at remembering and locating general landmarks; women are better at remembering and locating food), so the researchers were not surprised to discover a discrepancy between the two. The test asked people to identify an “odd man out” object in a briefly displayed field of two dozen otherwise identical objects. Men had a 68% success rate. Women had a 55% success rate.

《心理学》杂志报道说，由加拿大多伦多大学伊恩·思朋斯领导的一个小组进行了一个测试，展示人们辨认出现在他们视野中的不同寻常的物体的能力。类似的空间测试成绩通常因性别不同而成绩军迥异。(在记忆和寻找普通标志方面男性做的更优秀；而女性则在记忆和寻找食品上更有优势。)因而研究人员对在两者之间发现的差异性并不感到奇怪。测验要求人们从二十多个同类其他事物的简短展示中标记出一个“怪人出局”的目标。结果是男性成功率为68%。女性为55%。

Had they left it at that, Dr Spence and his colleagues might have concluded that they had uncovered yet another evolved difference between the sexes, come up with a “Just So” story to explain it in terms of division of labour on the African savannah, and moved on. However, they did not leave it at that. Instead, they asked some of their volunteers to spend ten hours playing an action-packed, shoot-'em-up video game, called “Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault”. As a control, other volunteers were asked to play a decidedly non-action-packed puzzle game, called “Ballance”, for a similar time. Both sets were then asked to do the odd-man-out test again.

要是他们就此而止，思朋斯博士和他的同事可能会得出结论，他们已经发现了两性之间在进化上的另一个的差异，紧接着以“仅止如此”的口气，用非洲热带草原上的劳动分工术语来解释这一现象，然后继续其他研究。然而，他们没有就此搁置不理。反倒是，他们要求一些志愿者花十个小时玩激烈的枪战光盘游戏，《荣誉勋章——太平洋袭击》。作为对照，其他志愿者被要求玩结果清晰明了的猜谜游戏，《Ballance》，两者所花时间相同。随后两组人都被要求重做“怪人出局”的测试。

Among the Ballancers, there was no change in the ability to pick out the unusual. Among those who had played “Medal of Honour”, both sexes improved their performances.

玩猜谜游戏的那组人，指出不同之处的能力没有变化。但是玩《荣誉勋章》的那组人，两性都提高了测验成绩。

That is not surprising, given the different natures of the games. However, the improvement in the women was greater than the improvement in the men—so much so that there was no longer a significant difference between the two. Moreover, that absence of difference was long-lived. When the volunteers were tested again after five months, both the improvement and the lack of difference between the sexes remained. Though it is too early to be sure, it looks likely that the change in spatial acuity—and the abolition of any sex difference in that acuity—induced by playing “Medal of Honour” is permanent.

给予两种性质不同的游戏并没有多少奇特之处。然而女性成绩提高的分数要远大于男性——大得以至于在两性之间不再有明显的区别。除此之外，差异的消失还是长期性的。5个月之后，当志愿者再次接受测试时，两性之间的成绩改善和缺乏差异性的现象仍然存在。这简直让人难以难以置信，似乎由《荣誉勋章》所激发的空间上的敏锐性——那种敏锐性状态下的任何性别差异的消失——是永久性的。

That has several implications. One is that playing violent computer games can have beneficial effects. Another is that the games might provide a way of rapidly improving spatial ability in people such as drivers and soldiers. And a third is that although genes are important, upbringing matters, too.

这有几种隐含的可能性。一个是玩暴力游戏能获得有益收获。另一个可能性是游戏提供了一个快速提高空间辨认能力的方法，例如司机和士兵。第三可能性是，虽然基因很重要，但是，教育同样重要。

In this instance, exactly which bit of upbringing remains unclear. Perhaps it has to do with the different games that boys and girls play. But without further research, that suggestion is as much of a “Just So” story as those tales from the savannah.

在这个事例中，到底有多少教育因素仍然不是很清楚。或许需要研究男性和女性玩的不同的游戏才知道。但是，如果没有更进一步的研究，这个结论就只能和许许多多的热带草原上“仅止如此”的故事面临同样结局。