客观只是一种错觉 Delusions of objectivity

“Have you ever noticed when you’re driving,” the comedian George Carlin commented, “that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

“你开车的时候有没有注意到，”喜剧演员乔治•卡林(George Carlin)评论道，“任何开得比你慢的人都是笨蛋，任何开得比你快的人都是疯子？”

True enough. But when you think for a moment about Carlin’s quip, how could it be otherwise? You’ve made a decision about the appropriate speed for the driving conditions, so by definition everybody else is driving at a speed that you regard as inappropriate.

的确如此。但如果你想一想卡林的俏皮话，你就会发现，还可能是什么其他结果吗？你根据行车条件决定了合适的行车速度，因此从定义上说，在你看来其他任何人的驾驶速度都是不合适的。

If I am driving at 70 and pass a car doing 60, perhaps my view should be, “Hmm, the average opinion on this road is that the right speed is 65.” Almost nobody actually thinks like this, however. Why not?

如果我以每小时70公里的速度开车超过了一辆以每小时60公里的速度行驶的汽车，可能我应该这么想，“嗯，对于这条路上的合理车速，平均的看法是每小时65公里。”然而，几乎没人会真的这么想。为什么呢？

Lee Ross, a psychologist at Stanford University and co-author of a new book, The Wisest One in the Room, describes the problem as “naive realism”. By this he means the seductive sense that we’re seeing the world as it truly is, without bias or error. This is such a powerful illusion that whenever we meet someone whose views conflict with our own, we instinctively believe we’ve met someone who is deluded, rather than realising that perhaps we’re the ones who could learn something.

斯坦福大学(Stanford University)心理学家、新书《房间里最聪明的人》( The Wisest One in the Room)的合著者之一李•罗斯(Lee Ross)，将这个问题描述成“天真的现实主义”。他指的是一种诱人的观念：我们看到的是世界真正的模样，既没有偏见，也没有谬误。这是一种非常强大的错觉，以至于一旦我们遇到了观点与我们相左的人，我们会本能地认为对方受到了误导，而不是意识到或许我们自己才是能够从中学到点什么的人。

The truth is that we all have biases that shape what we see. One early demonstration of this was a 1954 study of the way people perceived a college-football game between Dartmouth and Princeton. The researchers, Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril, showed a recording of the game to Dartmouth students and to Princeton students, and found that their perceptions of it varied so wildly that it is hard to believe they actually saw the same footage: the Princeton students, for example, counted twice as many fouls by Dartmouth as the Dartmouth students did.

真相是，我们都有偏见，这些偏见决定了我们所看到的景象。一个较早的例子是1954年的一项研究，内容是有关人们如何看达特茅斯学院(Dartmouth College)和普林斯顿大学(Princeton University)之间的一场大学橄榄球赛。研究者艾伯特•哈斯托夫(Albert Hastorf)和哈德利•坎特里尔(Hadley Cantril)向达特茅斯学院和普林斯顿大学的学生展示了一段比赛录像，发现他们对比赛的认知相差极大，让人难以相信他们看到的实际上是同一段录像。比如，普林斯顿的学生记下的达特茅斯学院的橄榄球队员的犯规次数是达特茅斯学院学生的两倍。

A more recent investigation by a team including Dan Kahan of Yale showed students footage of a demonstration and spun a yarn about what it was about. Some students were told it was an anti-abortion protest in front of an abortion clinic; others were told it was a protest outside an army recruitment office against the military’s (then) policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”.

后来，一个包括耶鲁大学(Yale University)的丹•卡亨(Dan Kahan)在内的小组进行了一项调查，调查人员向学生们展示了一段游行的视频片段，并且编造了一些有关这次游行的说法。一些学生被告知，这是一次在堕胎诊所前进行的反堕胎抗议游行；其他人则被告知，这是一次在征兵办公室外、针对美国军队（当时）的“不问，不说”政策的抗议游行。

Despite looking at exactly the same footage, the experimental subjects drew sharply different conclusions about how aggressive the protesters were being. Liberal students were relaxed about the behaviour of people they thought were gay-rights protesters but worried about what the pro-life protesters were doing; conservative students took the opposite view. This was despite the fact that the researchers were asking not about the general acceptability of the protest but about specifics: did the protesters scream at bystanders? Did they block access to the building?

尽管看的是完全一样的片段，实验对象对抗议者的激进程度得出了截然不同的结论。持自由主义观点的学生并不担心他们眼中捍卫同性恋权利的抗议者的行为，但他们担心那些反堕胎抗议者的行为；持保守主义观点的学生的看法则与之相反。尽管事实上，研究人员提出的并不是抗议活动总体上能否被接受的问题，而是有关抗议活动的一些细节的问题：抗议者是否向旁观者大叫？抗议者是否堵住了建筑物的出入口？

We see what we want to see. We also tend to think the worst of the “idiots” and “maniacs” who think or act differently. One study by Emily Pronin and others asked people to fill in a survey about various political issues. The researchers then redistributed the surveys, so that each participant was shown the survey responses of someone else. Then the participants were asked to describe their own reasoning and speculate about the reasoning of the other person.

我们只会看到自己想看的东西。我们还倾向于把那些和我们的想法和行动不一致的“笨蛋”和“疯子”往最坏了想。叶米利•普罗宁(Emily Pronin)等人进行的一项研究要求人们填写一份有关各种政治问题的调查问卷。然后研究人员重新分发这些问卷，这样每一位参与者都会看到另外一个人的回答。之后研究人员会要求参与者描述他们回答这些问题的思路，并猜测另一个人的思路是怎样的。

People tended to say that they were influenced by rational reasons such as “attention to fact”, and that people who agreed with them had similar motives. Those who disagreed were thought to be seeking “peer approval”, or acting out of “political correctness”. I pay attention to facts but you’re a slave to the approval of your peers. I weigh up the pros and cons but you’re in the pocket of the lobbyists.

受调查者通常会说，他们受到了一些理性上的原因的影响，比如“关注事实”，那些和他们意见一致的人也是出于同样的动机。他们认为，那些和他们意见不一致的人是在寻求“同辈的认可”，或者是出于“政治正确”的考虑。我关注事实，而你却为了同辈的认可而屈从。我衡量利弊，而你却被游说分子玩弄于股掌之上。

Even when we take a tolerant view of those who disagree with us, our empathy only goes so far. For example, we might allow that someone takes a different view because of their cultural upbringing — but we would tend to feel that they might learn the error of their ways, rather than that we will learn the error of ours.

即使我们对那些与我们意见不一致的人持宽容的看法，我们的同理心也只到这里为止。比如，我们或许会允许某人因为他们的文化背景持不同的观点——但我们往往会认为，他们或许能够认识到自己观点的错误，而不是我们会认识到自己的观点的错误。

Pity the BBC’s attempts to deliver objective and neutral coverage of a politicised issue such as the British referendum on leaving the EU. Eurosceptics will perceive a pro-Brussels slant, Europhiles will see the opposite. Both sides will assume corruption, knavery or stupidity is at play. That is always possible, of course, but it is also possible that passionate advocates simply don’t recognise objectivity when they see it.

可怜英国广播公司(BBC)还试图对英国全民公投决定是否退欧这样的政治话题进行客观中立的报道。疑欧派会认为这些报道倾向于布鲁塞尔，而亲欧派则会抱相反的看法。双方都会认为腐败、欺诈或者愚蠢在作怪。当然，这总是有可能的，但也有可能这些激情澎湃的支持者在看到客观性的时候根本不认为那是客观。

But then how could the situation be otherwise? If any media outlet criticises a political position that you personally admire, there is a contradiction to be resolved, and an easy way to explain the disagreement is to conclude either that the media are biased, or that you are. You can guess which choice people instinctively make. Small wonder that careful studies of media bias in the US show that most newspapers and radio or TV stations don’t try to persuade their readers and viewers; instead, they pander to the biases of their audience.

然而事情还能是什么其他样子吗？如果任何媒体批评一种你个人欣赏的政治立场，那么就有一个矛盾要解决了。要解释这一分歧，一个简单的方法是得出结论：要么是媒体有偏见，要么是你有偏见。你可以猜一猜人们在本能之下会做出什么选择。难怪对美国媒体偏见的严谨的研究表明，大多数报纸、电台或者电视台不会试图说服他们的读者、听众和观众；相反，它们会迎合受众的偏见。

It is hard to combat naive realism because the illusion that we see the world objectively is such a powerful one. At least I’ve not had to worry about it too much myself. Fortunately, my own perspective is based on a careful analysis of the facts, and my political views reflect a cool assessment of reality rather than self-interest, groupthink or cultural bias. Of course, there are people to the left of my position. They’re idiots. And the people on my right? Maniacs.

要对抗“天真的现实主义”很难，因为“我们客观地看待世界”这个错觉非常强大。至少，我自己还未曾太过担心这一点。幸运的是，我自己的观点是基于对事实的仔细分析，我的政治观点反映的是对事实的冷静评估，而不是出于自利、集体思维或者文化偏见。当然，会有人比我的立场更左，他们是笨蛋。比我右的人呢？疯子。