“害羞”的選民

Last week, UBS released a survey of 1,200 of its American clients and their attitudes towards the US election. It revealed some striking insights — after the election, for example, the proportion of investors who were bullish about US stocks jumped from 25 per cent to 53 per cent, while those who were bullish about growth rose from 39 per cent to 48 per cent. There was, however, an even more important detail: 36 per cent of respondents said that they did not tell their friends and family who they voted for, because they wanted to “fend off arguments or avoid judgment”.

不久前，瑞銀(UBS)發(fā)布了對其1200名美國客戶以及他們對美國選舉的態(tài)度的調(diào)查報告。該報告揭示出一些引人注目的見解——例如，在美國大選后，看好美國股市的投資者比例從25%飆升至53%，同時看好美國經(jīng)濟(jì)增長的投資者比例從39%升至48%。然而，該報告中更為重要的細(xì)節(jié)是，36%的受訪者表示，他們沒有告訴朋友和家人自己投了誰，因?yàn)樗麄兿Ｍ?ldquo;避免爭論或遭到評判”。

Yes, you read that right. Among these wealthy and (presumably) educated UBS clients, more than one-third were apparently too nervous or embarrassed to reveal their election choice. Call it, if you like, a plague of squeamish silence.

是的，你沒看錯。在這些富裕而且(想必)受過良好教育的瑞銀客戶當(dāng)中，逾三分之一的人似乎害怕或羞于透露他們在選舉中的選擇。如果你愿意的話，可以將這稱為一場神經(jīng)脆弱所致沉默的“瘟疫”。

Sadly, UBS does not have any long-term data with which to compare this result (I checked), and since the sample is tiny, it may be very biased. But I suspect the result points to a bigger pattern — and one that may help explain why Trump won, in stark contrast to the pollsters’ predictions.

遺憾的是，瑞銀沒有任何能與這一結(jié)果相對照的長期數(shù)據(jù)(我核查過了)，而且由于樣本數(shù)量很少，結(jié)果也可能偏差很大。但我懷疑調(diào)查結(jié)果揭示出一種更為廣泛的模式，它可能有助于解釋為何與民調(diào)機(jī)構(gòu)預(yù)測大相徑庭的是，特朗普贏得了大選。

As I criss-crossed the US this past year, I often heard middle-class, professional people tell me — with slightly embarrassed smiles — that they “understood” the appeal of Trump’s promises about change. Yes, their comments were typically laced with distaste for his aggressive persona and words — you only have to look at his outburst against Saturday Night Live to see why his tweets make people wince. But what struck me on my travels was that people voting for Hillary Clinton were rarely embarrassed to admit to it. Instead, they were resigned or dutiful. In political terms, a vote for Clinton seemed akin to eating spinach. A vote for Trump, however, was more like eating ice-cream laced with whisky for breakfast — something that establishment people did not want to admit to.

我在過去的一年里走遍了美國各地，經(jīng)常聽到中產(chǎn)階級和專業(yè)人士(帶著略有些尷尬的笑容)告訴我，他們“理解”特朗普承諾改變的吸引力。沒錯，他們在說這些的時候通常還夾帶著對特朗普激進(jìn)形象和言辭的反感——你只需看看他對《周六夜現(xiàn)場》(Saturday Night Live)的發(fā)飆就會明白為何他在Twitter上的帖子讓人們蹙眉了。但在旅途中讓我印象深刻的是，投票給希拉里•克林頓(Hillary Clinton)的人們很少會不好意思承認(rèn)。相反，他們是無可奈何的或有責(zé)任心的。投票給希拉里似乎就像政治上的“吃菠菜”，而投票給特朗普，更像是早餐吃冰激凌就威士忌——建制派人士不想承認(rèn)的吃法。

I suspect that this reticence will last for some time. Last week, I travelled to Minneapolis (for the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association) and discovered that the local media were gripped by a debate about how to handle family gatherings amid all the political poison unleashed by the Trump win.

我懷疑，這種沉默將會持續(xù)一段時間。不久前，我去了明尼阿波利斯(參加美國人類學(xué)協(xié)會(American Anthropological Association)年會)，發(fā)現(xiàn)當(dāng)?shù)孛襟w熱議的一個話題是，如何在特朗普勝選釋放的政治有毒空氣中處理家庭聚會。

Some people feel so angry that they are taking radical measures. “I sent an email to an in-law telling him that his genial hockey buddy and Trump supporter friend, Johnny, was no longer welcome on Thanksgiving!” a front-page column in Minnesota’s Star Tribune declared.

一些人極為憤慨，因此采取了激進(jìn)的舉措。明尼蘇達(dá)州的《明星論壇報》(Star Tribune)頭版的一篇專欄文章宣稱：“我給姻親發(fā)了一封電子郵件，告訴他，今年感恩節(jié)，他那位支持特朗普的隨和的曲棍球伙伴約翰尼(Johnny)不再是受歡迎的客人。”

However, most writers — and advice columnists — took a different tack and decided, like the UBS respondents, that it would be better to avoid fights caused by too much honesty this Thanksgiving and Christmas. In other words, I suspect there will be lots of loaded, tactful silences around the dinner table, much as there were with the pollsters.

然而，大多數(shù)作者(以及問答欄目專欄作家)采取了不同的做法，他們與瑞銀受訪者一樣，認(rèn)為在今年感恩節(jié)和圣誕節(jié)期間最好避免因過于誠實(shí)而導(dǎo)致爭執(zhí)。換言之，我懷疑晚餐期間會出現(xiàn)意味深長的、策略性的沉默，就像面對民調(diào)機(jī)構(gòu)一樣。

All of this has three important implications. First, it suggests that anybody who wants to guess how the forthcoming elections will turn out in France, Italy and the Netherlands needs to be careful about trusting poll results. Maybe voters in Europe are less shy about non-traditional choices but I doubt it.

所有這些有3個重要意義。首先，它表明，無論是誰想要猜測法國、意大利和荷蘭即將舉行的選舉情況都需要謹(jǐn)慎，別輕易相信民調(diào)結(jié)果?；蛟S歐洲的選民不會那么羞于說出自己的非傳統(tǒng)選擇，但我對此表示懷疑。

A second lesson is that the polling industry needs to rethink the questions it asks. It is striking, for example, that the one poll that was more accurate than most was conducted by the right-leaning political consultancy the Trafalgar Group. Early on, it decided that people were lying about their voting intentions. So it started asking questions such as how respondents’ neighbours were likely to vote. Not only did this deliver a different result but it enabled Trafalgar to predict the result in both Pennsylvania and Michigan.

第二個教訓(xùn)是，民調(diào)業(yè)有必要重新思考它所問的問題。例如，引人注目的是，一個比大多數(shù)民調(diào)都更為準(zhǔn)確的民調(diào)是由偏右的政治咨詢公司Trafalgar Group進(jìn)行的。該公司很早就認(rèn)定，人們不會如實(shí)透露自己的投票打算。因此，它開始問諸如受訪者的鄰居可能投誰之類的問題。這種做法不僅得出了不同的結(jié)果，而且還讓Trafalgar預(yù)測到了賓夕法尼亞州和密歇根州的投票結(jié)果。

The third, and biggest, lesson is that pollsters and political pundits need to move beyond their obsession with complicated mathematical models, and participate in more ethnographic research into subtle cultural trends of the sort that anthropologists do (on the shame problem, for example). Of course, such an undertaking will not be easy. Ethnographic research is time-consuming and cannot be plugged neatly into spreadsheets. And while last week’s meeting of the AAA revealed some amazing, grassroots work that anthropologists are doing to understand shifting American culture, it also reminded me why so few non-anthropologists know about these insights: this breed of academic tends to be very shy about pushing their analyses into the mainstream in a timely way, especially when it comes to politics.

第三個、也是最大的教訓(xùn)是，民調(diào)機(jī)構(gòu)和政治評論員需要擺脫對復(fù)雜數(shù)學(xué)模型的癡迷，對微妙的文化趨勢(比如在害羞的問題上)展開更多人種志研究，就像人類學(xué)家做的那樣。當(dāng)然，此類研究不會輕松。人種志研究極為耗費(fèi)時間，而且無法整齊地編排為電子表格。盡管不久前的美國人類學(xué)協(xié)會會議揭示出，人類學(xué)家正在做一些引人注目的基礎(chǔ)工作來理解處于轉(zhuǎn)變當(dāng)中的美國文化，但它也提醒我，為何非人類學(xué)家很少知道這些見解：人類學(xué)學(xué)者往往非常不愿意及時將他們的研究推向主流，尤其是在政治問題上。

If nothing else, the US election has shown us that we all urgently need to relearn the art of listening — to anthropologists, mavericks, naysayers and, yes, to people with opposing opinions. I hope that anthropologists get more plugged into the polling world. But I also hope that yesterday’s “shy” voters start to talk more openly in the months ahead about why they disliked the status quo. Only then will America be truly ready for change, with or without shame.

別的不說，美國大選向我們表明，我們?nèi)钾叫柚匦聦W(xué)習(xí)聆聽的藝術(shù)——聆聽人類學(xué)家、持另類觀點(diǎn)者、唱反調(diào)者、(沒錯)還有持相反觀點(diǎn)者的聲音。我希望，人類學(xué)家更加專注民調(diào)領(lǐng)域。但我也希望，過去“害羞的”選民在今后幾個月開始更為公開地談?wù)撍麄優(yōu)楹尾幌矚g現(xiàn)狀。只有到那時，美國才會真正準(zhǔn)備好迎接改變，無論是否帶著羞澀。