時差N小時:對扶手說再見 Farewell to Arms

Good afternoon, this is your captain speaking.

下午好，我是這架飛機的機長。

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

我們已經(jīng)到達了巡航高度并且將繼續(xù)飛3個小時，所以，請各位乘客確保舒適。

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.

我知道座位的設置使得兩名乘客公用一個扶手。

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，從社會心理學的觀點看來，這段飛行的樂趣就將大打折扣。

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

所以，其實你們并不介意，對嗎?

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名社會心理學家曾做過一個研究，他們觀察了20次飛行中的426對乘客，希望能看出誰得到這個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.

實驗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間最長呢?

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空間。

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

把實驗調(diào)整到參與人數(shù)體型相近的時候，這個數(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%的男人稱當其他人占據(jù)扶手的時候他們會感到煩惱，只有42%的女人會有同樣的感受。

Men under forty reported thestrongest irritation.

對于40歲以下的男人這種刺激反應最為強烈。

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.

當然，你可以對這些數(shù)據(jù)提出異議。但是這多少能表明，對這個小小的塑料制品的爭奪也是一個小小的戰(zhàn)場。