好英语网情人眼里出西施：定向认知偏差从何而来
As a child of the 1990s, my mind turned to Chandler Bing several times while writing this article. His inability to be annoyed by Janice’s laugh in Friends is, I think, a very good analogy for the idea that we can be blinded by love. An unlikely romantic couple seeming to hit things off when all around them can see how bad a match they are is perhaps the most common trope in romantic comedies. But when people we know are unable to detect the idiosyncrasies of the people they are dating, they are not doing it for comedic effect.
上世纪90年代的时候我还是一个少年，今天写这篇文章时，我不由多次想到当年看的电视剧《老友记》其中一位男主角钱德勒·宾（Chandler Bing） 。我认为钱德勒的女友珍妮丝笑声很可笑，但他却并不介意，这就是个很好的例子，正好说明爱情会令我们变得盲目。身边的人都能看出他们根本是一对不怎么般配的情侣，但当事人却能擦出爱的火花，如此的反差或许正是浪漫喜剧常用这样的恋情大做文章的原因。不过要是我们认识的某个人认不清他们情侣的个性人品，原因则并非是为了达到喜剧效果。
It can be frustrating to see a friend in a new relationship that we think is a bad fit for them. But have you noticed that often there is little you can do to draw their attention to their partner’s flaws? Your friend could be full of praise for their new partner, which might look at best like an exaggeration and at worst like they are completely misguided.
当一位朋友开始一段新恋情，而我们发现恋情的另一方并不值得朋友如此投入之时，难免会感到丧气。但你是否留意到，你想让你的朋友看清他的新恋人的缺点，但往往是徒劳无功? 你的朋友可能会对他的新伴侣赞不绝口，说好听一点是夸大其词，往坏里说则可能完全是误会。
There is a conundrum at the heart of understanding how judgements work in relationships. On the one hand, we need to accurately assess whether someone is right for us because it is such an important decision – this is someone who we might potentially spend the rest of our lives with. On the other, a lot of evidence suggests that we are very bad at evaluating the qualities of the people closest to us.
人在恋爱中判断力如何起作用？此问题的核心是一个难解的谜题。一方面，我们需要确凿知道某个人是否真的适合我们，因为这个决定实在太重要，我们选定的伴侣可能将会与我们共谐连理，白头偕老。另一方面，很多事实证明，对我们身边最亲近的人，其品行如何我们最不善于判断。
Love blinds us to the realities of the people around us. In one study, participants in relationships were asked to write about recent romantic moments, or random events, that they had shared with their partner after being shown a photo of an attractive stranger. While writing down their story, they ticked a box every time their thoughts drifted back to the photo of the stranger. The participants who wrote about romantic anecdotes ticked the box one-sixth as often as the group who wrote about random events. It seems that we are much less likely to be distracted by attractive alternatives while concentrating on the things we love about our partner.
情人眼里出西施，爱情把我们变得很盲目，让我们看不清我们亲近者的真相。有项研究向正在恋爱中的参与者先出示一张漂亮的陌生人照片，然后要求他们写下最近与伴侣分享的的浪漫时刻，或者发生在身上的一些偶然事件。研究还要求他们在写下自己的故事时，每想到一次那个漂亮陌生人的照片，就在框里打一个勾。结果是，回忆自己浪漫时刻的参与者所打之勾只是写随机事件的参与者的六分之一。看来，当我们对伴侣爱得很深的时候，我们很难被其他漂亮的人所吸引。
It makes sense that feelings of commitment will lessen our desires to look elsewhere, but love also makes us poor judges of our partners, too.
恋爱的感觉会降低我们花心的欲望，这是有道理的，但爱也会让我们评价伴侣的能力变得很糟糕。
Across most cultures, there is good evidence that humans prioritise attractiveness, kindness and status (or, the access someone has to resources) when looking for a new partner. These qualities are referred to as the "Big Three". How we prefer these qualities to manifest varies across cultures, as most cultures have different standards of beauty, for example. Or when it comes to status, some people might value a particular job or level of income, while for other people a rank or social class is more important. But we can generalise to say that all humans are interested in physical attraction, how nice a person is, and whether they can provide for you. You would think, therefore, that we should be quite good at measuring these qualities – otherwise the behaviour would not have evolved in humans.
有充分的事实证明，在大多数社会，我们物色新伴侣，首先考虑的是外貌、性格善良和社会地位（或能接近拥有资源的权贵之类）。这三项被称为选伴的“三大要素”。我们对这些要素的具体追求则因不同的文化背景而异，例如，大多数文化对美的标准各有不同。谈到地位，一些人可能会注重特定的工作或工薪水平，而另一些人则更为重视社会地位或社会阶层。但总而言之，可以说，所有人感兴趣的不外是外貌吸引力，对方有多善良，以及对方是否能为你提供所需这三项。所以，你可能会得出这样的结论，我们在择偶时应该很擅长于衡量这些要素，否则人类的行为就不会进化。
旁观者清，朋友或许比我们更能判断我们的伴侣之性格。
“From an evolutionary point of view, judgements of the quality of our partners must have some sort of accuracy,” says Garth Fletcher, emeritus professor of psychology at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Take the case of a peacock and peahen, for example. The peahen selects their partner based on their tail – the more extravagant the better. The peahen must be accurately perceiving the quality of the tail otherwise it wouldn’t work. “It should follow that humans are very picky about their partners because we pair-bond for life. So, if we are inaccurate at assessing the quality of our partner, qualities like attractiveness or kindness wouldn’t matter so much any more.”
新西兰惠灵顿维多利亚大学心理学名誉教授加思·弗莱谢说：“以进化理论来看，动物对伴侣品质的判断必须要有一定的准确性。”以孔雀为例。雌孔雀以雄性的尾巴做择偶的尺度，尾巴越华丽越好。因此雌孔雀必须有准确感知雄性尾巴质素的能力，否则这种择偶方式就起不到作用。“因此，人类应该对伴侣非常挑剔才对，因为我们要终生相守。所以，如果我们无法准确地评价伴侣的品质，那就谈不上外貌吸引力或为人善良等要求了。”
Fletcher describes two ways that we might inaccurately assess our partners: directional bias and tracking accuracy.
弗莱谢提出了人类可能无法准确评价伴侣的两个原因，一是定向认知偏差，一是素质排序准确。
If you judge the attractiveness of someone as greater than their objective level of attractiveness (or greater, say, than a random person would rate them) you are said to have positive directional bias – in other words, it is as if you are wearing rose-tinted glasses. The same applies the other way if you are overly critical of someone’s level of attractiveness – and is called a negative directional bias. It is normal for people in relationships to rate their partner’s attractiveness, kindness and status as higher than others might.
要是你评价一个人的外貌高于他们的实际外貌，或者高于随机的人给他们的评价，可以说你的定向认知偏差是正面的，即是说，此时你好象是戴着一副玫瑰色的眼镜来看爱人。如果你过于挑剔某人的外貌，这就是另一种定向认知偏差，称为负面的定向认知偏差。人在恋爱中，通常对爱侣的外貌、善良程度和地位的评价会高于对其他人的评价，因此一般是正面的定向认知偏差。
Where it gets slightly more complicated is when we consider the order in which we might rank those qualities, which psychologists call tracking accuracy. “Imagine I rated my partner as seven out of seven for attractiveness, six out of seven for kindness and five out of seven for status,” says Fletcher.
略复杂一点而言之，当我们要对择偶对象所具有的上述三要素的高低作一个名次排序，这即是心理学家称之为素质排序准确度的评估。弗莱谢说，“假设，我给我的伴侣的素质打分排序是，外貌打了7分满分，友善打了6分，地位是5分。”
If someone scores highly for tracking accuracy then those qualities will be in the correct order – a stranger would agree that this person was more attractive than kind, and more kind than high-status. But because of the rose-tinted glasses of positive directional bias, the stranger might actually rate them as a six for attractiveness, a five for kindness and a four for status. “People tend to be overly positive about their partner, but score very highly for tracking accuracy, which means that we must be making accurate assessments of that person’s qualities but then inflating them slightly for one reason or another,” says Fletcher.
如果此人在素质排序准确度上得分很高，那么他对自己伴侣素质排序的评估就符合伴侣的真实品质的正确排序，那么，即或不相关的陌生人也会承认你的伴侣确实是外貌强于其善良，其善良又强于其地位。但是由于情人戴有正面的定向认知偏差的玫瑰色眼镜，陌生人实际的打分可能会低一些，可能是外貌6分，善良5分，地位4分。弗莱谢说，“恋爱中的人往往倾向于正面高估自己的伴侣，但在素质排序准确度方面得分则很高，这意味即或我们对伴侣有偏爱，但也必须对伴侣的素质做出准确的评估，只不过出于这样或那样的原因略微夸大了他们的素质而已。”
This discrepancy between directional bias and tracking accuracy might explain how our love blindness evolved. We do rank each other’s qualities accurately. If status is a priority for you, then you are likely to be attracted to people for whom status is their best attribute. How impressive you think their status is on a scale of one to seven is likely to be different to someone else’s interpretation – but that does not matter, because we all inflate the qualities of the people we love.
这种定向认知偏差和素质排序准确之间的差异可能解释了人类爱情的盲目是如何进化的。恋爱者确实能够对彼此素质的高低进行准确的排位。如果你最注重的是地位，那么你自然很可能会被你认为地位是其最好属性的人所吸引。至于按照1到7的分数，你认为伴侣的地位属性应该获得多高的分，很可能与别人的理解不同。但这无关紧要，因为我们都会夸大我们所爱者的品质。
Directional bias – consistently ranking our partner’s qualities higher than other people would – is one of the most important factors that determines how happy you are in your relationship. If you ask people what they want from a relationship, they might say that they want to be seen authentically in a way that matches their self-perceptions. But people also quite like their partner to see them as a bit better than they really are. So, when we are secure in our relationships, this manifests as being overly positive.
定向认知偏差，即总是认为我们所爱者的素质高于其他人，是决定你在爱情中幸福感高低的最重要因素之一。如果你问人们他们想从爱情中得到什么，他们可能会说，他们想他们的爱人以一种符合他们自我认知的方式来真实地看待他们，但同时他们也很希望自己的爱人能把自己看得比实际情况好一点。所以，当我们在爱情中感到安全时，这种认知偏差的宣示就会过于正面。
“Your job in a relationship is to encourage your partner, to be a cheerleader,” says Fletcher. “People want their partners to see and accentuate their positives. If you want to have a good, happy relationship then it is helpful to have a charitable bias towards your partner. When you stop doing that your partner might interpret that you want them to change. It sends a powerful message that they are not good enough for you.”
弗莱谢说，“在恋爱中，你的工作就是做一名啦啦队员，鼓励你的爱人。人们希望自己的爱人能看到并强调他们的优点。如果你想拥有一段美好幸福的关系，那么对你的爱人抱有宽容的偏见是有助于两人的感情的。如你不这样做，你的爱人可能会认为你想改变他/她。这就等于向伴侣发出了一个强列的信息：他/她配不上你。”
It is sexually advantageous to be a cheerleader for our friends, and not just our partners, too.
不仅仅是为我们的爱侣当啦啦队员，也为我们的朋友称赞道好，会使我们获得性方面的优势。
“Women are biased about their same-sex friends,” says April Bleske-Rechek, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. “It is well established that women compete with each other on attractiveness, but they will rate their close female friends as more attractive than them. They rate them even higher than when they rate themselves.”
威斯康星大学奥克莱尔分校的心理学家布莱斯克‧雷切克（April Bleske-Rechek）说，“同性相嫉，女性对她们的同性朋友常怀偏见。众所周知，女性之间会在外貌上展开竞争，但会认为自己的闺蜜比自己更漂亮。她们对闺蜜外貌评价甚至比闺蜜自我的评价还要高。”
This could be advantageous because a group of attractive women are more likely to arouse the attention of a group of attractive men. It is beneficial to be in a group that attracts the best quality men and to be one of the more attractive women in the group.
这可能是有好处的，因为一群美女更有可能引起一群帅哥的注意。身处一群能吸引最优秀男性的女子中，而自己又是其中一位最引人注目的女性，这大有好处。
“Women should find attractive friends, but not too attractive because they get all the attention,” says Bleske-Rechek. “It’s like the idea of playing tennis with people at your level or slightly above to make you better.”
布莱斯克‧雷切克说，“女性应该与有魅力的同性交朋友，但闺蜜又不能太漂亮，否则会将异性的目光全部集中在她一人身上。“这就像你打网球，选择球技和你相当或略高于你的人对垒，才会提升你的球技。”
What you think your partner thinks about you is also important for the wellbeing of your relationship. “This is something we are really tuned into,” says Fletcher. “We pick up on what our partner wants from us. Once you start getting into real communication problems and people develop negative bias, they start to see their partner as less attractive than they really are – then the relationship is in trouble.”
你认为你的伴侣如何看待你，对你们爱情关系的正常发展也很重要。弗莱谢说，“这是我们真正要关注的问题。我们了解伴侣想从我们身上得到什么。一旦你开始遇到真正的沟通问题，相互就会产生负面的定向认知偏见，就会贬低伴侣的吸引力，尽管伴侣并没有那么差，这时两人的恋情就会有麻烦了。”
While in love, people also underestimate how environmental factors (like how well they get on with the friends or family of their partner) affect their happiness. “Because their partner encapsulates their attention,” says Ty Tashiro, author of The Science of Happily Ever After, “they don’t see these environmental things that are more subtle. People only recognised environmental factors as an influence on their happiness in a relationship 5% of the time – which is a gross underestimate.”
人在恋爱中，也会低估环境因素 (比如和朋友或家人如何相处之类) 对他们爱情幸福的影响。《幸福婚姻之道》（The Science of Happily Ever After）一书的作者泰·田代（Ty Tashiro）说，“因为他们眼中只有爱侣，看不到这些较微妙的身边环境。恋爱中人只在5%的时间里意识到环境因素会影响他们恋爱中的幸福感，这显然是严重低估了环境影响。”
However, after a break up our love blindness is revealed. Without the physical presence of our partner, says Tashiro, we have a more objective view and are better able to see the environmental factors at play.
不过，一旦爱情破裂，两人分手，这才会发现爱情曾让我们盲目。泰·田代说，眼前不再有伴侣的存在，这时我们才会有较客观的视角，也能较好地看到环境因素对其恋爱起了什么作用。
“People are impervious to good advice from friends,” says Tashiro. “If a friend is in a bad relationship, it is very tough to communicate that to them because they are so tuned into the positives of their partner. When it is over maybe there is this window of objectivity which could be valuable going forward. At this point they might reflect and realise that there were issues in their relationship.”
他说，“人们对朋友的良言苦口会无动于衷。如果一个朋友的恋爱关系很糟糕，是很难与他们沟通的，因为此时他们看到的爱侣都是优点。只有恋爱结束，这时也许会有一个客观的窗口让他们正视真相，才能吃一堑长一智。在这个时刻，他们才可能会反思并意识到他们恋爱关系存在问题。”
Fletcher warns that if you are going to commit yourself to a partner seriously, then there is good reason to acknowledge that you are also going to perceive them through rose-tinted glasses. “Romantic love is a commitment device,” he says. “Part of that is that you view your partner as better than they are. Positive bias allows us to overlook small problems and to invest in our partner once the relationship has started.”
弗莱谢警告说，如果你打算认真对待你和伴侣的爱情，那么有充分的理由承认，你也会戴上玫瑰色的眼镜来认识你的爱侣。他说，“浪漫的爱情是一种以身相许。有部分原因是你会美化你的伴侣。正向的认知偏差会让我们忽略爱情中的一些小问题，一旦进入热恋，就会对伴侣全身心投入。”
But, Fletcher says, you can’t afford to get too far away from reality. It is no good being overly positive because you will be misleading yourself about some of your partner’s flaws: “Romance is not based on objectivity, it is emotion and cognition working together or conspiring to put you in a long-term relationship.”
但是，弗莱谢说，你也不能过于脱离现实。定向认知偏差过于正面是没有好处的，因为会误导你，使你对伴侣的一些缺点视而不见，“浪漫的恋情不是建立在现实客观的基础上，而是情感和认知共同作用的结果，或者说是情感和认知误导你发展一段长期的恋情。”
When your friends are in seemingly unsuitable relationships, remember that they are probably seeing their partner as better than they are, and they might be impervious to your advice and unable to see better options elsewhere. Their assessment may well be wrong, but we are all guilty of it.
当你的朋友在谈一段似乎不合适的恋爱时，请记住，你的朋友可能会美化他们的伴侣，这时你对朋友进言，他们可能充耳不闻，他们也不会移开视线，看到还有更好的伴侣可以选择。他们对自己的恋情之认识很可能是错误的，但不幸，作为朋友，我们除了感到内疚，别无他法。