2018年经济学人 性感吸引:我的化学浪漫(2)

 

Dr Hare and his colleagues took 43 men and 51 women, all of them straight, and gave them two tasks.

Hare博士和他的同事们找了43名男性和51名女性，他们都是异性恋，给了他们两个任务。

One was to decide whether an androgynous computer-generated face was, on balance, more likely to be female or male.

一个是决定计算机生成的雌雄同体的脸，全面考虑来看，更可能是女性还是男性。

The other was to rate members of the opposite sex shown in photographs for both their sexual attractiveness and their likelihood of being unfaithful.

另一个是评估照片中显示的异性成员的性吸引力和他们不忠的可能性。

The participants completed both tasks twice, on consecutive¹ days.

参与者在连续几天两次完成了两项任务。

On one day they were exposed to the appropriate molecule² (AND for the women; EST for the men) and on the other to a placebo³ that ought to have had no effect.

一天，让他们处于适当的分子中（对于女性为AND；对于男性为EST），另一天则暴露于应该没有作用的安慰剂中。

Crucially, the study was double-blinded, which meant that neither the researchers nor the participants knew which day was which.

至关重要的是，研究是双盲的，这意味着研究人员和参与者都不知道哪一天是哪一天。

This should have made it impossible for unconscious biases⁴ on the part of the experimenters or the subjects to have had any effect on the result.

这应该会使实验者或受试者的无意识偏差不可能对结果有任何影响。

If AND and EST really are aphrodisiac pheromones, the researchers reasoned, then they ought to make participants more likely to assume that androgynous faces belonged to the opposite sex.

研究人员推论说，如果AND和EST真的是催情信息素，那么它们应该让参与者更容易认为雌雄同体的面孔属于异性。

They should also boost the sex appeal of the people in the photographs—and, because of that boost, increase the perception that those people might be unfaithful,

它们还应该提高人们在照片中的性吸引力，并且，由于这种促进，加强了这些人可能不忠的看法，

since the attractive have more opportunities for infidelity than the plain.

因为有吸引力的人比长相普通的人有更多不忠的机会。

In fact, they did none of these things. The study thus found no evidence that either AND or EST is a pheromone.

事实上，他们并没有像推论假设的那样表现。因此，研究没有发现任何证据表明AND和EST都是信息素。

Those who buy pheromone perfumes based on them would therefore appear to be wasting their money.

那些基于它们而购买信息素香水的人似乎是在浪费钱。

Whether the triumph of hope over experience will cause them to carry on doing so anyway is a different question altogether.

是否是希望战胜经验的满足感会使他们继续这样做就完全是一个不同的问题了。

1 consecutive   

adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的

参考例句：

• It has rained for four consecutive days.已连续下了四天雨。
• The policy of our Party is consecutive.我党的政策始终如一。

2 molecule   

n.分子，克分子

参考例句：

• A molecule of water is made up of two atoms of hygrogen and one atom of oxygen.一个水分子是由P妈̬f婘̬ 妈̬成的。
• This gives us the structural formula of the molecule.这种方式给出了分子的结构式。

3 placebo   

n.安慰剂；宽慰话

参考例句：

• The placebo has been found to work with a lot of different cases.人们已发现安慰剂能在很多不同的病例中发挥作用。
• The placebo effect refers to all the observable behaviors caused by placebo.安慰剂效应是指由安慰剂所引起的可观察的行为。

4 biases   

偏见( bias的名词复数 )； 偏爱； 特殊能力； 斜纹

参考例句：

• Stereotypes represent designer or researcher biases and assumptions, rather than factual data. 它代表设计师或者研究者的偏见和假设，而不是实际的数据。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• The net effect of biases on international comparisons is easily summarized. 偏差对国际比较的基本影响容易概括。