时差N小时 飞机扶手争夺战(上)

Farewell to Arms

告别扶手

On this moment of science

今日科学一刻

Good afternoon, this is your captain speaking. We are at cruising¹ altitude and will be in flight for another three hours, so you’d better get comfortable.

下午好，我是这架飞机的机长。我们已经到达了巡航高度并且将继续飞3个小时，所以，请各位乘客确保舒适。

That means figuring out who gets the arm rest you, or your neighbor in the next seat.

这意味着要确定出谁得到扶手—你，还是你邻座的人。

Oh, I know the seats are built so that one arm rest is shared by two passengers.

我知道座位的设置使得两名乘客公用一个扶手。

Sure, we could have given all the seats their own arm rests, but then airplane flights would be so much less interesting from a social psychology² point of view.

当然了，我们本可以是所有的乘客都有他们自己的扶手，但是这样一来，从社会心理学的观点看来，这段飞行的乐趣就将大打折扣。

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

所以，其实你们并不介意，对吗？

Turns out you do.

结果证明你们还是很在意的。

In a study conducted by three social psychologists, 426 pairs of people were observed on some twenty flights to see if there is a pattern to who gets the disputed³ armrest.

3名社会心理学家曾做过一个研究，他们观察了20次飞行中的426对乘客，希望能看出谁得到这个让人亦喜亦忧的扶手问题上是否有特定的模式。

The subjects observed were always one male seated next to one female⁴. Guess who got the armrest most of the time?

实验观察基本上是基于一名男性和一名女性邻座的情况下。猜一下谁靠着扶手的时间最长呢？

1 cruising   

adj.巡航的v.乘船巡游( cruise的现在分词 )；以快而平稳的速度长距离行驶；巡航；轻而易举赢得（或获得）

参考例句：

• The car was cruising along at 100 kilometres an hour. 这辆汽车平稳地以每小时100公里的速度行驶。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They will go cruising in the Mediterranean. 他们将在地中海上巡游。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

3 disputed   

v.辩论，争论( dispute的过去式和过去分词 )；争夺；阻止；就…进行辩论adj.有争议的

参考例句：

• They disputed over how to get the best results. 他们争论着如何能得到最好的结果。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The soldiers disputed every inch of ground when the enemy attacked. 敌人进犯，战士们寸土必争。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

4 female   

adj.雌的，女(性)的；n.雌性的动物，女子

参考例句：

• We only employ female workers.我们只雇用女工。
• The animal in the picture was a female elephant.照片上的动物是头母象。