测试：你属于男性大脑还是女性大脑

The tests that show if you've got a male or female brain: The answer may surprise you - and explain your personality
测试一下你属于男性大脑还是女性大脑：测试结果可能会让你大吃一惊，不过它可以某种层面上阐述你的个性哦。

Sit down for a moment. Relax. Then clasp your hands together so your fingers entwine — don’t overthink it! Now look at your thumbs. Which one is on top — the left one or the right?
坐下，放松，然后随意双手十指交叉，注意不要刻意安排哦。看看你的哪个拇指在上——左手还是右手？

【小测试答案】

If you are a man, the odds are it will be the left; if you are a woman, it is more likely to be the right. Now unfold your hands and take a look at your fingers, in particular your index finger (next to your thumb) and your ring finger (next to your little finger).
如果你是男人，左手就会在上，如果你是女人，右手就会在上。现在把双手张开，注意看一下食指和无名指。

This is the stuff of jokes and self-help books — but it is also shown to be true through science. The question is, do these tendencies result from nature — with the biological gender we are born with deciding our interests and personalities — or do they result from nurture, with society and upbringing creating the differing ways that men and women behave?
这类书籍属于休闲娱乐类书籍，但经科学证明也真实可信。问题在于这些倾向源于自然还是社会环境影响？我们的爱好和个性取决于与生俱来的生物性别还是后天培养？社会环境和教养方式不同，男性和女性的表现行为各异吗？

The BBC series Horizon asked Professor Alice Roberts and me to investigate. We started from very different positions.
我和爱丽丝•罗伯茨教授为BBC系列节目《地平线》进行调查研究这项工作，我们从不同的位置开始调查研究。

Alice thinks apparent brain differences between the sexes have been exaggerated by how our culture treats boys and girls. In the programme she carries out fascinating tests to prove her point, such as dressing up little boys as girls and vice versa and watching how people treat them.
爱丽丝认为大脑性别的明显差异夸大了我们对男孩和女孩文化的观点。在项目中做了有趣的测试来证明她的观点，比如，把小男孩打扮成小女孩，把小女孩打扮成小男孩，观察人们对性别互换的孩子们的看法。

Almost immediately, the girls start rough-housing and playing with trucks, while the boys are treated far more gently by the adults around them.
女孩们马上开始玩积木和卡车玩具，而男孩们则由成人温柔地呵护着。

She argues that parents’ unconscious actions — such as being gentler with girls and letting boys behave more roughly — often mould children into men and women who embody gender stereotypes.
她认为父母无意识的行为：对女孩很温和，对男孩们则比较放得开，正如男孩子女孩子日常被塑造的刻板印象。

While I agree that lots of wild generalisations about men and women are bandied around, I also think there may be something in claims that our fundamental biology influences how we behave.
虽然我同意关于男人和女人的很多草率概括，我也认为可能有些基本生物学影响着我们的行为。

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, an expert on the brain who I visited at Cambridge University, has done a lot of pioneering work on this. He believes, broadly, that people of whatever gender fall somewhere along a ‘systemiser’ to ‘empathiser’ spectrum.
大脑专家西蒙·巴伦科恩教授在剑桥大学做了许多开创性的工作。他认为从很大程度上无论是性别的“逻辑性”还是“同情性”都越来越不够明显。

Systemisters are people who enjoy breaking down and analysing systems.
系统逻辑性的人具有分解和分析的特质。

They are more likely to become train spotters or computer scientists.
他们更有可能成为火车的监察员或计算机科学家。

They are what he has called ‘male brained’ — as these qualities occur most frequently, but far from exclusively, in men.
他们的大脑属于所谓的“男性脑”，这些特质的表现最为频繁，但在男性身上却远远不止这些特质。

Empathisers, on the other hand, are more typically ‘female’ brained as they are more typically women.
“女性”的脑部表现出移情性，因为这个特质在女性身上更为典型。

Although there are exceptions, most men — when tested — come out as more ‘systemising’ than ‘empathising’, while for women it is the other way round.
虽然也有例外，但是经测试大多数男人的特质偏“系统性”，而女性则表现出“移情性”的特质。

A number of studies have shown that the greater the difference between the length of the ring finger and the index finger, the more ‘male’ your brain is likely to be.
大量的研究表明，无名指与食指的长度差得越大，越偏向“男性”大脑。

As you can imagine, this is a controversial area of science. Professor Baron-Cohen does these studies because he is interested in autism, which he describes as an extreme version of the male brain — more interested in systems and often struggling with empathy.
可以想象，这是一个有争议的科学领域。巴伦·科恩教授做这些研究工作，因为他对自闭症感兴趣，他将其形容为一种极端版本的男性大脑——对系统性更感兴趣，常常在同理心上表现得差些。