经济学人下载:心理学 当权者都会腐化 败坏?

Science and Technolgy
科技

Psychology
心理学

All power tends to corrupt
当权者都会腐化、败坏

But power without status corrupts absolutely
但出身卑微的当权者败坏的更彻底

DURING the second world war a new term of abuse entered the English language. To call someone "a little Hitler" meant he was a menial functionary who employed what power he had in order to annoy and frustrate others for his own gratification. From nightclub bouncers to the squaddies at Abu Ghraib prison who tormented their prisoners for fun, little Hitlers plague the world. The phenomenon has not, though, hitherto been subject to scientific investigation.
二战期间，有一个骂人的新词"小希特勒"在英语国家中很盛行，如果这样称呼一个人意味这他是一个为了满足自己，很会利用手里的小权力折磨、刁难其他人的位卑但权重的小人物。从夜总会的保安到阿布扎比监狱里以折磨犯人取乐的狱警， 这样的"小希特勒们"无处不在。但这种现象一直没有被科学的分析过。

Nathanael Fast of the University of Southern California has changed that. He observed that lots of psychological experiments have been done on the effects of status and lots on the effects of power. But few, if any, have been done on both combined. He and his colleagues Nir Halevy of Stanford University and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University, in Chicago, set out to correct this. In particular they wanted to see if it is circumstances that create little Hitlers or, rather, whether people of that type simply gravitate into jobs which allow them to behave badly. Their results have just been published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
南加州大学的 Nathanael Fast 改变了这一情况，他研究了大量的有关身份地位和有关于权力的心理学测试。但发现很少的测试是有关这两项之间相关性的。他和他的同事：斯坦福大学的 Nir Halevy、芝加哥西北大学的 Adam Galinsky 决定填补这一项空白。他们想知道是大环境造就了小希特勒们？还是所从事的特定工作迫使他们行为不端？测试结果就发表在这一期的"实验社会心理学杂志"上。

Dr Fast's experiment randomly assigned each of 213 participants to one of four situations that manipulated their status and power. All participants were informed that they were taking part in a study on virtual organisations and would be interacting with, but not meeting, a fellow student who worked in the same fictional consulting firm. Participants were then assigned either the role of "idea producer", a job that entailed generating and working with important ideas, or of "worker", a job that involved menial tasks like checking for typos. A post-experiment questionnaire demonstrated that participants did, as might be expected, look upon the role of idea producer with respect and admiration. Equally unsurprisingly, they looked down on the role of worker.
Fast博士将213位实验对象随机分配到四个代表不同情形的身份及权力的小组中。所有实验对象都被告知他们将以小组形式参加一个研究，与另一个同样是虚构的顾问公司的同学进行互动，他们彼此并不见面。一些试验对象被赋予的角色是"拿主意的"人－需要他们制定、实施重大决策，另一些人的角色是"劳动者"－做些类似校对、打印之类的日常事务的工作。实验后的问卷调查验证了他们之前的推测：测试对象们对"拿主意的"角色报以尊重和赞美，同样在他们意料之中的还有，对劳动者的角色都是轻视的态度。

To manipulate their power, participants were told there would be a draw for a $50 bonus prize at the end of the study and that, regardless of their role, each participant would be able to dictate which activities his partner must engage in to qualify to enter the draw. Participants that Dr Fast wanted to imbue with a sense of power were informed that one other element of their role involved dictating which "hoops" their partners would have to jump through in order to qualify for the draw, and that they controlled the amount of effort the partner had to exert in order to win the $50. They were also told that the partner did not have any such control over them. In contrast, low-power participants were informed that while they had the ability to determine the hoops their partner had to jump through, that partner ultimately had more control because he could remove the low- power participant's name from the raffle if he did not like the hoops selected.
在如何运用他们的权力的实验中，测试对象们被告知在研究结束后会进行一个价值50美元的抽奖活动，无论他们的角色是什么，每个参与者都有权决定他所评判的对象在完成指定动作后是否有资格参加抽奖。Dr Fast还赋予那些权重的测试对象的另一个角色就是，他们能决策哪些"障碍"是必须翻越之后对方才有资格抽奖，他们还控制着对方努力多少次才能赢取50美元。他们同时被告知另一方则没有控制他们的权力。相反的，权轻的测试者则被告知他们也能决定对方必须翻越的"障碍"，可最后，如果权重的这一方不喜欢他们要完成的动作，他们可以直接将权轻的测试对象除名。

Participants were then presented with a list of ten hoops and told to select as many as they liked (but a minimum of one) for their partner to jump through. Unknown to the participants, Dr Halevy and Dr Galinsky had conducted an independent test, using 58 people not involved in the main study, to rate how demeaning, humiliating, degrading, embarrassing and uncomfortable each of the ten possible activities actually was. Five of the ten were rated as deeply demeaning. These included things like: "say ‘I am filthy' five times" and "bark like a dog three times". The other five were not considered particularly demeaning. They included: "tell the experimenter a funny joke" and "clap your hands 50 times".
之后，测试对象们收到一个代表10个"障碍"的列表，要他们说出他们选了几个（至少选1个）"障碍"给他们的评判对象必须翻越的。测试对象所不知道的是， Dr Halevy and Dr Galinsky 对另外没有参加上述实验的58个人进行了一项独立的测试，即，对这10项行为的贬抑、羞辱、跌份、尴尬、和难受的程度进行打分。10项中有5项被评判为极其贬抑。比如像"说5遍‘我是肮脏的'"和"学狗叫3次"，其它5项不被认为是特别的丢脸，包括"讲一个笑话给对方"和"拍手50次"。

Participants who had both status and power did not greatly demean their partners. They chose an average of 0.67 demeaning activities for those partners to perform. Low- power/low-status and low-power/high-status participants behaved similarly. They chose, on average, 0.67 and 0.85 demeaning activities. However, participants who were low in status but high in power-the classic "little Hitler" combination-chose an average of 1.12 deeply demeaning tasks for their partners to engage in. That was a highly statistically significant distinction.
那些位高权重的测试对象对都不会特别刁难他们的对手，他们让对方所做的动作平均贬抑值为0.67。 权轻位卑 和权轻位高的测试对象所选的动作都差不多，他们所选的行动的贬抑平均值分别是0.67和0.85。但是，那些位身份卑微但手握重权的测试对象－即典型的"小希特勒"的组合体－为他们的对手选择要完成的动作贬抑平均值高达1.12。这是数字统计上的明显区别。

Of course, not everybody in the high-power/low-status quadrant of the experiment behaved badly. Underlying personality may still have a role. But as with previous experiments in which random members of the public have been asked to play prison guard or interrogator, Dr Fast's result suggests that many quite ordinary people will succumb to bad behaviour if the circumstances are right.
当然，在占到测试人员14人数的代表权重位卑的测试对象中，也不是每一个人都有这样的贬抑他人的行为举止，自身的人格特征也起到了一定的作用。但是，在先前做过的实验中，随机找来一些人来扮演狱警和审判官， Dr Fast 发现，如果环境允许，很多普通人都会去试试做个"恶人"。