Psychology Lecture
心理学讲座
(Professor) Let me put a question to you, just something for you to keep in your minds and think about. I won’t ask you for an answer, at least not today. The question is this: Are humans, by their nature, innately good, innately evil or something in between? Like I said, I’m not going to ask for an answer. For the time being, I just want you to think about the question.
（教授）让我问你一个问题，只是让你保持在你的脑海里思考的问题。我不会要求你的答案，至少不是今天。问题是这样的：人类，就本质而言，性本善，性本恶，还是介于两者之间？就像我说的，我不会要的答案。这段时间，我只是想让你思考这个问题。
Social psychologists have been arguing over it for years, though it hasn’t always been as controversial as maybe it should have been. Many times we – and by “we” I mean social psychologists and the public – we behaved like we already knew what the answer must be and we were just trying to find the evidence we needed to back it up.
社会心理学家们一直争论了多年，但它并不总是存有争议，也许它应该是有争议的。很多时候我们——我的意思是社会心理学家和公众——我们表现得像我们已经知道答案而我们只是在试图找到我们自圆其说需要的证据似的。
Pioneers in the field by and large shared the view that human beings were, at their core, nasty brutish creatures that lacked any sort of moral compass – any absolute sense of right and wrong. By this thinking, humans were “irrational, suggestible and emotional”. One study put it just that way.
在该领域的先驱总体上认为，人类在他们的内心里是肮脏的野蛮的生物，缺乏任何道德上的指导——任何绝对意义上的对与错。这一思想认为，人类是“非理性、易受影响和情绪化的”。一项研究如是说。
Basically, this is the view that our behavior is governed by a tendency to obey and a need to conform. A number of studies were run to test this and some of them have become quite well-known. One done back in the 70s by Stanley Milgram has become something of a classic, and a pretty infamous one too. Anyone care to tell us about it?
基本上这种观点认为，我们的行为由服从和遵守的倾向所控制。许多研究测试了这一点，其中的一些研究已经家喻户晓。由斯坦利·米尔格拉姆在七十年代做的一项研究已经成为经典，却又臭名昭著。谁来告诉我呢？
(Student 1) Wasn’t that the experiment that involved someone asking or ordering another person to shock people…I mean with electricity. If I remember right, they didn’t really use electrical shocks, but the people asked to give them thought they were.
（学生1）这项实验并没有涉及有人要求或命令他人对人冲击……我的意思用电。如果我记得没错，他们没有真的用电击，但被要求给予电击的人认为他们这样做了。
(Professor) That’s the one. And do you remember how it turned out?
（教授）这是一个。你还记得它变得如何了？
(Student 1) I think so, the test subjects – the people ordered to give the shocks – well, they were basically willing to follow the instructions they were given, even when they thought they were causing someone a lot of pain or putting them in danger.
（学生1）我认为是这样，测试主体——被命令给予电击的人——他们基本上是愿意听从他们的指示，尽管他们认为他们是在给人造成很大的痛苦或使他们处于危险之中。
(Professor) Right again. Thank you, Paul. That experiment is the most commonly cited and certainly the most dramatic test of the theory that humans have no inner moral sense; that our “morality” is externally sourced; that it is defined by what is expected of us by the group we see ourselves as belonging to.
（教授）好了。谢谢你，保罗。这个实验是最常被引用的、最引人注目的测试，用来说明人类没有内在的道德意义的理论；我们的“道德”是外来的；它是由我们自认为所属的群体的期望所定义的。
What’s more it seemed to suggest that any sense of right and wrong we do have is a bit…well…a bit…ad hoc. In other words, it’s subject to change as the demands placed upon us change. That paints a pretty dark picture of human nature, wouldn’t you say?
更重要的是，它似乎表明我们的是非感仅有一点点……好吧……仅仅是一点点。换句话说，它的主题随着对我们的要求改变而改变。这把人性描绘成一个非常黑暗的画面，你说不是吗？
So…now that I’ve got you all depressed about your morally ambivalent inner self and worried about what this horrible truth implies for society, I’m going to tell you that things might not really be all that bad.
所以……现在我知道你们所有人压抑着你的道德上矛盾的内心，担心这可怕的事实对社会来说意味着什么，我要告诉你，事情可能并不是真的那么糟糕。
What is not so often mentioned is that Milgram came up with a very different set of findings in a continuation of his experiments. These tests evaluated people’s willingness to comply under slightly different circumstances.
不那么经常提到的是，米尔格拉姆后续的实验中得到了一个非常不同的结果。这些测试评估人们在略有不同的情况下是否愿意遵守。
In these tests it was found that people are not always quite so willing to cause others pain or harm. This was especially true when the test subject received conflicting orders, or when the person receiving the pain was the authority figure himself – two conditions that were tested in the experiment.
这些测试发现人并不总是很愿意让别人痛苦或受伤害。在受试者收到相互矛盾的命令，或受到痛苦的人就是命令者本人这两个条件下尤其如此。
The strange thing is…and this is what I really want to focus on today…the odd thing is that when the results of Milgram’s work were published, these parts were practically ignored. All the attention, particularly in the popular press, was put on the “proof” that we are obedient and brutal creatures.
奇怪的是……这是今天我真的很想专注于的地方……奇怪的是，当米尔格兰姆研究的结果公布，这些部分几乎被忽略。所有的关注，特别是在大众媒体上，都在我们是听话的和残忍的动物的“证据”上。
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