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 [ZT] 英国 ECONOMIST杂志 2007-12-19 -- 上海是全世界美丑与收入最最挂钩的!!! |
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laozhong
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作者：laozhong 在 海归酒吧 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
[ZT] 英国 ECONOMIST杂志 2007-12-19 -- 上海是全世界美丑与收入最最挂钩的!!!
Beauty and Success
美与成功的关系: 锦上添花
To those that have, shall be given
Dec 19th 2007
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在中国，丑相的影响在女性身上得到更大的体现，而漂亮的长相则给人更多的回报。上面的那组数据对上海男性而言是-25%对+3%；而女性是-31%对+10%。在英国，长相差的男性比女性要糟糕些（-18%对-11%），但长相漂亮的收入则一样（都只比平均多1%）。
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The ugly are one of the few groups against whom it is still legal to discriminate. Unfortunately for them, there are good reasons why beauty and success go hand in hand
面丑之人是少数几个受到合法歧视的人群之一。对他们来说，不幸的是，漂亮的外表与成功确有因果联系。
IMAGINE you have two candidates for a job. They are both of the same sex—and that sex is the one your own proclivities incline you to find attractive. Their CVs are equally good, and they both give good interview. You cannot help noticing, though, that one is pug-ugly and the other is handsome. Are you swayed by their appearance?
假设有两位候选人来竞争一个工作。他们都是同性别，因为性别也是你的偏好所在。他们的个人简历都同样的好，他们的面试表现也都很好。但你可能注意到了其中一个人面貌较丑，而另一个则漂亮。你是否被他们的长相所左右呢？
Perhaps not. But lesser, less-moral mortals might be. If appearance did not count, why would people dress up for such interviews—even if the job they are hoping to get is dressed down? And job interviews are turning points in life. If beauty sways interviewers, the beautiful will, by and large, have more successful careers than the ugly—even in careers for which beauty is not a necessary qualification.
你也许不会。但是非不那么分明的人也许会受到影响。如果长相不重要，那为什么人们要打扮一番来参加面试呢，即使他们希望得到的工作不需要穿着方面的要求？而且工作面试是人生的一个转折点。如果美丽的长相能够左右面试，那么总的来说，在长相不是一个必要条件的职业里，长得漂亮的人比长得丑的人会有更多成功的机会。
If you were swayed by someone's looks, however, would that be wrong? In a society that eschews prejudice, favouring the beautiful seems about as shallow as you can get. But it was not always thus. In the past, people often equated beauty with virtue and ugliness with vice.
但是，如果你被别人的外表所左右，那错了吗？在一个摒弃偏见的社会里，偏好美貌似乎显得有些肤浅。但也不总是这样的。过去，人们常常把漂亮与美德，把丑陋与邪恶联系起来。
Even now, the expression “as ugly as sin” has not quite passed from the language. There is, of course, the equally famous expression “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, to counter it. But the subtext of that old saw, that beauty is arbitrary, is wrong. Most beholders agree what is beautiful—and modern biology suggests there is a good reason for that agreement. Biology also suggests that beauty may, indeed, be a good rule of thumb for assessing someone of either sex. Not an infallible one, and certainly no substitute for an in-depth investigation. But, nevertheless, an instinctive one, and one that is bound to redound to the advantage of the physically well endowed.
即使是现在，“貌丑如邪恶（丑陋之极）”这个表达还没有从我们的语言中消失。当然，与之相对，我们同样也非常有名的这句：情人眼里出西施。但是，那句古老谚语的言外之意“美是武断的”是不对的。大多数有情人都对美持有相同的看法，而且现代生物学也支持这种看法。根据生物学，美可能确实在我们评价一个人时，不论男女，都会使用的比较好的标准。这不是确实可信的判断，当然也不可能替代深入的调查。但，无论怎样，这都是我们的本能反应，也一定会有益于发挥我们优越的外表。
Fearful symmetry
可怕的对称
The godfather of scientific study of beauty is Randy Thornhill, of the University of New Mexico. It was Dr Thornhill who, a little over a decade ago, took an observation he originally made about insects and dared to apply it to eople.
对美进行科学研究的始创人是新墨西哥大学的兰迪.托恩黑尔。大概就在十多年前，托恩黑尔博士把他原用于观察昆虫的方法用于观察我们人。
The insects in question were scorpion flies, and the observation was that those flies whose wings were most symmetrical were the ones that did best in the mating stakes. Dr Thornhill thought this preference for symmetry might turn out to be universal in the animal kingdom (and it does indeed seem to be). In particular, he showed it is true of people. He started with faces, manipulating pictures to make them more and less symmetrical, and having volunteers of the opposite sex rank them for attractiveness. But he has gone on to show that all aspects of bodily symmetry contribute, down to the lengths of corresponding fingers, and that the assessment applies to those of the same sex, as well.
他研究的昆虫是蝎蝇，通过观察他发现那些翅膀最对称的蝎蝇在求偶中做得最好。托恩黑尔博士认为对对称美的偏好可能是动物王国里的普遍现象（也确实似乎如此）。尤其人类也是如此。他从人的脸部开始，对照片进行处理，让其或多或少有些对称，然后让男女志愿者来按吸引力对它们进行排序。但他的研究继续说明了身体各个部分的对称决定了相应的手指长度，这种判断也适用于那些同性别的人。
The reason seems to be that perfect symmetry is hard for a developing embryo to maintain. The embryo that can maintain it obviously has good genes (and also a certain amount of luck). It is, therefore, more than just coincidence that the words “health and beauty” trip so easily off the tongue as a single phrase.
这似乎是因为发育期的胚胎很难保持完美的对称。而能够保持对称的胚胎很显然有较好的基因（当然也是要某些运气的成分）。因此，“健康与美”这个词组很容易的就从人们嘴边蹦出，也不只是巧合。
Other aspects of beauty, too, are indicators of health. Skin and hair condition, in particular, are sensitive to illness, malnutrition and so on (or, perhaps it would be better to say that people's perceptions are exquisitely tuned to detect perfection and flaws in such things). And more recent work has demonstrated another association. Contrary to the old jokes about dumb blondes, beautiful people seem to be cleverer, too.
其他方面的美也可以表示身体的健康。尤其是皮肤和头发对疾病、营养不良等很敏感（或者，完全可以这样说，人们的知觉是如此敏感以至于可以感觉得到皮肤和头发等里面的完美状态和缺陷）。而且最近的研究表明还有另外一种关联。人们常常嘲笑说：华而不实的金发美女，恰恰相反，长相漂亮的人似乎也更聪明些。
One of the most detailed studies on the link between beauty and intelligence was done by Mark Prokosch, Ronald Yeo and Geoffrey Miller, who also work at the University of New Mexico. These three researchers correlated people's bodily symmetry with their performance on intelligence tests. Such tests come in many varieties, of course, and have a controversial background. But most workers in the field agree that there is a quality, normally referred to as “general intelligence”, or “g”, that such tests can measure objectively along with specific abilities in such areas as spatial awareness and language. Dr Miller and his colleagues found that the more a test was designed to measure g, the more the results were correlated with bodily symmetry—particularly in the bottom half of the beauty-ugliness spectrum.
同样在新墨西哥大学工作的马克、普罗克西、罗纳德.耶奥和杰弗里.米勒对美与智力进行过一项最详细的研究。这三位研究者把人们的身体对称与他们在智力测试中的表现相联系。当然，这些测试采取许多不同的形式，测试的内容也颇有争议。但大多数受测人员都认为这些测试有一定效用，通常被称作“一般智力”，或者“g（一般）”，它们可以客观地测试人们在空间感和语言方面特别的能力。米勒博士和他的同事发现如果一项测试更多的被设计来测试g,那么测试结果也会更多的与身体的对称相联系，尤其是下半身美丑的对称。
Faces, too, seem to carry information on intelligence. A few years ago, two of the world's face experts, Leslie Zebrowitz, of Brandeis University in Massachusetts, and Gillian Rhodes, of the University of Western Australia, got together to review the literature and conduct some fresh experiments. They found nine past studies (seven of them conducted before the second world war, an indication of how old interest in this subject is), and subjected them to what is known as a meta-analysis.
脸部也似乎能传达智力的信息。几年前，世界两名脸部研究专家，麻省的布兰代斯大学的Leslie Zebrowitz和西奥大学的Gillian Rhodes，一起研究了文献，进行了新的实验。他们找到了过去的九项研究（其中七项是在二战以前进行的，这表明了对此事兴趣之久远），然后用变化分析法对它们进行分析。
The studies in question had all used more or less the same methodology, namely photograph people and ask them to do IQ tests, then show the photographs to other people and ask the second lot to rank the intelligence of the first lot. The results suggested that people get such judgments right—by no means all the time, but often enough to be significant. The two researchers and their colleagues then carried out their own experiment, with the added twist of dividing their subjects up by age.
上面所提到的研究或多或少都用了同样的研究方法，也就是给人们照相，然后让他们做智力测验，接着把这些照片给其他的人看，然后让这一组人对第一组人的智力进行排序。测试结果表明人们的判断是对的，当然他们的判断也决不总是对的，但是这足以说明问题了。然后这两位研究者及他们的同事进行了自己的实验，只不过他们是把调查对象按年龄分组。
Bright blondes聪明的金发美女
The results of that were rather surprising. They found that the faces of children and adults of middling years did seem to give away intelligence, while those of teenagers and the elderly did not. That is surprising because face-reading of this sort must surely be important in mate selection, and the teenage years are the time when such selection is likely to be at its most intense—though, conversely, they are also the time when evolution will be working hardest to cover up any deficiencies, and the hormone-driven changes taking place during puberty might provide the material needed to do that.
他们研究的结果是非常令人吃惊的。他们发现小孩的脸和中年人的脸确实看上去散发出一股聪明的气息，而十几岁的青少年和老年人的脸就没有。这是令人惊讶的，因为这种看脸色的事情在选择配偶时一定非常重要，在青少年期，这种选择可能更为突出，虽然从另外一方面讲，这个时期也很难掩盖他们青春发育期的缺点，这些缺点有可能是青春期荷尔蒙变化所造成的。
Nevertheless, the accumulating evidence suggests that physical characteristics do give clues about intelligence, that such clues are picked up by other people, and that these clues are also associated with beauty. And other work also suggests that this really does matter.
然而，越来越多的证据表明身体的特点确实能透露出人的智慧，别人领会到了这些特点，并把它们与美联系起来。而且，其他的事情也表明这真的很重要。
One of the leading students of beauty and success is Daniel Hamermesh of the University of Texas. Dr Hamermesh is an economist rather than a biologist, and thus brings a somewhat different perspective to the field. He has collected evidence from more than one continent that beauty really is associated with success—at least, with financial success. He has also shown that, if all else is equal, it might be a perfectly legitimate business strategy to hire the more beautiful candidate.
德克萨斯大学的丹尼尔.汉姆梅斯是美与成功关系的研究中最突出的学者之一。汉姆梅斯博士是位经济学家而非生物学家，因此他研究这个领域的视角有些不同他人。他从不只一个大陆收集到了证据，表明美确实与成功有因果联系—至少是金融方面的成功。他也表明在同等条件下聘用更漂亮的候选人可能是个非常合理的商业策略。
Just over a decade ago Dr Hamermesh presided over a series of surveys in the United States and Canada which showed that when all other things are taken into account, ugly people earn less than average incomes, while beautiful people earn more than the average. The ugliness “penalty” for men was -9% while the beauty premium was +5%. For women, perhaps surprisingly considering popular prejudices about the sexes, the effect was less: the ugliness penalty was -6% while the beauty premium was +4%.
就在十多年前，汉姆梅斯博士在美国和加拿大主持了一系列的调查，结果表明，如果把一切因素都考虑在内，长相差的人的薪水低于平均水平，而长相漂亮的人的薪水高于平均水平。长相差的男性比平均薪水少挣9%，而长得帅的人则多挣5%。就女性而言，可能令人有些惊讶，鉴于普遍的性别歧视，这个影响稍微小一些：长相差的人比平均工资少挣6%，而漂亮的人则多挣4%。
Since then, he has gone on to measure these effects in other places. In China, ugliness is penalised more in women, but beauty is more rewarded. The figures for men in Shanghai are –25% and +3%; for women they are –31% and +10%. In Britain, ugly men do worse than ugly women (-18% as against -11%) but the beauty premium is the same for both (and only +1%).
自那时起，他就在其他地方继续评估这种影响。在中国，丑相的影响在女性身上得到更大的体现，而漂亮的长相则给人更多的回报。上面的那组数据对上海男性而言是-25%对+3%；而女性是-31%对+10%。在英国，长相差的男性比女性要糟糕些（-18%对-11%），但长相漂亮的收入则一样（都只比平均多1%）。
The difference also applies within professions. Dr Hamermesh looked at the careers of members of a particular (though discreetly anonymous) American law school. He found that those rated attractive on the basis of their graduation photographs went on to earn higher salaries than their less well-favoured colleagues. Moreover, lawyers in private practice tended to be better looking than those working in government departments.
这个差别在职业内部也存在。汉姆梅斯博士调查了一所美国特别的法学院（虽然小心地隐去真名）毕业生的职业后，发现那些从毕业照上看比较有魅力的人比他们不那么受青睐的同事的薪水要高些。而且，私人律师事务所的律师比那些政府公务部门工作的律师的长相好些。
Illustration by Brett Ryder
Even more unfairly, Dr Hamermesh found evidence that beautiful people may bring more revenue to their employers than the less-favoured do. His study of Dutch advertising firms showed that those with the most beautiful executives had the largest size-adjusted revenues—a difference that exceeded the salary differentials of the firms in question. Finally, to add insult to injury, he found that even in his own cerebral and, one might have thought, beauty-blind profession, attractive candidates were more successful in elections for office in the American Economic Association.
而且更不公平的是，汉姆梅斯发现有证据表明漂亮的人比不那么漂亮的人给雇主带来的收益更多些。他研究了荷兰的广告公司，发现公司管理人员长相很好的公司的盈利是最大的，这个盈利的差别超过公司薪水的差别。最后一点，也等于是在伤口上撒盐，他发现他会认为，人们也可能认为--在象美国经济协会这个不看长相的单位里，有魅力的候选人在他们的职位竞争中更能取胜。
That last distinction also applies to elections to public office, as was neatly demonstrated by Niclas Berggren, of the Ratio Institute in Stockholm, and his colleagues. Dr Berggren's team looked at almost 2,000 candidates in Finnish elections. They asked foreigners (mainly Americans and Swedes) to examine the candidates' campaign photographs and rank them for beauty. They then compared those rankings with the actual election results. They were able to eliminate the effects of party preference because Finland has a system of proportional representation that pits candidates of the same party against one another. Lo and behold, the more beautiful candidates, as ranked by people who knew nothing of Finland's internal politics, tended to have been the more successful—though in this case, unlike Dr Hamermesh's economic results, the effect was larger for women than for men.
那最后一点差别也存在于斯德哥尔摩的比率研究机构的公职竞争中，，尼古拉斯.伯格瑞恩和他的同事简要地阐明了这一点。他的研究小组调查了大约2000位芬兰选举中的候选人。他们让外国人（主要是美国人和瑞典人）查看这些候选人的竞选照片并按魅力来排名。然后他们把排名与真正的选举结果进行对比。他们能够排除政党偏好的影响，因为芬兰有个比例代表制，可以让同政党的候选人彼此竞争。瞧，根据那些对芬兰国内政治一无所知的人的评判，长得越好的候选人可能越会成功，虽然在本例中，这个影响对女性大一些，不同于汉姆梅斯博士在经济领域的调查结果。
If looks could kill酷毙了
What these results suggest is a two-fold process, sadly reminiscent of the biblical quotation to which the title of this article refers. There is a feedback loop between biology and the social environment that gives to those who have, and takes from those who have not.
这些结果显示的是一个两方面的过程，是对圣经引语沮丧的回忆，如这篇文章标题所示。在生物学和社会环境间有其对应的地方，它让拥有的人有更多，让没有人的连同他的所有一起夺走。
That happens because beauty is a real marker for other, underlying characteristics such as health, good genes and intelligence. It is what biologists call an unfakeable signal, like the deep roar of a big, rutting stag that smaller adolescents are physically incapable of producing. It therefore makes biological sense for people to prefer beautiful friends and lovers, since the first will make good allies, and the second, good mates.
之所以这样，是因为美对他人来说是个真正的标记，比如像健康、好的遗传基因及智力等等这些基本特点。这些都是生物学家所称的伪造不了的信息，就象一头发情的牧鹿的低沉吼叫，年龄小的青少年们的身体上是无法展现出来的。因此，从生物学的角度来看，人们喜欢长相好的朋友和爱人是正常的，因为第一次见面，会让彼此成为好朋友，而第二次则会让彼此成为好的伴侣。
That brings the beautiful opportunities denied to the ugly, which allows them to learn things and make connections that increase their value still further. If they are judged on that experience as well as their biological fitness, it makes them even more attractive. Even a small initial difference can thus be amplified into something that just ain't—viewed from the bottom—fair.
这给长相好的人带来了长相不好的人所没有的机会，并且会让他们学到更多东西，结识更多的人，从而让他们自身的价值得到提高。如果以那种阅历来和他们的身体特点来评判，会让他们更有魅力。即使是很小的差别也能够被扩大成为不公平的事情
Given all this, it is hardly surprising that the cosmetics industry has global sales of $280 billion. But can you really fake the unfakeable signal?
鉴于此，化妆产业的全球销售达到了28亿美元也就毫不奇怪了。但你真的能伪造那些不可能伪造的身体信息吗？
Dr Hamermesh's research suggests that you can but, sadly, that it is not cost-effective—at least, not if your purpose is career advancement. Working in Shanghai, where the difference between the ugliness penalty and the beauty bonus was greatest, he looked at how women's spending on their cosmetics and clothes affected their income.
汉姆梅斯博士的研究表明你能，但很不幸它并不划算—至少如果你的目的是想要有更大的职业发展的话。在上海，长得好和长得不好所带来差别是很大的，在这里工作时，他调查了女性在化妆品和衣服上的花费是怎样影响她们的收入。
The answer was that it did, but not enough to pay for itself in a strictly financial sense. He estimates that the beauty premium generated by such primping is worth only 15% of the money expended. Of course, beauty pays off in spheres of life other than the workplace. But that, best beloved, would be the subject of a rather different article.
答案就是，严格地从金钱方面来讲，这是划得来的，但这不够。他估计靠打扮来获得的美只占所花金钱的15%的价值。当然美是在生活方面而不是工作场所给人回报。那是人们的最爱，但只能是另一篇完全不同的文章所要谈的话题了。
作者：laozhong 在 海归酒吧 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 [ZT] 英国 ECONOMIST杂志 2007-12-19 -- 上海是全世界美丑与收入最最挂钩的!!! -- laozhong - (15536 Byte) 2008-1-24 周四, 15:03 (1167 reads)
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