高达seedop:越丑越聪明吗？

萨特、苏格拉底、贝多芬……丑人真的更聪明吗？

It's been a few weeks since we posted the questions that the Explainer was eitherunwilling or unable to answer in 2011. Among this year's batch of imponderables were inquiries like,Are the blind sleepy all the time? andDoes anyone ever get a sex change back? We asked our readers to pick the question that most deserved an answer in the Explainer column. Some 10,000 of you were able to register a vote, and the winning question is presented below. But first, the runners-up:

 几个星期前我们把上面这个问题抛出来，而这个问题在2011年的Explainer栏目中既没有人愿意也没有人能够回答。在今年的一堆难以回答的问题中，有：盲人是不是整天都在睡觉？有人变了性然后又变回来吗？我们希望读者能够从Explainer专栏中挑出最渴望得到答案的一个问题。一万名注册读者进行了投票，被选出的答案已经在下面列出来了。但是首先，让我们从第三名看起：

In third place, with 6.6 percent of the total votes, a bit of speculative evolutionary biology:Let's say that a meteor never hits the earth, and dinosaurs continue evolving over all the years human beings have grown into what we are today. What would they be like?

第三名的问题获得了6.6%的得票率，这是一个有点儿关于进化生物学的推测性问题：假设小行星没有撞击地球，恐龙继续进化至今，就像我们人类进化成为我们现在的状态。那么这个世界会是什么样子？

In second place, with 7.5 percent, an inquiry into pharmacokinetics:Why does it take 45 minutes for the pharmacy to get your prescription ready—even when no one else is waiting?

第二名的问题获得了7.5%的投票率，这是一个关于药物动力学的问题：为什么药店需要45分钟才能把处方弄好——即使没有其他人在等待？

And in first place, with the support of 9.4 percent of our readers, the winner by a landslideand Explainer Question of the Year for 2011:

而第一名的问题得到了读者9.4%的投票率支持，以压倒性胜利荣获Explainer栏目的2011年度之问：

Why are smart people usually ugly? I get this isn't always the case, but there does seem to be a correlation. Attractiveness doesn't predict intelligence (not all ugly people are smart), but it seems like intelligence can be a good predictor for attractiveness (smart people are usually on the ugly side). Keep in mind, I have nothing against people who are really brilliant, I've just always wondered.

为什么聪明人看起来总是很丑？我知道事实并不总是如此，但是看起来确实有这样一种联系。吸引力并没办法预测智商（不是所有的丑人都聪明），但是似乎智商可以成为对吸引力的很好的预报器（聪明人通常长相上令人难以恭维）。请记住，我对聪明人并不反感，我只是常怀着好奇之心。

The answer: They’re not.

问题的答案：他们并不总是很丑。

Oh, how the Explainer loves a false premise. When it comes time to assemble the year-end list, he'll always give extra credit to questions that are predicated on blatant untruths. In 2010, for example, someone wanted to know why athletes never sneeze. In 2009, a reader asked,Why is it always funny to put something on your head as a pretend hat? But this year's winning question isn't merely ill-posed; it gets the truth exactly backward.

噢，Explainer栏目的读者向来喜欢这样一个虚假的前提。每年收集年终问题清单的时候，他们都会特别热衷于提出那种被认为是昭然的谎言的问题。比如在2010年，有人想知道为什么运动员从来不会打喷嚏。2009年，一位读者问道：为什么在头上放个东西当做帽子看起来总是非常滑稽？但是今年胜出的这个问题并不只是提法不当；它掩盖了真相。

The idea that an ugly face might hide a subtle mind has attracted scientific inquiries for many years. At first, scientists wanted to know whether it was possible to read someone's intelligence from the shape of his face. In 1918, a researcher in Ohio showed a dozen photographic portraits of well-dressed children to a group of physicians and teachers, and asked the adults to rank the kids from smartest to dumbest. A couple of years later, a Pittsburgh psychologist ran a similar experiment using headshots of 69 employees from a department store. In both studies, seemingly naive guesses were compared to actual test scores, and turned out to be accurate more often than not.

多年来，“丑陋的外表下可能隐藏着一个敏锐的思想”这个想法已经吸引了很多人进行各种科学调查。首先，科学家想知道是否有可能从一个人的长相上知晓其智商水平。1918年，俄亥俄州一位研究者向一些内科医生和老师展示了一组穿着得体的孩子的照片，让他们把这些孩子按照最聪明到最笨的顺序进行排序。若干年后，一位匹兹堡的心理学家采用某个部门的69位雇员的证件照进行了相似的实验。在两个研究中，依据表面的天真猜测的结果与实际的测试得分进行比较，结果表面他们的猜测常常很准确。

Many such studies followed, and with consistent results: You can learn something about how smart someone is just by looking at a picture. But scientists couldn't figure out where that information might have been hiding in the photographs. The Ohio researcher said that some of his subjects were "greatly influenced by the pleasant appearance or smile, but for some the smile denotes intelligence and for others it denotes feeble-mindedness." The author of the follow-up in Pittsburgh wondered if the secret of intelligence might not be lurking in "the lustre of the eye."

  很多类似实验相继进行，都得到了一致的结果：仅靠看某个人的照片你就可以知道他有多聪明。但是科学家没办法证明这种信息是从照片的哪里体现的。俄亥俄州的调查者声称他们的部分实验对象是被“讨人喜欢的外表和微笑所严重影响，但是对一些人来说这种微笑表示这聪明，但是另一些人却觉得这表示愚蠢。” 匹兹堡的实验者则想知道智力的秘密是不是潜藏在“眼睛的光泽”里。

While some researchers pondered this question, a Columbia University psychologist named Edward Thorndike made another, related discovery. In 1920, Thorndike published his theory of the "halo effect," according to which subjects, when asked to describe someone's various qualities, tend to "[suffuse] ratings of special features with a halo belonging to the individual as a whole." If they were describing the person's physique, for example, along with his bearing, intelligence, and tact, they would assign high or low ratings across the board. Later studies confirmed that the halo effect could arise from a simple photograph: If someone looks handsome, people tend to assume that he's smarter, more sociable, and better-adjusted, too.

  就在一些研究人员思索这个问题的时候，一位名叫爱德华·桑代客的哥伦比亚大学心理学家进行了另一种相关的调查。1920年，桑代客发表了他的“光环效应”理论，实验中要求被试者描述某人的不同方面的品质，他们倾向于“把带着个人的单独光环的独特特征评定给整个人。”如果让他们描述一个人的体形，比如依据他的行为、智力和机智，他们可能会全面地进行或高或低的评定。后续的研究证实了光环效应能够从一张简单的照片上得到反映：如果某人看起来很帅，人们就倾向于认定他更聪明，更善于社交，有更好的适应力。

Now there were two findings: First, scientists knew that it was possible to gauge someone's intelligence just by sizing him up; second, they knew that people tend to assume that beauty and brains go together. So they asked the next question: Could it be that good-looking people really are more intelligent?

  现在我们已经有了两种发现：第一，科学家已经发现仅仅通过照片猜测来测定某人的智商是可能的；第二，他们也发现人们倾向于认定美与智是合二为一的。所以他们不禁发问：难道长相俊美的人真的更聪明吗？

Here the data were less clear, but several reviews of the literature have concluded that there is indeed a small, positive relationship between beauty and brains. Most recently, the evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa pulled huge datasets from two sources—the National Child Development Study in the United Kingdom (including 17,000 people born in 1958), and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in the United States (including 21,000 people born around 1980)—both of which included ratings of physical attractiveness and scores on standard intelligence tests. When Kanazawa analyzed the numbers, he found the two were related: In the U.K., for example, attractive children have an additional 12.4 points of IQ, on average. The relationship held even when he controlled for family background, race, and body size.

  上述的数据并不是非常精确，但是一些文学评论已经得出结论：在美与智之间确实存在一种较小的但是肯定的关联。最近，进化心理学家金泽哲从两个不同来源得到了庞大的数据集——一个是英国的国家儿童发展研究计划（数据包括1958年出生的17000个人），另一个是美国的国家青少年健康长期研究计划（数据包括1980年左右出生的21000个人）——两个数据库都包括外表吸引力的评定和标准智商测定的分数。金泽分析了这些数据，他发现两者是相关的：在英国的数据中，例如，外表吸引力高的孩子在智商比平均水平高12.4. 在他控制了家庭背景、种族和体形的情况下，这种关系保持了稳定。  

From this, Kanazawa concluded that the famous halo effect is not acognitive illusion, as so many academics had assumed, but rather an accurate reading of the world: We assume that beautiful people are smart, he argues, because they are.

  据此金泽哲得出结论，最显著的光环效应不是一种认知错觉，正如这么多的学术证明的一样，它是一种对世界的准确解读：他主张，我们认为漂亮的人物都聪明，是因为他们确实如此。

The story does have some caveats and complications. First, a few other studies have come up with different results. A recent look at yearbook photos from a Wisconsin high school in 1957 found no link between IQ and attractiveness among the boys, but a positive correlation for the girls. Another researcher, Leslie Zebrowitz of Brandeis University, noticed that the looks-smarts relationship applies only to the ugly side of the spectrum. It's not that beautiful people are especially smart, she says, so much as thatuglypeople are especiallydumb. Then there's the fact of Kanazawa's having gotten into trouble last spring for asserting—using the same dataset and similar methods to those described above—that African-American women are objectively "far less attractive" than whites, Asians, or Native Americans. (He later acknowledged some flaws in his analysis.)

这样的结果确实有一些不同意见和难题。首先，其他一些研究得出了不同的结论。一项最近的对于威斯康辛高中的毕业纪念册照片的调查显示男生们在智商和外在魅力方面并没有关联，但是女生们则有肯定的关联。另一位调查者，布兰迪斯大学的莱斯利注意到相貌与智商的关联只存在于长相欠佳的这部分人群。她说，并不是漂亮的人物更聪明，而是丑人特别得笨。事实上，金泽哲去年春天已经由于断言而陷入了麻烦——由于使用了和上文所述的相同数据和相似方法——他认为非裔美国女性客观上远不及白人、亚洲人或者土著美洲人更有吸引力。（后来他承认他的分析存在一些瑕疵。）   

So, getting back to the original question, the bulk of the evidence suggests that smart people are not "usually ugly." In fact, the opposite seems to be true: Either smart people are more beautiful than average, or dumb people are more ugly (or both). And while no facial features within the normal range could ever be that useful as a predictor of intelligence, people can perform better than you’d expect from random chance using nothing more than a head shot.

  那么，让我们回到最初的问题，大量证据显示聪明人通常看起来不丑。事实上，反过来也成立：聪明人比普通人更漂亮，或者说蠢人比普通人更丑。尽管面部特征没办法有效地预测智商，但是人们仍然可以通过证件照来进行推测。

All of which leaves one great, unanswered question. If smart people tend to be good-looking, that might explain the halo effect. But what led our questioner to get things backward and assume that smart people were ugly? And why are there so many like-minded others, asking the same question—or its inverse—around the Internet? (Here'sone, and one more.) Aren't we all familiar with the archetypical nerd, who is both ugly and smart? At the opposite end, what about all those beautiful, airheaded women and beefy, brainless men we see on television? Could the person who wrote in with the 2011 Question of the Year be succumbing to a bias that hasn't yet been documented in the lab—a sort of halo effect in reverse, a "horns effect," perhaps?

  上述所说引出了一个巨大的未回答的疑问。如果说聪明人容易长相俊美，那或许可以解释光环效应。但是是什么让我们的读者把事情搞颠倒认为聪明人通常长相丑陋呢？为什么这么多人透过因特网都表达了这样相似的想法，问了这样相同（或者相反）的问题？（这只是一部分，还有更多。）难道我们不是都对那种典型的书呆子（既丑又聪明）很熟悉吗？另一方面，那些电视上的漂亮却愚蠢的女人和强壮却无脑的男人又怎么样呢？提出2011年度之问的人是不是屈从于一种还没被实验证实的偏见——一种与光环效应相反的“喇叭效应”？   

French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, 1957

  法国哲学家让·保罗·萨特，1957

Ugly geniuses aren't uncommon in history, of course, and while these anecdotes tell us nothing about the population as a whole, the memory of people who were famously hideous and brilliant might have an outsize influence on our judgments. Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, was short, bespectacled, and wall-eyed. ("I cannot even decide whether [my face] is handsome or ugly," says one of his characters inNausea. "I think it is ugly because I have been told so.") Ancient sources tell us that the great philosopher Socrates had thinning hair, flared nostrils, widely-spaced eyes, a thick neck, slobby shoulders, and a pot belly. Ludwig van Beethoven was ugly and smelled bad; Abraham Lincoln's face struck the poet Walt Whitman as being "so awful ugly it becomes beautiful."

  相貌丑陋的天才在历史上并不少见，当然了，整体上来看这些轶事并不能说明什么，对那些著名的相貌丑陋的天才的纪念可能会极大影响我们的判断力。例如，让·保罗·萨特就是矮个子，戴眼镜，并且斜视。（“我甚至没办法判断我是英俊还是丑陋，”他小说《Nausea》中一位人物说，“我觉得我丑是因为他们是这样告诉我的。”）古代的资料显示伟大的哲学家苏格拉底头发稀薄，鼻孔巨大，两眼间距很大，脖子粗大，大腹便便。贝多芬相貌丑陋，浑身臭味；亚伯拉罕·林肯的脸诗人沃特·惠特曼大为惊讶“丑到了极致也就成了美。”

In addition, Kanazawa points out that a closer look at the data reveals an interesting fact: The very ugliest people in his dataset are dumber on average, but they also tend to be the most diverse when it comes to intelligence. That means that if you're at the low end of the spectrum for looks, you're more likely than anyone else to be at one extreme end for IQ (either very dumborvery smart). If that's the case, then it might provide another reason why Sartre and Socrates types stick out in our minds. We know (consciously or not) that ugly people tend to be a little dim; but at the same time, there are more brilliant brutes running around than we might expect.

  此外，金泽哲指出进一步分析数据发现一个有趣的现象：数据库中最丑的人比平均水平更笨，但是在智商方面也呈现出更大的多样性。也就是说如果你的长相属于那种最难看的，你的智商最可能呈现两极化趋势（要么非常笨要么非常聪明）。如果真是这样，也就从另一个角度说明了为什么萨特和苏格拉底这类人被我们铭记。我们（自觉或者不自觉地）认为相貌丑陋的人应该比较迟钝，但是与此同时，也有比我们想象的更多的相貌丑陋的聪明人。 

For his part, Kanazawa rejects the notion of the horns effect—he doesn't believe thesmart-and-uglystereotype exists at all. (Indeed, it has never been shown in the lab.) Instead, he says, we may be assuming that smart people are nerdy, and that nerdy people tend to lack social skills. Since people with social skills are attractive, there could be an indirect link between at least one kind of "attractiveness" and intelligence. But if you're looking at pure "beauty," as measured by rating photographs or measured facial features, then intelligence and looks go hand-in-hand.

从金泽哲的立场来看，他反对喇叭效应的观点——他不相信那种聪明人长相丑陋的刻板印象的存在。（这个效应也确实未被实验证实过。）他认为我们或许可以这样想：聪明人都有点儿书呆子气，因此就容易缺乏社交技巧。通常高超的社交技巧令人更具魅力，所以这就有了一种间接的类似“魅力”与智商的联系。但是如果我们真正研究“美”，进行照片和面部特征的科学测定，那么智商和长相就呈现了正相关的密切联系。   

Bonus Explainer:Why might intelligence and looks go hand-in-hand? There are a few different theories. First, it might be that some common genetic factor produces both smarts and beauty. Or maybe there's a combination of genes that make people both dumb and ugly. Kanazawa thinks it's the former, arguing that intelligent men have tended to rise to the top of the social hierarchy and select beautiful women as their mates. Their offspring, contra George Bernard Shaw's supposed quip, would have had both traits together.

附加说明：为什么智商和长相呈现正相关？对此有几种不同的理论。首先，可能是一些相同的遗传因素使得人们既聪明又美丽。或者存在一种使人既笨又丑的基因结构。金泽哲支持前一种说法，认为高智商的男人更容易上升到社会的统治阶层并且娶一位漂亮的女人作为伴侣。这样的话，与萧伯纳的那个讽刺相反，他们的后代就同时拥有了那两种特征。   

Another theory holds that certain environmental factors in the womb or just after birth can produce both facial disfigurements and cognitive impairments on one side, or facial symmetry and high intelligence on the other. A third suggests that attractive children are treated better, and receive more attention from their caretakers and teachers, which helps to nurture a sharper mind. It's also possible that smart people are better able to take care of themselves and their looks.

  另一种理论相信，子宫内或者刚出生时的某种环境因素可能会引起相貌和认知的缺陷，另一方面有可能使人相貌英俊，智商超常。第三种理论认为相貌俊美的孩子会得到更好的照料，得到他们的监护人和老师的更多关心，这些都会帮助他们进一步提升智商水平。还有一种可能就是，聪明人更有能力去照顾好自己，当然包括他们的外表。