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Sometimes other people make choices we wouldn't.
有时候，别人和我们的选择不一样，
They order vanilla ice cream.
他们点香草冰淇淋，
They quit a perfectly good job to go travel the world.
辞掉了一份非常好的工作去周游世界，
They vote for someone we really, really, really don't want to get elected.
把票投给我们真的，真的，真的不想当选的人。
And if the decision-maker is a close friend or if the choice is one that affects you, you might wonder why they did it.
如果决策者是你的密友，或者这个选择影响了你，你可能想知道他们为什么做出这样的选择。
You might even think you know why.
你甚至可能想知道他们选择的原因。
But the thing is, you're probably wrong about their motives more often than you think.
但是，关于他们的动机，你的误解可能比你想的还要深。
People can be good at understanding other people's thoughts and feelings—at times.
人们有时很善于理解别人的想法和感受——有时。
The kind of everyday mind-reading you do when you make inside jokes with your best friends or infer that your partner is upset is called empathetic accuracy.
就像你每天和最好的朋友开玩笑或者推断你的伙伴不开心的读心术，这被称为同理心代入。
But people are much better at empathetic accuracy under certain circumstances,
但在某些情况下——
like in close relationships or when they're really motivated to understand someone.
比如关系亲密或者真正带着动机去理解某人的时候，人们更善于同理心代入，
Generally speaking, though?
一般来说，不过?
Guessing what's going on in other people's heads is tricky.
猜测别人脑子里在想什么是很难的。
That's in part because the same behavior can result from different motivations.
部分原因是因为做出相同行为的动机可能不同。
For example, a 2016 study published in Science found that
例如，2016年发表在《科学》杂志上的一项研究发现：
there were clear differences in brain activity when a person's generous behavior was motivated by empathy as opposed to the desire to pay someone else back.
当慷慨行为是出于同理心，而不是报复别人时，人的大脑活动明显不同。
But… the end result was the exact same behavior—you couldn't tell the motivation by what the person did.
但是...最终的行为完全相似——你不能通过一个人做了什么来判断他的动机。
And since we aren't all walking around with brain scanners in our pockets,
既然我们没有大脑扫描仪，
most of us have to do some inference-making and deductions when we're trying to figure out why people do what they do.
当试图弄清楚人们为什么这么做时，我们大多数人不得不进行推断和推理。
And there's a whole bunch of biases that can lead us astray.
有很多偏见会让我们误入歧途。
Like the correspondence bias,
比如对应偏差：
which is our tendency to assume people's behaviors have to do with their beliefs and personality rather than the situation they're in.
我们往往认为，人们的行为与他们的信仰和个性有关，而与所处的环境无关。
Researchers demonstrated this in a now-classic 1967 study by having people give speeches about Fidel Castro,
在1967年的一项经典研究中，研究人员通过让人们说出与菲德尔·卡斯特罗
the communist revolutionary who was governing Cuba at the time.
（当时统治古巴的共产主义革命者）有关的演讲证明了这一点。
Subjects watched one of these pro- or anti-Castro speeches,
实验对象观看支持或反对卡斯特罗的一篇演讲，
and then they were asked to judge the speaker's feelings about Castro.
然后要求就发言人对卡斯特罗的看法做出判断。
Even when the participants knew the speaker had been assigned their position,
即使参与者知道演讲者站在自己的立场，
they still believed they at least partially agreed with their speech.
他们仍然相信，至少部分同意他们的演讲。
We just tend to assume that people's behaviors represent who they are,
我们往往认为代表一个人的是行为
not what's happening in their lives, even when we know the context for their decisions.
而非生活中发生的事，即使我们知道这个人决策的背景。
And if the person is outside our cultural group, we do this even more—if we see their behavior as negative.
如果这个人不属于我们的文化群体，而我们将他的行为定义为消极，我们会更加产生这种想法。
If it's positive, then we suddenly think it's their situation or some external factor driving their good behavior.
如果我们将他的行为定义为积极，那么我们就会突然认为是处境或一些外部因素驱使他们做出良好的行为。
That's a phenomenon known as the ultimate attribution error.
这就是所谓的基本归因偏差。
Basically, we don't give people we consider "different" from us the benefit of the doubt.
根本上来说，我们不会假定和自己“不同”的人无过失或无罪。
We also can't really cope with the idea that other people are complex and full of contradictions.
我们也无法接受其他人是复杂、充满矛盾的观点。
You know you're a multifaceted unicorn:
你要知道自己是一个多面的独角兽：
sometimes you like to go out and party, and sometimes you just want to sit at home with your cat and binge SciShow episodes.
有时你喜欢出去聚会，有时候你只是想坐在家里和你的猫一起狂看《科学秀》。
But studies have found we tend to view others as more one-dimensional.
但研究发现，我们往往更愿意从一维的角度去看他人。
In a 2016 study, for instance, participants viewing a fictional Facebook page for Joe Smith predicted that he'd prefer vacations similar to the one he just booked.
例如，在2016年的一项研究中，在Facebook上浏览虚构的乔·史密斯页面的参与者预测，史密斯更喜欢的假期和刚刚预订的假期类似。
Like, if his page mentioned a vacation to a lake, participants rated him as more likely to go to the mountains in the future and much less likely to go to the city.
比如，如果乔·史密斯的页面提到了去湖上度假，参与者认为他将来更可能去山上，而不太可能去城市度假。
Because nobody's ever enjoyed a lake and a city.
因为没有人喜欢去城市的湖上度假。
Been camping lately?
最近露营？
Well, no cities for you, then! You don't like them!
那么，你不会选择去城市露营！你不喜欢城市！
There are a whole bunch of other biases like this one that can affect how we interpret others' behavior.
还有很多其他类似的偏见也会让我们对他人的行为产生误解。
The assumed similarity bias is our tendency to assume that people are fundamentally like us—even when they're not.
假设相似性偏见指的是我们往往假设人们本质上和我们一样——即使他们和我们不一样。
If we might do something for a particular reason,
如果我们出于某种特定的原因去做某事，
we tend to think other people would do it for the same reason.
我们往往认为其他人也会出于同样的原因。
Then there's the hostile attribution bias,
接着是敌对归因偏差：
which is our tendency to interpret other people's behavior as hostile or aggressive to us, even when it's just… not.
我们往往把别人的行为理解为有敌意或有攻击性，即使它没有敌意或攻击性。
And according to what's known as the value-weight heuristic,
按照所谓的价值权重启发法的说法，
we tend to consider a particular choice's most extreme traits as more influential in someone's decision than they actually are.
我们往往认为，特定选择的最极端特征对一个人决定的影响比实际更大。
This was demonstrated in a 2017 study where subjects were told that a woman named Julie had decided to move to Fort Lauderdale,
2017年的一项研究中，参与对象被告知一位名叫朱莉的女性决定搬到劳德代尔堡，
Florida—a place that, apparently, the participants largely thought is delightful and sunny all the time.
弗罗里达——很明显，参与者们一直认为弗罗里达气候宜人，阳光明媚。
And the more delightful and sunny they thought it was,
他们认为，这个地方越宜人、越阳光灿烂，
the bigger the role they thought the weather had played in Julie's decision to move there.
天气在朱莉决定搬到弗罗里达所起的作用就越大。
The same study also showed that
同样的研究也表明，
people made interpersonal judgments based on these biased inferences and then used them to predict people's future choices—often incorrectly.
人们根据这些有偏见的推论做出人际判断，然后用这些判断来预测人们未来的选择——通常是错误的。
But the studies did suggest a possible way to overcome some of this bias if you want to make more accurate assessments.
但是，如果你想让评估更准确的话，这些研究确实提出了可能克服某些偏见的方法。
They found that
他们发现，
being asked to make the same decision before considering why someone else had made it
考虑为什么别人做出决定之前让受试者做同样的决定
made the subjects less likely to assume that other people's decisions were based on an extreme attribute.
这样，受试者不太可能认为他人的决定是极端的。
In other words… walk a mile in their shoes.
换句话说，站在他人的立场上去思考。
Which is something experts recommend across the board for trying to understand other people's motivations.
这是专家们为了解他人的动机而提出的建议。
It might seem a bit trite, but it works. And if all else fails?
这可能看起来有点老套，但确实有效。如果其他方法都失败了呢？
There's always one sure-fire way to find out what someone's thinking: Just ask them.
总有一种可靠的方法可以让我们知道一个人在想什么：直接问他们。
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Psych!
感谢收看心理科学秀节目。
If you really want to understand why people make the choices they do,
如果你真的想知道为什么人们会做出这样的选择，
you might also like our episode on how the company you keep can influence your opinions.
你可能也会喜欢我们的节目——同伴如何影响你的意见。
