新刊推荐 | 我们为什么要将机器和设备人格化？我们是怎样将人的特征赋予物品的?"

Why People Personify Machines and Gadgets?

Matthew Huston

门椿林译注

智能手机、汽车、家电的出现让我们可以与物品以人与人的交流方式进行互动。这种对电子设备的人格化倾向反映了当代人精神层面的孤独状态，还会让人更加难以和这些设备说再见。我们为什么要这么做？我们又是怎样将人的特征赋予物品的?

The number of devices you can talk to is multiplying—first it was your phone, then your car, and now you can boss around

your appliances. Children are likely to grow up thinking everything is sentient, or at least interactive: One app developer told The Washington Post that after interacting with Amazon’s Alexa

, his toddler started talking to coasters. But even without chatty gadgets, research suggests that under certain circumstances, people anthropomorphize

everyday products.

能够和你说话的设备正变得越来越多——首先是你的手机，然后是你的车，现在你可以随意使唤你的家用电器。现在的孩子们可能会觉得任何东西都是有感知能力的，或至少是可以互动的：一位应用程序开发人员对《华盛顿邮报》记者说，他刚刚学会走路的孩子在跟亚马逊公司的智能语音助手Alexa有过互动之后，开始跟杯垫说话了。但是即便是没有能够和人聊天的电子设备，研究表明，在某些情况下，人们也会将日常物品人格化。

1. boss around: 颐指气使，发号施令。

2. Alexa: 亚马逊公司开发的一款智能助手软件，可以通过语音与用户互动。

3. anthropomorphize: /??nθr?p?"m?:fa?z/ 赋予人性，人格化。

Sometimes we see things as human because we’re lonely. In one experiment, people who reported feeling isolated were more likely than others to attribute free will and consciousness to various gadgets. In turn, feeling kinship with objects can reduce loneliness. When college students were reminded of a time they’d been excluded socially, they compensated by exaggerating their number of Facebook friends— unless they were first given tasks that caused them to interact with their phone as if it had human qualities. The phone apparently stood in for real friends.

有时候，我们把东西看成人是因为我们很孤独。在一个实验中，那些说自己感到孤独的人会比其他人更有可能将自由意志和意识赋予不同的设备。反过来说，与这些事物有亲密关系会减少孤独的感觉。当大学生们回忆起以前在社交过程中被排挤的时候，他们会通过夸大脸书好友数量来进行心理上的补偿——除非他们先被要求做一些与手机进行互动的任务，在这些任务中，他们要把手机当做具有人类特性的东西。很明显，手机代替了真正的朋友。

At other times, we personify products in an effort to understand them. One study found that three in four respondents cursed at their computer—and the more their computer gave them problems, the more likely they were to report that it had “its own beliefs and desires.”

在其他时候，我们将物品人格化是为了努力理解它们。一项研究表明，有3/4的被调查者会咒骂他们的电脑——他们的电脑出的问题越多，这些被调查者越有可能说电脑有“它自己的信仰和想法。”

When we personify products, they become harder to cast off. After being asked to evaluate their car’s personality, people were less likely to say they intended to replace it soon. And anthropomorphizing objects is associated with a tendency to hoard

当我们赋予产品人性的时候，舍弃他们会变得更加困难。当人们被要求去评估他们汽车的个性之后，他们打算近期换车的可能性会降低。将物品人格化会导致囤积的倾向

。

4. hoard: 贮藏，囤积。

So how do people assign traits to an object? In part, we rely on looks. On humans, wide faces are associated with dominance. Similarly, people rated cars, clocks, and watches with wide faces as more dominant-looking than narrow-faced ones, and preferred them—especially in competitive situations (like confronting a former bully at a school reunion). An analysis of car sales in Germany found that cars with grilles that were upturned like smiles and headlights that were slanted like narrowed eyes sold best.

The purchasers saw these features as increasing a car’s friendliness and aggressiveness, respectively.

那么我们是如何将人的特性赋予物品的呢？在一定程度上，我们是依靠外貌。拿人类的例子来说，大脸常常代表着权威。类似地，人们常常会认为那些有着“大脸”的车、时钟和手表比“小脸”的更加霸气，也会更加青睐前者—— 尤其是在那些火药味很浓的情况下（比如在同学聚会上碰到了以前的霸凌者）。德国的一个对汽车销售的分析表明，那些前保险杠向上翘像是在微笑，或是车头灯倾斜像是眯着眼的汽车卖得最好。消费者会觉得前者能增加汽车的友善度，后者则会增加汽车的霸气感。

It’s little wonder so many companies use mascots to bring brands to life. A taxonomy of 1,151 brand characters found symbols that were human or humanlike to be prevalent: People (the Marlboro Man) were most popular, accounting for 21 percent of mascots, followed by birds (Twitter), domesticated animals (Morris the Cat), wild animals (Tony the Tiger), and various plants (Mr. Peanut).

所以许多公司会使用吉祥物来给品牌赋予活力就不足为奇了。一个对1,151个品牌代言形象的类别分析表明，拿人类或者像人类的形象作广告吉祥物是普遍的现象：人（比如万宝路牛仔）是最常见的，占全部商标的21%，其次是鸟的形象（比如推特）、家养的动物（比如莫里斯猫）、野生动物（比如东尼虎）以及各种植物（比如花生先生）。

Personifying products and brands can backfire

, however. When a coffee maker was anthropomorphized in an ad (“I am Aroma” versus just “Aroma”), men—but not women—felt betrayed by increases in its price. Now that speech-enabled coffee makers are on the market, maybe the machines can sweet-talk their way back into men’s hearts.

然而，将产品和品牌人格化也会产生事与愿违的结果。当一个咖啡机在广告中被人格化时（广告词是“我是阿罗马”而不是“阿罗马”时），男人——而不是女人——会对它涨价产生被背叛的感觉。如今，既然能够说话的咖啡机已经在市场上销售了，也许这些机器可以用甜言蜜语赢回男人们的心

。

5. grille: 网格状护栏，此处指汽车前保险杠；slant: 使倾斜。

6. taxonomy: /t?k?s?n?mi/ 分类学，分类法；Marlboro Man: 万宝路香烟广告中的牛仔形象，体现其粗犷的男性化诉求；Morris the Cat: 一只橘色虎斑猫，是美国9Lives牌猫粮的吉祥物；Tony the Tiger: 美国Kellogg麦片吉祥物；Mr. Peanut: 美国卡夫食品公司（Kraft Foods）旗下零食品牌Planters的吉祥物。

7. backfire: 回火，产生事与愿违的后果。

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《英语学习》杂志创刊于1958年，由北京外国语大学主办，是一本集知识、学习和趣味于一体的英语文化综合性刊物，被评为“全国优秀外语教辅期刊”，一贯以“学习英语的终身益友，了解世界的精彩橱窗”为宗旨，在突出人文旨趣、深入介绍西方社会文化、增进阅读者的英语修养的理念指导下，坚持严谨而不失活泼、品位与趣味并重的办刊风格，凸显杂志的高等教育气质。

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五月本是春暖花开的季节，可我的灵感却偏偏出现在这个小企鹅身上，在辗转反侧的梦里，脑子里都是他的形象，不画下来不行。实际上无论是一月还是五月，地球最南端的那个地方总是一片冰天雪地。在BBC拍摄的影片里，我看到这只公企鹅，从悬崖峭壁跳入波涛汹涌的大海，去捕猎小鱼，随后艰难地爬上峭壁，不小心还摔伤了腿，鲜血染红了洁白的羽毛。他要回家，要走几乎一整天的路，然后在企鹅群里找到他的妻子和两个幼小的饿着肚子的孩子。这一情景彻底触动我，我和这个公企鹅又有什么区别呢？人类的生活也不过如此。而作为诗人，艺术家，这种幸存本身就是缪斯赋予给你的诗行。就此机会，金重愿和百万读者分享：一首诗就是一部由文字制成的小机器——美国大诗人威廉斯。

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