女人如玩物
原文：科学美国人 2009.2.17
翻译：Sunforever
最近在芝加哥举行的美国科学进步学会上发布的一项最新研究表明，当男人看到穿着暴露的女性照片时，他们大脑的反应就像面对一个即将上手的物品一样。
男人视女人如玩物？看看情色业的蓬勃发展，或许真有这个趋势。但若问到男人怎样，何时，以及为什么这么对女人，就要科学来解答了。
普林斯顿的心理学家Susan Fiske，上周日在芝加哥举行的年度美国科学进步学会上发表了一项新的研究。在研究中他们比较了“……异性恋男人对半裸女人，半裸男人，和穿好衣服的男女的感知。”他们发现21位男性主体对性感的比基尼半裸女郎记忆最深。那是自然了。然后他们让男人们看着照片，同时扫描他们的大脑，她发现，“……这种记忆与大脑前皮层某部分的活跃有关，他们有一种冲动去操纵某样东西，所以，就仿佛他们立刻在思索怎样上这些身体一样。”
Fiske解释道，前皮层和后颞中回这些区域一般在人想要使用某种工具时活跃，比如螺丝刀。“我并不是说他们真正的把这些女人照片当作工具照片，或非人类的照片，但大脑的图影数据让我们把这看作一个科学隐喻。那就是，他们对这些照片的反应就和人们对物品的反应一样。”
Fiske还测试了这些男人性别歧视的级别，发现一个令人惊讶的效应，就是那些级别高的人“……这些有敌意的性别主义者倾向于减弱大脑某些区域的活动，这些区域和人们想起他人时的冲动有关。这种社会认知区域的活动减弱很奇特，因为以前几乎从未发生过。这是非常可靠的效应，前额叶皮层是即时反应的，当人们想念其他人，看他人的照片，想象一些人的时候。”
“通常当你检查出社会认知时，人们的目的是想弄明白他人在想什么要什么。而在这些数据中没有证据表明这种现象。所以这种前额叶的活动减弱非常令人震惊。”
为了保证这是个预备研究，Fiske还准备跟踪更大的样本。然而她推断，“……这些发现都是一致的，他们对这些照片的反应和他们对物品的反应一样，那不是对有独立思想的人的反应。”Fiske认为如果在工作场所有性别明显的女性画面，可能会发生溢出效应，或许会影响人们对待女性同事的方式。
Women as Sex Objects
A new study presented at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago shows that when men see photos of scantily clad women their brain registers the women as objects to be acted on. Christie Nicholson reports
Please note: this podcast is longer than the usual one minute as it includes quotes from the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.
Do men objectify women? Well some say there may be a tendency, since there’s a booming business in pornography. But to answer the how, when and why men objectify women requires some science.
Princeton psychologist Susan Fiske presented findings from a new study this past Sunday, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Chicago, where she and her colleagues compared, "...heterosexual men’s perceptions of scantily clad women, scantily clad men, and fully clothed men and women."
And what they found is the 21 male subjects had the best memory for photos of sexy bikini-clad women. No surprise. Then they had the men look at the photos while their brains were scanned and what she found was that, "...this memory correlated with activation in part of the brain that is a pre-motor, having intentions to act on something, so it was as if they immediately thought about how they might act on these bodies."
Fiske explained that the areas, the premotor cortex and posterior middle temporal gyrus, typically light up when one anticipates using tools, like a screwdriver. "I’m not saying that they literally think these photographs of women are photographs of tools per se, or photographs of non-humans, but what the brain imaging data allow us to do is to look at it as scientific metaphor. That is, they are reacting to these photographs as people react to objects."
Fisk also tested the men for levels of sexism and found a surprising effect those who scored high on this test, "...the hostile sexists were likely to deactivate the part of the brain that thinks about other people's intentions. The lack of activation of this social cognition area is really odd, because it hardly ever happens. It’s a very reliable effect, that the medial prefrontal cortex comes online when people think about other people, see pictures of them, imagine other people."
"Normally when you examine social cognition, people’s aim is to figure out what the other person is thinking and intending. And we see in these data really no evidence of that. So the deactivation of medial prefrontal cortex to these pictures is really kind of shocking."
To be sure this is a preliminary study, and Fiske intends to follow up with a larger sample, but nonetheless she concludes, "...these findings are all consistent with the idea that they are responding to these photographs as if they are responding to objects and not to people with independent agency." Fiske suggested that if there are sexualized pictures of women in the workplace, there may be a spillover effect, perhaps influencing the way people perceive female colleagues.
—Christie Nicholson
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