Culture and psychology

文化與心理

You are what you eat

吃什么你就是什么

Or, rather, what you grow to eat

或者說，種什么來吃你就是什么

May 10th 2014 | From the print edition of The Economist

譯者：Wesyman

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THAT orientals and occidentals think in different ways is not mere prejudice. Many psychological studies conducted over the past two decades suggest Westerners have a more individualistic, analytic and abstract mental life than do East Asians. Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain this.

說東方人和西方人思維方式不一樣，這可不只是偏見。過去的二十年里，許多心理學(xué)研究都顯示西方人比東亞人更個人主義、更擅長分析和抽象思維。為了解釋這個現(xiàn)象，研究者們提出了若干種假說。

One, that modernisation promotes individualism, falls at the first hurdle: Japan, an ultra-modern country whose people have retained a collective outlook. A second, that a higher prevalence of infectious disease in a place makes contact with strangers more dangerous, and causes groups to turn inward, is hardly better. Europe has had its share of plagues; probably more that either Japan or Korea. And though southern China is notoriously a source of infection (influenza pandemics often start there), this is not true of other parts of that enormous country.

一假說認為現(xiàn)代化發(fā)展促進了個人主義，但過不了第一關(guān)：日本，該國極度現(xiàn)代化，但其國民保持了集體主義的觀念。假說二認為如果一個地方有傳染病肆虐，與陌生人交流的風(fēng)險就會更大，便導(dǎo)致當?shù)刈迦鹤兊脙?nèi)向，這說法也比第一個強不到哪。歐洲是有經(jīng)歷過瘟疫，大概比日本和韓國都多。盡管中國南部也是臭名昭著的傳染病之源（流感大流行常常從那里開始），但在這個龐大國家的其他地區(qū)卻不存在這種現(xiàn)象。

That led Thomas Talhelm of the University of Virginia and his colleagues to look into a third suggestion: that the crucial difference is agricultural. The West’s staple is wheat; the East’s, rice (see article). Before the mechanisation of agriculture a farmer who grew rice had to expend twice as many hours doing so as one who grew wheat. To deploy labour efficiently, especially at times of planting and harvesting, rice-growing societies as far apart as India, Malaysia and Japan all developed co-operative labour exchanges which let neighbours stagger their farms’ schedules in order to assist each other during these crucial periods. Since, until recently, almost everyone alive was a farmer, it is a reasonable hypothesis that such a collective outlook would dominate a society’s culture and behaviour, and might prove so deep-rooted that even now, when most people earn their living in other ways, it helps to define their lives.

于是，弗吉尼亞大學(xué)的托馬斯-塔爾赫姆和他的同事決定研究第三個假說：差異關(guān)鍵在農(nóng)業(yè)。西方的主食是小麥，東方是水稻（見文）。在農(nóng)業(yè)機械化之前，種水稻的農(nóng)民必須比種小麥的多花一倍的時間勞作。為了有效調(diào)度勞作時間，尤其在種稻和收割的時節(jié)，相隔千里的各水稻種植社會（印度，馬來西亞和日本）都發(fā)展出了合作勞動交換機制，讓鄰里可以錯開彼此的務(wù)農(nóng)日程，以便在非常時期互相幫助。因為在近代以前幾乎每個活人都是農(nóng)民，所以假說認為這種集體觀念會支配一個社會的文化和行為是有道理的，而這種觀念可能已深深扎根于文化，以至于直到今天，盡管大部分人不以農(nóng)業(yè)為生，但還是多少決定了他們的生活。

Mr Talhelm realised that this idea is testable. Large swathes of China, particularly in the north, depend not on rice, but on wheat. That, as he explains in a paper in Science, let him and his team put some flesh on this theory’s bones.

塔爾赫姆意識到這個假說是可以測試的。中國有大片地帶，尤其在北方，是以小麥而不是水稻作為主要作物。如他在《科學(xué)》雜志的論文所說，他和他的團隊借此得以為理論的骨架添一些肌肉。

The team gathered almost 1,200 volunteers from all over China and asked them questions to assess their individualism or collectivism. The answers bore little relation to the wealth of a volunteer’s place of origin, which Mr Talhelm saw as a proxy for how modern it was, or to its level of public health. There was a striking correlation, though, with whether it was a rice-growing or a wheat-growing area. This difference was marked even between people from neighbouring counties with different agricultural traditions. His hypothesis that the different psychologies of East and West are, at least in part, a consequence of their agriculture thus looks worth further exploration. And such exploration is possible—for India, too, has rice-growing and wheat-growing regions.

該團隊從中國各地聚集了近1200名志愿者，向他們提問并評估他們的個人主義或集體主義程度。志愿者的答案與他們來源地的富裕程度（塔爾赫姆用該因素來衡量這些地區(qū)的現(xiàn)代化程度或公共醫(yī)療水平）幾乎沒有關(guān)聯(lián)。然而，答案卻與來源地種植水稻或小麥的問題表現(xiàn)出顯著的相關(guān)性。這種差異甚至在有著不同農(nóng)業(yè)傳統(tǒng)的鄰縣間也有體現(xiàn)。他的假說認為，東西方的心理學(xué)差異至少部分可歸因于農(nóng)業(yè)差異，因此值得進一步探索。而這樣的探索是可行的——因為印度也同時擁有水稻和小麥的地區(qū)。

How resilient Asia’s collectivist cultures will be as they lose their rural roots remains to be seen. But the message from Japan, and also from more recently modernised places such as Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, seems to be “quite resilient”. For some, Asian values—with their tenets of solidarity and collective action—are cause for celebration. For others, they are stifling and a barrier to social progress. But whichever side you take, if Mr Talhelm is correct they are only “Asian” because, back in the neolithic, farmers in many parts of that continent found Oryza a more congenial crop to grow than Triticum.

隨著去農(nóng)業(yè)化，亞洲各國的集體主義文化彈性有多強還有待觀察。但從日本，以及其他新近現(xiàn)代化地區(qū)（韓國，臺灣，香港和新加坡）傳達的信息來看，還是“頗有彈性”的。對一些國家來說，亞洲的價值觀——團結(jié)和集體行動的信條——是值得慶祝的。但對其他國家來說，又是社會進步的阻礙。但不論你站在哪一方，如果塔爾赫姆是對的，亞洲的價值觀只是“亞洲的”而已，因為早在新石器時期，許多在這塊大陸上的農(nóng)夫們就已發(fā)現(xiàn)稻屬植物比小麥屬植物更適宜種植。

From the print edition: Science and technology