Linda Rising：“你相信谁？”

在Agile 2008大会上，Linda Rising博士主持了一个演讲，集中讲述了多年前进行的实验，该实验从心理学和认知科学的角度，展示出人类的“偏见”和“成见”的强大影响，并且指出二者很难避免。本文是对该演讲的摘要概括。

贯穿整个演讲的，就是下面这个实验，该实验于1954年进行，并被称为“Robbers Cave实验”。

 

两组12岁的男孩被带到同一个童子军营地，不过他们彼此不知道对方的存在，而且相信自己所在的组是营地中唯一的小组。（当然，他 们抵达营地时乘坐了不同巴士。）第一周时，两个组分别行动。他们在湖中游泳，建造隐蔽所，搭帐篷。陪同的大人们（其实他们是主持实现的研究人员）确保两个 组之间没有任何联系。各组组员们构成了一个紧密团结的团队。

一周之后，两个小组知道了对方的存在（这是大人们策划好的）。此时，尽管他们还没有见到对方，两个组已经开始区分“我们”和“他们”了，而且会说“他们 （另外一个组）侵占了我们的领地”。研究人员也被这些男孩子行为的极端程度所惊讶：各组组员迅速团结在一起的速度，以及两个组视对方为“敌人”的速度。

两个组被带到一起了。在“大人”设计好的计划下，两个组参加了一些争胜负的游戏，比如棒球和拔河。每组在各项游戏的得分最后会加在一起，由大人充当评判的 角色。当天得分最高的一组会获得奖励。结果公布时，失败一方烧掉了获胜一方的旗帜，袭击了对方的营地。两个小组处于全面宣战的边缘。

Rising博士停止了对实验的讲述，开始谈论人们的偏见。人类生而具备一种本能，迅速判断当前状况是危险还是安全，面前的食物能否食用，面前的人 是敌是友。这是本能，是人类通过生存竞争和进化过程获得的本能。在原始社会，倘若有人难于分辨面前的人是属于自己的部族，还是敌方部落的一员，那就是生死 攸关的问题。然而，由于这种本能的存在，人类一见到其他人，就会很容易给他们分类；换句话说，产生成见。

人们很容易把其他人分类：敌人或是朋友、亲人或是陌生人、自己人或是外人。这个决策是在非常短的时间内形成的，分类会带来成见和鲁莽的判断。人们会根据第一印象对他人做出假设。偏见有两个特点：

• 每个人都有偏见。
• 没有人认识到自己有偏见。

换句话说，每个人都错误地认为自己没有偏见。结果，虽然人们都相信自己做出了理智的决策，实际上他们总在证明自己的行为，以及朋友、家人和同事行为的正确性，而且总是假定陌生人和外人的行为是“不好”的。

成见使得人们看待彼此的方式变得过于简单。尽管每个人的个性都非常丰富和复杂，人们还是会基于他人的外在行为给他们扣帽子，而忽略细节和难以观察到的个人特质。Rising博士在她的说明中提出了下面的例子：

结了婚的人们在谈论到自己的另一半时，喜欢用推断的表达方式，不是么？他们‘从不’把厨房打扫干净，或者他们‘总是’在抱怨。这是基于偏见的另一种扣帽子方法。

而且，当管理者评估下级的工作能力时，同样会产生“偏见”和“成见”。大多数情况下，管理者会根据工作者三周内的表现“判断”其能力，给这些人打上 “有能力”或是“无能”的标签。一旦形成偏见，管理者就会通过这个标签来看待工作者的所有行径。如果两个工作者犯了同样的错误，对于“无能”的工作者，管 理者会想：“又来了，他/她总是犯同样的错误。”而对于“有能力”的工作者，管理者会这样想：“也许他/她身体不太舒服。”最终，管理者只会去关注验证他 们的偏见的行为。

不仅如此，偏见会导致人们丢掉展示自己能力的机会。Rising博士介绍了另一个实验。通常来说，人们认为女人的数学能力不如男人出色（在美国如 此）。在该实验中，受试者会接受数学测试。如果在测试前不跟受试者讲有关测试与性别有关的观点，男人和女人的测试结果没有差别。然而，如果先告诉他们不同 性别的数学能力表现不同，那么女人的得分就会低于男人呢。而且，如果在试卷上单独留出一列，供受试者填入性别，之前也不告诉他们有关性别和能力的观点，那 么得到的测试结果，男人和女人也是没有差别的。这个例子展示出，人们对自己性别的认知会激活偏见，从而阻止一个人固有能力的发挥。

“偏见”与“成见”深深植根于人的本性之中，并且影响到每个人。如果人们试图一起完成复杂的工作或是达到一个共同的目标时，“偏见”和“成见”就会 构成障碍，它们会使得人们丢掉展示个人能力的机会，产生错误，有时还会降低持偏见者的能力发挥。那么又该如何避免这些偏见，或是减轻它们的负面影响呢？

Rising博士继续讲述与第一个实验有关的故事：

研究人员试图缓和两个小组之间的冲突，可是，仅仅让大家共同进行某些活动无法产生明显的效果。研究人员接下来安排了一个“事故”，他们切断了营区的 供水。所有的男孩子都要去检查水管（长度不止1公里），看看是不是有哪里堵住了。当壅塞被发现并疏通之后，两个小组的成员们走到一起庆祝。通过让所有的男 孩子们解决同一个影响到整个园区的“事故”，两个小组之间的冲突冰雪消融了。

人们是可以合作的。给定一个共同的目标，他们可以一起工作，解决面临的问题。有一个用猴子做的研究，实验的设置，使得两只猴子必须互相协作才能取得 食物。一开始两个猴子都可以获取食物。后来实验方式发生了变化，即使两只猴子一起合作，也只有一只猴子能够获得食物。然而，即使它们认识到自己可能无法吃 到任何东西，还是会跟对方合作，而得到食物的猴子也会将其分享给它的伙伴。

人们是可以合作的。Rising博士任务说这也是人的本能。只要能够互相合作，双方可以互不欣赏。不过彼此要互相了解并承认对方付出的努力。这样彼此就可以尊重对方的能力和付出的努力。人们得到尊重和信任后会感到高兴，这种感觉是人类的天性。

利用这些直觉和本能，Rising博士指出：从允许人们展示自身能力的观点来看，敏捷实践是非常出色的；特别是面对面的沟通可以提升合作的效果。

在她的最后一张幻灯片上，Rising博士使用了一个非常有震撼力的照片，上面有一个正在进食的猴王，它被一群母猴子和年青猴子的热切目光紧紧包 围。这张幻灯片的标题是“盼头”。母猴子和年青猴子抱有希望，因为它们觉得老大会给它们分享食物。不过我觉得这么说意犹未尽，我认为照片还包含了另外的信 息：希望，蕴含于人们的合作能力之中。

演讲伊始，Rising博士称这个演示是她的第三个“奇怪的谈话”。在Agile2006上，她从动物行为学的角度分析了Bonobo大猩猩的合作 行为，并说明了敏捷的合作性是多么“自然”。在Agile 2007上，她分析了人们欺骗自己的“能力”，认为这种能力会对业务估算的准备产生负面影响。

Rising博士在Agile 2008上的演讲，讨论了人类的偏见能够造成哪些障碍，团队的能力如何因成见而消弭，还包括敏捷团队如何克服这些负面影响。在作者看来，这些知识剖析了人类精神和大脑的工作方式，并在某种程度上揭示了人类的局限性。

 

During Agile 2008, Dr. Linda Rising held a presentation centered on experiments conducted many years ago, presenting how deep, powerfully affecting, and difficult to avoid are human “prejudices” and “stereotypes” as seen from the perspective of psychology and cognitive science. In the second half of the session, she explained how it is possible to minimize and overcome the impact of prejudice. This article is a summary of that presentation.

The following experiment was mentioned throughout the session, an experiment conducted in 1954 and known as the Robbers Cave Experiment:

Two groups of 12-year-old boys were taken to a Boy Scouts camp, but neither group knew of the other’s existence and believed that their group was the only group in the camp. (Of course, they traveled to the camp by different buses.) During the first week, the two groups carried out their activities separately. They swam in the lake, built hide-outs, and pitched tents. The accompanying adults (who were actually the researchers conducting the experiment) ensured that there was no contact between the two groups. The members of each group bonded as a team.

After one week, the two groups became aware of each other’s presence (as contrived by the adults). At this point, despite their not actually seeing each other, the two groups began distinguishing between “us” and “them” and saying “they (the other group) intruded on our territory”. The researchers were surprised by the extremes in boys’ reactions: how quickly the members of each group had bonded initially with each other and how quickly both groups had seen the other as “the enemy.”

The two groups were then brought together. In a plan set-up by the “adults”, the two groups participated in competitive games such as baseball and tug-of-war, and the total scores for various games were recorded for each group, with the adults acting as judges. The group that won with the highest total score for the day was awarded prizes. When that happened, the losing group burned the flag of the winning group and raided their camp; the two groups were on the verge of declaring all-out war on each other.

Dr. Rising broke off her story about the experiment here and turned to the topic of people’s prejudices. Humans are born with an instinctive ability to instantly determine whether what is in front of them is safe or dangerous, edible or inedible, enemy or friend. Since this ability is instinctive, it is an ability that humans acquired through competition for survival and the process of evolution. For humans in primitive times, slowness in distinguishing whether the person in front of them is a member of their own tribe or a member of an enemy tribe was a life-or-death issue. However, because of this instinctive ability, humans also came to categorize other humans — in other words, stereotyping them — the moment they laid eyes on them.

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People categorize other people: enemy or friend; family or stranger; insider or outsider. This decision is made in an extremely short period of time, and categorizing then leads to stereotyping and simplification, with people making presumptions about others based on first appearances. Prejudice has two characteristics:

• Everyone has prejudices
• Nobody realizes that they are prejudiced

In other words, everybody mistakenly believes that they are not prejudiced. Consequently, while people believe themselves to be making rational decisions, they in fact constantly justify their behavior and that of their friends, family, and colleagues, and constantly presume the actions of strangers and outsiders to be “bad.”

Stereotypes simplify the way people view others. Despite the rich and complex individuality inherent in each person, people label others focusing on general outward appearance and ignoring details and difficult-to-observe features. Dr. Rising gave this example during her explanation:

“People who are married tend to use presumptive expressions when talking about their spouses, don’t they? They ‘never’ tidy up the kitchen, or they’re ‘always’ complaining. This is another kind of labeling due to prejudices.”

Moreover, when supervisors and managers evaluate the abilities of the staff working under them, the same prejudices and stereotyping occurs. In many cases, a supervisor “determines” the ability of a worker in about three weeks, labeling them as either “can do” or “can’t do” workers. Once a prejudice has been formed, the supervisor views all the actions of that worker through this filter. If two workers make the same mistake, in the case of the “Can’t do” worker, the supervisor will think, “There he/she goes again, making the same mistakes,” while in the case of the “Can do” worker the supervisor will think, “Maybe he/she wasn’t feeling well.” Eventually, the supervisor can only recognize actions that affirm their prejudice.

Not only this, prejudices can also cause people to lose the capacity to demonstrate their own abilities. Here Dr. Rising introduced another experiment. In general, females are believed to be less proficient in mathematics than males (in the case of the United States). In this experiment, the subjects were given a mathematics test. If no mention of gender was made before the test was administered, there was no difference in the results between males and females. However, if comments were made about the relationship between mathematical ability and gender before the test was administered, the females scored lower than the males. Furthermore, the same results were obtained by simply having a column on the test paper for subjects to fill in their gender, without any comments about gender being made. This is an example of consciousness of their own gender activating prejudices and inhibiting a person’s natural abilities.

Prejudices and stereotyping are rooted in human instincts, and so influence everyone. However, these can also be obstacles when many people are attempting to work together to complete a complex job or reach a common objective, missing chances for people to display their individual abilities, inviting mistakes, and in some cases even lowering the capabilities of the people who have prejudices. How is it possible to escape from these prejudices and/or lessen their impact?

Continuing the story of the first experiment, Dr. Rising said:

The researchers tried to stop the conflict between the two groups, but simply making the two groups carry out activities together produced no noticeable results. The researchers then staged an “incident” in which the camp’s water supply was cut off and all the boys had to check the water pipe (more than 1 km long) to see where it was blocked. When the blockage was found and removed, the members of both groups joined together in celebrating. By involving all the boys in the resolution of an “incident” that affected the entire camp, the conflict between the two groups evaporated.

Humans can cooperate. Given a common objective, they can work together to tackle the task at hand. In a study using monkeys, the experiment was set up so that two monkeys obtained food by cooperating with each other. Initially both of the monkeys obtained food, but the experiment was changed so that only one monkey obtained food even when the two monkeys cooperated. However, even when one of them realized that it would not receive any food, it cooperated with the other, and the monkey who received the food shared it with the other monkey.

Humans can cooperate. Dr. Rising says that this human ability is also instinctive. In order to cooperate, there is no need for the two parties to like each other. All that is necessary is that one party acknowledges the efforts of the other, and the other party recognizes the efforts of the first. A relationship of mutual respect for the ability and contribution of the other party is born from that. People feel happy to be respected and trusted; such instincts are inherent to human nature.

Taking advantage of these natural human instincts, Dr. Rising points out that Agile practices are outstanding from the standpoint of enabling people to display their abilities, especially the fact that face-to-face communication promotes cooperation.

For her last slide, Dr. Rising used a very striking image, a photograph of a boss monkey eating, surrounded by females and youngsters staring intently at him. The title of the slide was “Reason for Hope”. The females and youngsters had hope because they thought the boss will share the food with them. However, I felt that was not all; I felt the photograph also contained the message that hope lies in the ability of humans to cooperate.

At the start of the session, Dr. Rising said that this presentation was the third of her “weird talks.” At Agile 2006, she examined the cooperative behavior of Bonobo apes from an ethological perspective and spoke about how “natural” the cooperative aspects of Agile are. At Agile 2007, she examined the “ability” of humans to deceive themselves, considering how this “ability” affected the preparation of business estimates.

Dr. Rising’s presentation at Agile 2008 discussed how tied up in prejudices humans are, how the capacity of teams is diminished by stereotyping, and how Agile teams overcome these negative impacts. In the opinion of the author, such knowledge cuts through the workings of the human spirit and brain and seems somehow excitingly close to the human limit.