来源：《新科学家》
原文刊登日期：2021年4月23日
When a person looks at their mobile phone, around half the people nearby will start checking their phones within 30 seconds. Such a rapid, automatic response is probably due to people imitating each other without realising it – what scientists call the “chameleon effect”. While such imitation is thought to have evolved in human societies to help people bond with each other, imitating mobile phone use might have the opposite effect, says Elisabetta Palagi at the University of Pisa, Italy.
当一个人看手机时，其周围大约一半的人会在30秒内开始查看手机。这种快速的自动反应可能是因为人们在无意识的情况下互相模仿——科学家称之为“变色龙效应”。意大利比萨大学的Palagi说，虽然这种模仿被认为是在人类社会中进化而来的，以帮助人们彼此建立联系，但模仿使用手机可能会产生相反的效果。
“We have a need to follow the norms imposed on us by people around us, to match our actions with theirs in this automatic way,” she says. “But smartphones can increase social isolation through interference with real-life, ongoing activities.”
她说：“我们需要遵循周围人强加给我们的规范，以这种自动的方式使我们的行为与别人的行为相匹配。但智能手机会干扰现实生活中正在进行的活动，从而加剧社会隔离。”
Worse, people without phones can’t even try to replicate the behaviour. “So these people can feel especially isolated.”
更糟糕的是，没有手机的人甚至无法尝试复制这种行为。“所以这些人会感到特别孤立。”
Palagi had already investigated the chameleon effect in humans – which can include facial expressions, hand movements, foot shaking, yawning and speech patterns. So when her student Veronica Maglieri noted how people – including herself – always seemed to pick up their phones when other people did, they decided to run an observational study.
帕拉吉已经研究了人类的变色龙效应——包括面部表情、手部动作、抖脚、打哈欠和说话模式。因此，当她的学生维罗妮卡·马格里里注意到人们——包括她自己——似乎总是在别人拿起手机时拿起手机时，她们决定进行一项观察研究。
The team watched 88 women and 96 men in 820 different situations in natural settings – parks, restaurants, public transportation, waiting rooms and dinner parties, for example – to see how many would look at their phones after someone else nearby did. These “trigger” individuals pushed buttons or swiped their screens for five seconds, either with or without looking at the lit-up screen.
研究小组观察了88名女性和96名男性在820个不同的场景中——例如公园、餐馆、公共交通、候车室和晚宴派对——以了解多少人会在旁边的人看手机后自己也看手机。这些“触发”的人要么按下按钮，要么在屏幕上滑动5秒钟，看或不看亮着的屏幕。
The researchers found that 50 per cent of people looked at their phone within 30 seconds of the trigger touching and looking at his or her phone, but just 0.5 per cent of people did so when the trigger touched the phone without looking at it. “It’s paying attention to the phone that sets off the imitation,” Palagi says.
研究人员发现，50%的人在触发者看了手机后的30秒内也看了看自己的手机，但当触发者仅仅触摸手机而不看时，其附近的人只有0.5%也看了看自己的手机。帕拉吉说：“人们对手机的关注会引发模仿。”
The imitating behaviour wasn’t just fast, but – at least anecdotally – it was also automatic and subconscious, adds Maglieri. “One woman who was sitting across from me in a waiting room saw me check my phone, and within seconds she took out her phone and called someone and said, ‘Hey, I just felt like calling you; I don’t know why,’” she says.
这种模仿行为不仅是快速的，而且——至少据说——也是自动的和潜意识的，Maglieri补充道。“在等候室里，坐在我对面的一位女士看到我在看手机，几秒钟后她拿出手机给某人打了电话，说，‘嘿，我就想给你打电话，我不知道为什么，’”她说。
Response rates were the same across all groups, regardless of age, sex, or relationship to the trigger. The researchers themselves were usually the triggers, and the people they observed were strangers, acquaintances or friends and family in balanced groups. But none of the subjects knew their behaviour was being observed.
无论年龄、性别或与触发者的关系如何，所有组别的应答率都是相同的。研究人员本身通常是触发者，他们观察的人是陌生人、熟人或朋友和家人。但没有一个受试者知道自己的行为被观察到。
“Most people get infected by other people’s mobile phone behaviour, without even realising it,” says Palagi.
帕拉吉说：“大多数人都会被其他人使用手机的行为传染，甚至没有意识到这一点。”。