来源：《新科学家》
刊登日期：2021年2月10日
Observing a virtual-reality version of yourself confidently delivering a speech with bold body language can improve your public speaking – if you are a man.
如果你是一位男性，通过观看虚拟现实影像中的自己用肢体语言大胆自信地发表演讲，能提高你的演讲能力。
Marianne Schmid Mast at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and her colleagues took 76 subjects – most of whom were undergraduate students, and around a third of whom were women – and asked them to give a 3-minute speech to a virtual audience. The subjects then watched a virtual talk given confidently by either an avatar made to look like themselves or an avatar of the same gender that didn’t resemble them. They were then asked to give a second 3-minute speech.
瑞士洛桑大学的Mast和她的同事们选择了76名受试者——其中大多数是本科生，约三分之一是女性——并要求他们在虚拟听众面前做3分钟的演讲。接下来，受试者观看了一段台风自信的虚拟演讲，演讲者或是一个看起来像他们自己的虚拟人物，或是一个不像他们的同性别虚拟人物。然后，受试者被要求再做一次3分钟的演讲。
The team found a notable pattern among male participants who had, before the study, expressed the belief that they weren’t good public speakers. Those that then watched their avatars were, on average, 22 per cent more persuasive in the second speech – based on an assessment of body language by an external viewer – than those who watched the unfamiliar avatar.
研究小组发现，在男性参与者中有一个显著的模式，在研究开始前，男性受试者认为自己不是好的演说者。根据外部观众对肢体语言的评估，观看自己化身的人在第二次演讲中的说服力平均比观看陌生人化身的人高出22%。
Schmid Mast says men who lack confidence benefit more from seeing the confident avatar, as it allows them to visualise the behaviour needed to improve their own performance.
Mast说，缺乏自信的男性从看到自信的化身中获益更多，因为它能让他们看到哪些行为能够提高自己的演讲表现。
“If you’re shy or think you can’t do it, then you actually profit from seeing yourself. It takes out the stress. You already see yourself using the hand gestures which usually you don’t use, so you see it doesn’t look completely ridiculous, and that can encourage you to actually show it,” she says.
“如果你很害羞，或者认为自己做不到，那么你实际上会从观看自己中获益。它可以消除压力。你已经看到你自己在做那些你通常不会做的手势，所以你看到这看起来并不傻，这可以鼓励你真正地表现出来，”她说。
There was no observable effect on women in any of the tests. Schmid Mast believes this is down to women being generally more expressive with their bodies and faces than men, and therefore benefiting less from the cues in the virtual speech. The team plans to further observe this gender gap in future research.
在所有的测试中都没有观察到对女性的影响。Mast认为，这是因为女性通常比男性更善于表达自己的身体和面部表情，因此从虚拟演讲的提示中获益较少。研究小组计划在未来的研究中进一步观察这种性别差异。