手機(jī)版
心理學(xué)版本的心想事成。說白了就是：你對(duì)別人友好，別人就喜歡你；你要是怕別人對(duì)你不友好，自己先把架子擺起來，對(duì)方可就真不喜歡你了。
The mystical-sounding 'acceptance prophecy' is simply this: when we think other people are going to like us, we behave more warmly towards them and consequently they like us more. When we think other people aren't going to like us, we behave more coldly and they don't like us as much.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because if we predict acceptance we get it, if not we don't. It's also an intuitively appealing explanation for how people come to like （or dislike） each other. But the question for psychologists is whether it is really true or just a neat fairy story.
The waters are, of course, muddied by all the usual individual and cultural differences-some people care more about other's acceptance and some people are naturally more accepting-but let's set those aside for a moment and just imagine two people who are identical except that one expects others to accept her and one expects others to reject her.
What the research has found, according to a new paper just published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, is that one part of the acceptance prophecy has strong evidence to support it, while the other part does not. Until now.
The first part, in a model put forward by Dr Danu Anthony Stinson at the University of Waterloo and colleagues, is that the interpersonal warmth people project predicts how much others like them （Stinson et al., 2009）. For psychologists this is uncontroversial; people take better to others who are genuinely warm with accurate judgements about their warmth made in only 30 seconds （Ambady et al., 2000）.
Pleased to meet you
What has proved more controversial is whether anticipating acceptance really does increase the interpersonal warmth that people project towards others. It's this question that Stinson et al. （2009） set out to test by manipulated people's expectations about a person they were about to meet for the first time.
They told 14 of 28 men recruited for their study that the attractive woman they were going to meet was nervous and worried about how she would be perceived by them. Quite naturally when these men found that the woman was nervous and insecure it made them feel better in comparison. This had the effect of making the men much less anxious about the interaction （actually about half as nervous as judged by independent observers） and consequently much warmer.
In comparison the other 14 sweaty-palmed participants were only given basic demographic information about the woman they were going to talk to, nothing that would calm their fears of rejection. This manipulation created two groups, then, one that was anticipating acceptance more than the other.
What the results showed was that when the risk of rejection was lower, men acted more warmly towards the woman to whom they were talking. This extra warmth also lead to a panel of observers liking them more in comparison with those who were more fearful of risk and therefore interpersonally colder.
So this provides evidence that the acceptance prophecy holds true. In this experiment people who expected to be accepted did act more warmly towards a stranger and consequently they were perceived as more likeable.
Social optimist or pessimist?
There was an exception, though, to the results of this study. One sub-group were not affected by the experimental manipulation to increase how much they expected to be accepted. That's because they already expected to be accepted. These are the social optimists （or at least people who think rather a lot of themselves!）.
Social optimists, of course, are in the happy position of expecting to be accepted and finding that, generally speaking, they are. Social pessimists, though, face the dark side of what sociologist Robert K. Merton-who coined the expression 'self-fulfilling prophecy'-has called a 'reign of error'. Expectation of rejection leads to the projection of colder, more defensive behaviour towards others, and this leads to actual rejection. "Uh-huh," mutters the social pessimist, "I knew they wouldn't like me".
And so it goes.
看似神秘的"接納預(yù)言"實(shí)則很簡(jiǎn)單：當(dāng)我們認(rèn)為自己受到其他人喜歡時(shí)，我們?cè)谒麄兠媲熬蜁?huì)表現(xiàn)得更加友善，結(jié)果對(duì)方也會(huì)相應(yīng)地變得更喜歡我們。當(dāng)我們認(rèn)為自己不被他人喜歡時(shí)，就會(huì)表現(xiàn)得更加冷淡，這樣一來，對(duì)方就更不喜歡我們了。
這就是一個(gè)自我實(shí)現(xiàn)預(yù)言，因?yàn)楫?dāng)我們預(yù)期會(huì)被他人所接納時(shí)，我們獲得了接納，而當(dāng)我們預(yù)期不被接納時(shí)，就不會(huì)被接納。對(duì)于人們?yōu)槭裁磿?huì)喜歡或不喜歡彼此，上述也是個(gè)直觀上很有吸引力的解釋。但是對(duì)心理學(xué)家而言，重點(diǎn)是這個(gè)解釋是事實(shí)，還是僅僅是一個(gè)"看起來很美"的童話故事。
在這個(gè)問題上，把水?dāng)嚋喌恼撬心切┩ǔ５膫�(gè)體和文化差異--有些人更在意來自他人的接納，有些人天性就比較容易接納別人--但是讓我們暫時(shí)把這些放到一邊，只考慮兩個(gè)人，他們?cè)谒蟹矫娑家荒Ｒ粯�，只除了其中一個(gè)預(yù)期其他人會(huì)接納他，而另一個(gè)人預(yù)期其他人會(huì)拒絕他。
根據(jù)最近發(fā)表在《人格和社會(huì)心理學(xué)公報(bào)》上的一篇論文，研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，"接納預(yù)言"有一部分得到了有力的證據(jù)支持，其他部分則不然。直到現(xiàn)在。
Waterloo大學(xué)的Anthony Stinson博士及其同事提出的一個(gè)模型中，第一部分是：人們表達(dá)出的人際友善可以預(yù)測(cè)其他人對(duì)他們的喜愛程度（Stinson et al., 2009）.對(duì)于心理學(xué)家而言，這一點(diǎn)是毫無疑問的。人們更喜歡那些真正友好的人，而且他們?cè)?0秒內(nèi)就能對(duì)他人的友好程度作出準(zhǔn)確的判斷。
很高興見到你
被認(rèn)為更有爭(zhēng)議的一點(diǎn)是預(yù)期的接納是否確實(shí)增加了人們表達(dá)友善的程度。Stinson等人（2009）對(duì)此做了個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)，通過操縱人們對(duì)于將要初次見面的另一個(gè)人的預(yù)期。
他們?yōu)樵撗芯空骷?8名男性被試，并告知其中的14人他們將要見到一位富有魅力的女子，并且這位女子對(duì)于他們將會(huì)怎樣看待她感到十分緊張和擔(dān)憂。很自然地，當(dāng)這些男士發(fā)現(xiàn)這名女性在緊張害怕時(shí)，他們的感覺相比較而言變好了。這在很大程度上減輕了這些男士對(duì)于交談的焦慮（事實(shí)上，獨(dú)立的觀察者判斷他們的焦慮程度減輕了大約一半）,并且他們也更加熱情了。
與此相對(duì)比，另外14名緊張得滿手是汗的參與者只得到了他們將要與之交談的女性的基本信息，沒有任何東西可以緩和他們對(duì)于被拒絕的恐懼。從而這一操縱產(chǎn)生了兩個(gè)被試組，其中一組將會(huì)預(yù)期比另一組得到更多的接納。
結(jié)果顯示，當(dāng)被拒絕的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)降低時(shí)，男性會(huì)對(duì)他們與之交談的女性表現(xiàn)出更多的熱情。而這一額外的友善表現(xiàn)也令得旁觀者喜歡他們勝過那些因?yàn)榭謶侄憩F(xiàn)冷淡的男士。
從而，這一結(jié)果為接納預(yù)言的正確性提供了證據(jù)。在這個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)中，預(yù)期會(huì)得到接納的人們的確對(duì)陌生人更友善，結(jié)果他們也被認(rèn)為是更加令人喜愛的。
社交樂觀主義者或悲觀主義者？
然而，該研究結(jié)果有個(gè)例外。有一小組人沒有被實(shí)驗(yàn)操縱所影響而提高他們預(yù)期被接納的程度。這是因?yàn)樗麄円呀?jīng)預(yù)期會(huì)獲得接納。這些人是社交樂觀主義者（或者至少是考慮自己比較多的人）.
當(dāng)然，社交樂觀主義者處在一個(gè)愉快的立場(chǎng)上，他們預(yù)期會(huì)獲得接納，并且一般都會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)事實(shí)的確如此。然而，社交悲觀主義者則面臨著術(shù)語"自我實(shí)現(xiàn)預(yù)言"的創(chuàng)造者，社會(huì)學(xué)家Robert K. Merton所說的"錯(cuò)誤支配".預(yù)期被拒絕導(dǎo)致對(duì)他人更加冷淡、防御性的行為表現(xiàn)，而這一點(diǎn)又反過來導(dǎo)致他們真的被拒絕。"啊哈，"社交悲觀主義者咕噥著，"我就知道他們不會(huì)喜歡我。"
事情果如他們所言。
