如痴如狂的“名人效应”

何航

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” You may recognize this brilliant quote from genius physicist Albert Einstein.
你可能会记得天才物理学家爱因斯坦有句至理名言：“疯子就是反复做着相同的事情，却期望有一天会出现不同的结果。”
However, a quick Google search shows that this quote first appeared in print in 1981, in a pamphlet by Narcotics Anonymous (a US organization that helps people quit smoking), some 25 years after the scientist died.
而通过谷歌搜索，我们发现：1981年，这句话第一次出现在麻醉剂成瘾者互诫协会（美国一所戒烟组织）的宣传册上。而那时爱因斯坦已经过世约25年了。
Many famous people have probably said less than half the things you’ve heard them being quoted on. This is because quotes are more quotable and inspirational when they come from those famous for their success and wisdom.
我们所听到过的名人名言可能只有不到一半是出自名人之口。因为许多言论贴上“成功人士或智者”的标签后，流传度以及励志性都会更上一层楼。
Misattributing quotes is just one aspect of our tendency to give celebrities more credit than they rightfully deserve. Nowadays, it’s not just wisdom we want to gain from famous people, we copy everything from soccer players’ hairstyles, to pop singers’ fashion sense and movie stars’ exercise regimes.
将名人名言张冠李戴只是我们对名人盲目崇拜的一个方面。如今，我们不仅渴望从名人身上学到智慧，还会去效仿名人的一切，从球星的发型、歌手的时尚品味，再到影星的健身之道。
In a recent BBC radio program, social anthropologist Jamie Tehrani tried to explain our obsession with celebrities from an anthropologist’s perspective.
在英国广播公司BBC近期播出的一档节目中，社会人类学家杰米• 特拉尼试图从人类学角度来解读我们对名人的痴迷。
Fame is a powerful cultural magnet. As a hyper-social species, Tehrani explains, humans acquire knowledge, ideas and skills by copying from others, rather than through individual trial and error. However, we pay far more attention to the habits and behaviors demonstrated by famous people than those demonstrated by ordinary folks in our community.
名人声望就像是一块强大的文化磁石。特拉尼解释说，作为一个极端社会化的物种，人类通过模仿来获取知识、思想和技能，并非经由个人反复试验和试错得出。而我们也会更多地去关注名人而不是街坊邻里的言行举止和生活习惯。
Tehrani calls this “prestige-biased learning”. Prestige is a form of social status that is based on respect and admiration for members of one’s community. In primitive society, if a hunter is extremely good at hunting, he would be well respected in his tribe and other hunters would study his hunting skills or copy his method of making weapons. Prestige-biased learning has been crucial to the evolutionary success of our species.
特拉尼将这种现象称之为“声望学习法”。声望是一种基于对社群中其他成员的尊敬和羡慕而形成的社会地位。在原始社会中，如果一位猎人十分擅长狩猎，他将在部落里备受尊重，其他猎人都会前来学艺，或者模仿他制造武器的方法。“名望学习法”一直对人类进化起到至关重要的作用。
In the past, Tehrani said, any useless traits we acquired as a result of prestige-biased learning were offset by the benefits of picking up useful skills. So, in the long run, it was an effective, adaptive strategy.
特拉尼表示，过去，我们通过“名望学习法”获得的任何无用的特性都将被习得的有用技能带给你的好处所抵消。因此，从长远来看，这的确是种行之有效的学习策略。
But in the modern world, politicians become famous through sex scandals and singers sell more albums after they die from a drug overdose.
但在当代社会，许多政治家通过桃色新闻而一举成名，而一些歌手在死于吸食毒品过量后，其专辑却大卖。
Bob Beckel from USA Today bemoans today’s pop culture, which awards celebrity status to people who have done nothing to deserve it, “other than being outrageous enough to get themselves in the tabloids”.
来自《今日美国》的鲍勃•贝克尔为当今的流行文化而感到惋惜，称将那些徒有虚名者奉为名人，“除了离谱得足以登上小报之外一无是处”。
Being famous has become an end in itself. In primitive society, a good hunter was a role model because people could learn from him and had a better chance of surviving. Today, we need to ask ourselves if someone is really a good role model and what superior knowledge or skill they can teach us before putting them on a pedestal.
声望本身已成为一个终极的目标。在原始社会，一位好猎手之所以被视为偶像，是因为人们可以向他学艺以便更好地生存下去。而如今，我们在膜拜偶像之前应该先问问自己：他们是否真的是一个好榜样，而我们又可以从他们身上学到什么更卓越的知识与技能。