爲什麼人在飛機上愛發飆大綱
Why do some travelers squabble about overhead bin space? Or feud over an armrest? Why, when a passenger reclines his seat, does another respond with rage befitting the pages of “Lord of the Flies”?
爲什麼有些旅客會爲艙頂行李箱或扶手發生口角？爲什麼前排乘客把椅背向後調，後排乘客會用簡直可以寫進《蠅王》(Lord of the Flies)式的狂怒去迴應？What makes rational travelers like you and me suddenly explode?
爲什麼你我這樣理智的旅客會突然之間勃然大怒？
Some factors are environmental (packed planes, teeming gates); others are internal (stress, fatigue). Together, they can make a perfect storm. Last month at least three flights were diverted because passengers got into fights about reclining seats (and that’s to say nothing of the other unruly passenger incidents that regularly transpire). While the percentage of flights diverted each year is low — it’s been well under 0.40 percent since at least 2004, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics — even a handful of diversions due to passengers who can’t play nice is too many. We may be animals, but need we prove it on a flight to West Palm Beach?
有環境方面的原因（擁擠的機艙和入口處的排隊等候）；也有旅客自身的原因（壓力、疲憊）。這些因素結合在一起很容易讓人發怒。上個月，至少有三個航班因爲有乘客向後調節椅背導致打架而改變航線（更不必說其他難以約束的的乘客事件也經常發生）。雖然每年航班改道的比率很低——據美國運輸統計局稱，至少從2004年起，遠低於0.40%）——但就算只有幾起改道航班事件是由不友好的乘客引起的，也還是顯得太多了。我們也許真的是動物，但我們需要在飛往西棕櫚灘的航班上證明這一點嗎？
One of the most obvious catalysts is, of course, a crowded cabin. Many seats are thinner and narrower than in the past, and planes like some 777s, which used to have only nine seats across in coach, now cram 10 across.
當然，一個最明顯的催化劑是擁擠的機艙。很多飛機的座位比過去更窄，比如，波音777的某些飛機過去一排有九個座位，現在卻擠了十個。“When you crowd people together, there is a point at which they are no longer able to function appropriately,” said Leon James, a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii who has studied road and air rage. Crowding breeds feelings of alienation, cynicism and anonymity. It leads, as Dr. James put it, to “a breakdown of ordinary social inhibitions” — such as controlling one’s explosive emotions.
“如果你讓人們擠在一起，到了一定程度，他們就不再能做出適當的行爲，”夏威夷大學研究路上和機上憤怒的心理學教授利昂·詹姆斯(Leon James)說。擁擠會滋生異化、利己和匿名的感覺。就像詹姆斯博士說的，它會導致“普通社交控制力的崩潰”——諸如控制情緒爆發等能力。Planes today are, in a word, antisocial, he said. Little wonder that people recline their seats without a friendly warning. “They just do it,” said Dr. James, adding that it’s a sign of “impersonal hostility among passengers,” an atmosphere “created by the airlines by the way they manage the passengers.” Most airlines don’t encourage social cabin environments (more on how to do that later). Rather, he said, their service changes have reinforced the hostile climate. By increasing fees for checked bags, passengers on a budget have had to compete for overhead bin space. By eliminating hot meals in coach, travelers have resorted to carrying on their own sometimes odoriferous food at the expense of their seatmates’ noses.
他總結說，如今的飛機是反社交的。難怪人們調節座椅時不會友好地提醒後座的人。“他們就這麼做了，”詹姆斯說。他補充說，這是“乘客間冷漠敵意”的一個表現，這種氣氛是“航空公司對待乘客的方式造成的”。大部分航空公司不去營造彼此交流的機艙氛圍（我後面再具體談談如何改善這一點）。他說，相反，航空公司服務的改變強化了這種敵意氣氛。由於托運行李費用增加，節省的乘客們不得不爭奪艙頂行李箱。由於取消機上熱餐，乘客們就自帶食物，有時食物的味道不太好聞，鄰座的鼻子就會遭罪。I find myself thinking of John B. Calhoun’s seminal overpopulation research, published in Scientific American in the 1960s, which found that as rats were increasingly crowded together they became ever more aggressive and exhibited “behavior disturbances” from “frenetic overactivity” to “pathological withdrawal.”
我想起了20世紀60年代約翰·B·卡爾霍恩(John B. Calhoun)在《科學美國人》(Scientific American)上發表的一項關於人口過剩的重要研究。他發現，老鼠所在的空間越擁擠，它們就越好鬥，表現出“瘋狂的過度活躍”或“病態退縮”等“行爲障礙”。In a congested plane, it’s not just other passengers from whom we feel estranged, though.
不過，在擁擠的飛機上，我們不只是對其他乘客感到疏遠。“You feel a distance from your sense of self,” said Emma Seppala, the associate director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University School of Medicine. “You lose self-awareness,” she continued, referring to one interpretation of a psychological theory known as deindividuation, “and it’s been shown to lessen rationality.”
“你對自己的自我意識感到疏遠，”斯坦福大學醫學院同情與利他研究教育中心的副所長艾瑪·斯帕拉(Emma Seppala)說。她繼續說道，“你失去自我意識”——這是對“去個體化”(deindividuation)心理學理論的一種解釋——“有證據表明，這會降低理性”。The cabin is perhaps the most glaring environmental factor contributing to air rage, but there’s also the theater of getting to the airport and checking in: stop-and-go traffic, the obstacle course of suitcases on the curb, noise bouncing off the terminal walls, snail-like security lines, endless pings from your smartphone as work emails continue to land even as you remove your shoes and shove them into an X-ray machine.
機艙可能是最明顯的導致機上憤怒的環境因素，但是去機場、辦理登機手續也讓人煩躁：交通狀況不好，路邊的行李箱帶來障礙，航站樓中迴盪的噪音，安檢隊伍像蝸牛爬行一樣緩慢，智能手機的提示音不停作響——因爲工作郵件還是會不斷到來，就算你脫掉鞋子，把它們塞進安檢機後，手機還是響個不停。“Evolutionarily we’re currently experiencing more stimulation than we ever have before,” Dr. Seppala said. Many people feel overtaxed and depleted, especially when traveling, and “that really impacts our self-control and willpower,” she said.
“從進化角度看，我們現在感受到的刺激超過之前任何時候，”斯帕拉博士說。很多人感到負擔過重，筋疲力盡，特別在旅行時，她說，“那真的會影響我們的自控力和意志力。”Self-control, however, is not a neat, unitary concept. It’s not as if some people have it and some people don’t.
不過，自控不是個簡單、單一的概念。不是說有些人有，有些人沒有。“There are multiple ways to fail at self-control, and each of these are supported by different brain circuits,” said Joshua W. Buckholtz, an assistant professor in the department of psychology and center for brain science at Harvard. “As it turns out self-control is this heterogeneous construct, and we’re only now beginning to parse it and understand what these distinct faculties are.”
“很多因素會讓我們失控，每個因素由大腦的不同迴路控制，”哈佛大學心理系和腦科學中心副教授約書亞·W·巴克霍茨(Joshua W. Buckholtz)說，“結果發現，自控是個包含很多因素的複雜機制，我們現在剛開始分析它，想弄清它由哪些不同的機能組成。”What we do know is that certain things can affect our capacity for self-control, particularly stress and sleep deprivation — which tend to be as much a part of travel as luggage.
我們確切知道的是，某些因素會影響我們的自控力，特別是壓力和睡眠不足——它們和行李一樣，是旅行的一部分。A study by neuroscientists at New York University, published last year in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that “even mild stress can make it difficult to control your emotions.” Other studies have shown that stress can make you more self-focused, said Dr. Seppala, resulting in tunnel vision for whatever it is you want, and woe be to anyone who gets in the way.
紐約大學的神經系統科學家們去年在美國國家科學院學報上發表了一項研究。他們發現“甚至連輕微的壓力都會讓人很難控制情緒”。斯帕拉博士說，其他一些研究表明，壓力會讓你更專注自我，視野狹隘，只關注自己想要的東西，厭煩任何妨礙你的人。Being jet-lagged, or simply not having had a good night’s rest, also makes you vulnerable.
時差或睡眠不足也會讓你變得脆弱。“Sleep deprivation can play a really important role in making people act much more emotional,” said Iris Mauss, an associate professor in the department of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. A study by her colleague Matthew Walker, director of the university’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory, found that “without sleep, the brain had reverted back to more primitive patterns of activity,” he said in a news release, “in that it was unable to put emotional experiences into context and produce controlled, appropriate responses.”
“睡眠不足真的會讓人變得更情緒化，”加州大學伯克利分校心理系副教授艾麗斯·莫斯(Iris Mauss)說。她的同事、該校睡眠與神經影像研究室主管馬修·沃克(Matthew Walker)做過一項研究，他在新聞發佈會上說，“大腦在缺乏睡眠的情況下回到更原始的運行模式，無法把情緒體驗放在具體環境中思考，無法做出剋制的適當反應。”Stress and sleep deprivation also hurt our ability to interpret other people’s intentions and mental states. For instance, you might jump to the conclusion that the person who reclined his seat onto your lap is a jerk, when in fact maybe he’s a tired soldier returning from duty, or someone with a disability. “The very rich representations of other people’s minds become degraded and impoverished when we are stressed and sleep deprived,” said Dr. Buckholtz of Harvard. “Your predictions about other people are wrong.”
壓力和睡眠不足還會影響我們對他人意圖和精神狀態的理解。例如，前排的人把椅背向後調，壓到你的手提電腦，你可能會馬上認定他是個蠢貨，而實際上他可能是個疲憊的退伍士兵或者殘疾人士。“在有壓力、缺乏睡眠的情況下，你會簡單粗暴地理解他人頭腦的豐富表現，”哈佛大學的巴克霍茨博士說，“那時你對他人的理解是錯誤的。”Even those who pick fights at 35,000 feet?
甚至包括那些在3.5萬英尺的高空尋釁滋事的人？“They may be really nice people, but in that situation they got really deindividuated,” said Dr. Seppala of Stanford, referring to a loss of self-awareness. When we see another person act badly, we conclude, often incorrectly, that he or she is a bad person. Psychologists call this “fundamental attribution error.” After all, when we ourselves act badly, we simply say, “I had a bad day,” or “I wasn’t myself.” We don’t define ourselves as bad.
“他們可能是很好的人，但是在那種情況下，他們真的失去了自我，”斯坦福大學的斯帕拉博士說。她指的是自我意識的喪失。當我們看到有人行爲惡劣時，經常會錯誤地認定他/她是個壞人。心理學家們稱之爲“基本歸因錯誤”。畢竟，我們自己表現惡劣時會說，“我今天心情不好”或者“我平常不是這樣的”。我們不認爲自己是壞人。In a heated exchange, it can help to view the other person as someone who is fundamentally good, yet going through something stressful. Some people are obviously better at doing that — and at regulating their emotions — than others. They’re resilient, able to distance themselves from a stressful situation while others in the same situation fall apart. Are these stoics just born that way? Scholars like Dr. Mauss of the University of California, Berkeley, are still trying to find out. But she said being good at regulating emotion seems to be something that’s learned either early in life from, say, your parents, or later in life through conscious reflection on yourself as well as analysis of situations in which you learn to think, “this will pass,” or “it’s not relevant in the grand scheme of things.”
在激烈爭吵時，想想對方本質上是個好人，只是現在有些壓力，會對情況有所幫助。有些人明顯更擅長於此，能控制住自己的情緒。他們更有彈性，能讓自己從緊張情況中脫離出來，而其他人在同樣的情況下可能已經崩潰了。這些鎮定的人是天生如此嗎？加州大學伯克利分校的莫斯博士等學者仍在努力弄清這個問題。不過她說，善於控制情緒似乎是早年從父母那裏學來的，或者是後來在生活中通過有意識的自我反省或者通過分析情況養成的——在這個過程中你學會這樣想：“這會過去的”或者“從更廣闊的角度看，這無關緊要”。When our emotions are high and we’re physiologically aroused, however, it’s difficult to reason with ourselves. Thankfully, there are other ways to control the mind. Take breathing, for instance. Dr. Seppala cited a study that showed that different emotions such as joy, anger, fear and sadness, each have distinct patterns of breathing (like faster and shallow when afraid, she said). What’s revolutionary, she added, is that the study also showed that by breathing in different ways, people were actually able to generate different emotions.
不過，當我們在情緒上和生理上很激動時，我們很難理智思考。幸好還有其他方法來控制大腦。比如，深呼吸。斯帕拉博士說，一項研究表明，處於高興、生氣、恐懼和悲傷等不同的情緒之下，會有不同的呼吸方式（她說，比如恐懼時呼吸會更快、更淺）。她補充說，具有革命意義的是，這項研究還發現，用不同的方式呼吸真的能產生不同的情緒。“It’s the only autonomic process that can be controlled,” said Dr. Seppala, who is also the lead author of a study published last month in The Journal of Traumatic Stress that found that a breathing-based meditation was able to decrease post-traumatic stress in American military veterans. “We can learn to have an impact on our nervous system,” she said.
“它是唯一可控的自發過程，”斯帕拉博士說。她也是上月發表在《創傷壓力雜誌》(The Journal of Traumatic Stress)上的一項研究的主要作者。那項研究發現，以呼吸爲基礎的冥想能減輕美國退伍軍人的創傷後壓力。“我們能學會對自己的神經系統施加影響，”她說。The breathing-based meditation that was used by the researchers is known as Sudarshan Kriya Yoga, and it has also been shown to increase self-reported “optimism and well-being” in college students, and to decrease self-reported anxiety in people with general anxiety disorder. Don’t have time for meditation or yoga? Experts say to make time, because the better you are, the better your fellow travelers will be.
研究者們所使用的呼吸冥想被稱爲淨化呼吸法，大學生練習後自稱變得“更樂觀、健康”，有焦慮障礙的人練習後自稱焦慮減輕。沒時間冥想或做瑜伽？專家們說，那就騰出時間來，因爲你變得更好，跟你同行的旅客們也會變得更好。“Taking care of yourself,” Dr. Seppala said, “is the most unselfish thing you can do.”
斯帕拉博士說，“照顧好自己是你能做的最無私的事情。”There’s plenty the airlines could be doing, too (aside from configuring planes with seats that actually fit their ticket holders). For example: Improve the cabin atmosphere.
航空公司也有很多方面需要提高（除了把機艙座位設計得可以真正容納購票者之外）。比如，改善機艙氣氛。“They have to think of the crowd as a potential community,” said Dr. James of the University of Hawaii, and enact certain community-building principles. One simple tactic is what he refers to as live demography: a flight attendant standing in front of the cabin asking questions like “How many of you are going home?” or “Raise your hand if you’ve never been on an airplane before.” It may sound like a kindergarten exercise, but it encourages passengers to relax, be friendly and communicate with one another. “It breaks the anonymity and the hostility,” Dr. James said.
夏威夷大學的詹姆斯博士說，“他們必須把機上乘客當成一個潛在團體”，並且採取某些團體建設的方法。一個簡單的方法是他所謂的現場人口統計：一位空乘人員站在機艙前問一些問題，比如“你們中間有多少人是返鄉？”或者“以前從未坐過飛機的請舉手”。這可能聽起來像幼兒園活動，但它能幫助乘客放鬆，讓他們更友好，願意相互交流。“它能打破隔膜和敵意，”詹姆斯博士說。Airline personnel also need to be trained, or better trained, to be more compassionate in how they handle people, he said, be it demonstrating sympathy when problems arise or simply being specific when asked about delays, saying “20 minutes” instead of just “a few more minutes,” which creates uncertainty and increases frustration.
他說，航空公司的人員還需要接受更多培訓，以便在對待乘客時更有同情心，不管是在問題出現時表現出同情心，還是在乘客詢問延誤時間時具體地說“20分鐘”，而不是“幾分鐘”，後面這種說法給人一種不確定的感覺，讓人更沮喪。“The airlines have to learn how to help people cope,” he said. “If they don’t, it’s going to get a lot worse.”
“航空公司必須學會如何幫助乘客應對糟糕情況，”他說，“否則，情況會變得糟糕很多。”
