《心理新青年》对话美国芝加哥大学商学院Thomas Talhelm博士（下篇）：鼓励中国学生跟随兴趣大胆探索

《心理新青年》对话美国芝加哥大学商学院Thomas Talhelm博士（下篇）：

鼓励中国学生跟随兴趣大胆探索

1. 嘉宾简介

Dr. Thomas Talhelm is an Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Thomas has lived in China for five years as a Princeton in Asia fellow, as a freelance journalist in Beijing, and as a Fulbright scholar. He researches how rice farming gave southern China a very different culture from wheat-farming northern China. Thomas also founded Smart Air, a social enterprise that makes low-cost DIY air purifiers to help people in China protect themselves from air pollution. 

2. 采访题记

文化是一种复杂的现象，种植小麦、种植水稻的区别不能解释一切文化差异，只能解释农耕方式所导致的一部分差异，导致南北方人心理与行为差异还有很多其他原因。Thomas希望告诉大家，如果感兴趣研究中国社会内部的文化心理差异，后续还会出现更多更复杂的版本。他认为这个领域还有很多值得挖掘的东西，希望未来有更多的研究者深入探究，与他开展深度的交流与合作。专访下篇我们非常高兴的继续邀请到了Thomas Talhelm博士，面向人格与社会心理学领域的年轻学子及爱好者们，与大家分享和畅谈学术训练与文章写作等实用技巧。具体内容，请看下文。

3. 采访正文

《心理新青年》：Thanks again for your valuable time and generous support! Next we are going to move onto the topic of academic training and publication, which I’m sure many young researchers will be quite interested in. Do you feel comfortable sharing with us what kind of tastes or preferences the top journals in our field are looking for based upon your experience and understanding?

非常感谢您的宝贵时间和慷慨分享！

接下来，我们想请您谈谈学术训练和文章发表的问题，相信很多年轻的研究者会很感兴趣这个话题。你愿意和我们分享一些个人经验吗，尤其是你的发表过程中，你认为我们领域的顶刊比较喜欢或者正在寻找哪些东西吗？

Thomas: Yeah. I’m not sure if I have super helpful recommendations, but one thing I do remember about Science is the editors I have met seemed quite interested in how robust—particularly statistically robust—the findings are. I’ve actually had requests where the editor wanted to see and analyze the data themselves, which is amazing. I've never had that from any other journal. But again, it could be just thisparticular editor.

In general, I would just encourage people to think about whether something is genuinely interesting. I often ask students to imagine “what if we find this?” So if we find what you think we’re going to find, then I ask: “Will anyone care?” And usually people can answer that question. Usually people know. An example is, a student of mine from China wanted to show that people in China would socially conform more than Americans. And I said, “Okay, imagine that we find that, who's going to care about that?” Usually at that point they know. So it’s not that I have some knowledge that they don't have. It’s just that they haven't thought one step ahead.

Another way to think about that is just how valuable is this finding? Something that is different or that challenges a common view has more value in terms of interest, or updating our views on the world. I can’t exactly say that all studies I’ve done are clearly thought through and interesting from the start. I did several studies in graduate school, and whenI came home for Christmas, I started telling my sister about my research. WhileI was talking, I could tell she wasn’t really interested. And she's my sister! At that point I realized that I didn't really care about what I was talking about either. It was simply a follow up of my advisor’s studies and it “made sense” to do the follow up (meaning, it was easy to do, the logical next step). So I stopped doing that. It’s not worth it. Normally researchers care more than other people. So if I don’t care, then nobody’s going to care.

So I would just encourage people to think about something that sticks in your mind. That idea about modernization—about how people use money differently—has crossed my mind at least once a week for the last month, or at least once a week for the last year. That means it's interesting to me. So research in that direction is going to be of interest to people. If you only think about this topic when you're in the lab, and once you're done with like or after 5 PM, you're like, “whew, I don't have to think about this anymore,” then that's not of interest to you. Then do something else. It is tough for grad students, because usually the safe thing is not the thing that I'm talking about.

好啊，没问题。我不确定我在这方面有很多经验，但是我记得在Science发表过程中一件印象深刻的事情是，我遇到的编辑特别想知道我的数据的稳健性，尤其从统计学上来说。有编辑真的问我要原始数据，想要自己分析，感觉蛮神奇的。其他杂志从来没找我要过原始数据。当然，也许只是我遇到的这个编辑比较独特而已。

总体来说，我会鼓励大家多想想你研究的东西是否真正地有意思。我常常会让学生去想象，如果我们发现了这个结果，那又会怎么样。我会问：有人会在乎你的研究发现吗？大家其实知道这个问题的答案，通常情况下，大家心里是有数的。举个例子，我有一个中国学生想说明中国人比美国人更容易在社交中顺应他人。我说，那好，想象我们有了这个发现。谁会在乎呢？这个时候他们就明白了。所以，我并不是比大家知道的东西更多，只是很多人没有多想一步。

另一种思考这个问题的方式是：这个研究结果到底有多大价值？有价值的结果是与众不同的，或者能够打破我们在某些问题上的常识，或是能够让我们对世界产生不一样的看法。就我个人而言，并不是所有我做过的研究都是一开始就想清楚到底有什么价值的。我在研究生时期做过一些研究，当我回家过圣诞节的时候，我会跟我姐姐讲我在做什么。当我说的时候，我从她的眼神中看出她并不在乎我说的这些事。那时我意识到，连我自己也不真正在乎我说的这些东西。这些研究只是跟进了我导师的研究成果，而且比较合理而已。所以我没再继续做下去了，感觉不值得花费更多时间。一般来说，研究者应当比别人更在乎。如果我自己都不在乎，那就没人会真正在乎了。

所以，我会鼓励大家多思考在你心中挥之不去的那些问题。之前提到的关于现代化的问题，人们会如何用不同的方式花钱，我在过去的一个月里至少一周想到一次，或者说，过去一年里至少一个月想到一次。这说明我对这个问题确实有兴趣。那么，在这个方向做研究才会产生让其他人有兴趣的结果。如果你只有在实验室的时候才想到这个问题，下午五点一过，你就在想，可算不用再想这个问题了，那就说明你对它其实没兴趣，那不如去做点别的吧。对研究生来说，这确实不容易，因为我说的这类东西一般不是安全保险的选择。

《心理新青年》：Yeah, some people manage multiple projects, some are safer for publications and other ones may be of more interest to themselves.

是的，有些人会同时做很多不同的项目，有些是更加安全、为了发表的，而有些项目是纯粹出于兴趣，自由探索的。

Thomas: Yeah, I’ve had multiple projects—you can definitely do that—but I would encourage people to follow your interest.

是的，我自己也同时做很多项目，你绝对可以这样做，但我还是鼓励大家跟随你内心的兴趣去做。

《心理新青年》：Can we talk a bit about academic writing? You have published papers on many top journals, including Science, Psych Science (Psychological Science), JPSP (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology), PSPB (Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin) etc. So what would you say are the most critical aspects of academic writing?

我们能聊聊写作方面的话题吗？你在很多心理学顶级期刊上发表了文章，包括《科学》、《心理科学》、《人格与社会心理学杂志》、《人格与社会心理学公告》等。你认为对于学术写作来说，哪些方面最为重要和关键？

Thomas: I don’t know if I’m somebody to emulate, but I noticed I do a couple of things slightly differently from my colleagues. One is that I frequently talk about research and present it before it's published. I've had multiple graduate students ask me, “Should I do that? Shouldn’t I wait until it's published?” And I say “no.” People's questions during my talk feeds directly into my paper. Sometimes I run other studies because of that feedback. Recently a colleague of mine told me that reviewers almost always ask to run additional studies. But that has rarely happened to me—maybe only once. I think that’s because I'm often sitting on things for a while, presenting them and getting feedback that leads to more studies done before I publish it. Take the chair moving study for example. I did the first studies and then I started to present it. One of the most common reactions for the chair moving studies was, “How do you know people in Beijing or at a BeijingStarbucks are from Beijing?” So I went out and did another study where I asked people in Starbucks where they were from and submitted that as a part of the package. If I had been quick and just sent the paper out, that wouldn't have been part of it, and the reviewers almost surely would have mentioned that. Maybe it would have gotten rejected from that journal. Going through this process with people really helped for me to refine the research.

说不上我这些经验是不是值得模仿，但我的确发现我和其他同事有几个不太一样的做法。一个是我经常在发表之前报告和讨论我的研究。很多研究生问我，我应该这样做吗？是不是该等到发表之后再去这么做？我说其实不是，人们在讨论时问你的问题会直接帮助到你的文章发表。有时候我甚至会因为人们的问题而追加实验。最近一个同事跟我说，审稿人总是会让我追加实验，但这几乎从来没在我身上发生过，也许有过一次吧。我觉得这是因为我总是花一段时间酝酿、做报告、得到更多反馈，促使我做更多的实验，然后再去发表。我报告星巴克挪椅子实验的时候，一个最常见的问题是：你怎么知道北京星巴克里的人都是北京人呢？于是我就去补了另一个实验，询问星巴克里的人你们都来自哪里，并把这个研究作为论文提交的一部分。如果我刚拿到结果就很快投稿，审稿人肯定会问我这样的问题，而我的文章很有可能就被拒了。所以，这样一个交流和反馈的过程真的对我改善研究有帮助。

《心理新青年》: Yeah, I do like that in your papers you have really thoughtful and rich discussions which brings out alternative explanations and rules out confounding factors.

是的，我很喜欢你的文章中有很多充分和深入的讨论，并且提到了一些不同的可能解释并排除了一些混淆因素。

Thomas: Yeah, some people call me OCD, which is sort of right. I really try to tie up all the loose ends. Your advisor might not teach you this, because the world has changed in the last ten or twenty years, but now, supplemental materials are basically unlimited, so you have no excuse to limit your writing. If there are other theories or other things tested, and if you don't have space for it, put in the supplemental and just tell readers: I did this, or I have analyzed this in multiple different ways, and it’s in the supplemental materials.

The one thing I really really really want to say about writingis: don't overestimate your readers. As scientists and graduate students, we start to write in this fancy, technical, formal way. I really try to write not like that. Oftentimes people think they should write in a more formal or scientific way. The readers are scientists, educated, right? But don't overestimate how lazy and busy your readers are going to be. Don't overestimate how much time they're going to spend on your paper, including reviewers. Reviewers are a little bit more careful than regular people, but would you prefer a paper that's written in a more easy-to-understand way or do you want the one that's written in a fancy way? I think people make the misprediction about other people liking fancy writing. I often joke that I try to get as much past the reviewers as possible because sometimes reviewers will complain that my writing is too informal, but I know that the readers like that. I think reviewers actually appreciate it too, even if sometimes they ask me to change “too” into “additionally.” If you write in a simple way, and they don't have to read it ten times to figure it out, they'll appreciate it.

So don't hesitate to, for example, put bullet points in your paper. You can put bullet points, more titles, and more section titles in your papers. If you ever have to reread a sentence because you didn't understand it, that's probably bad writing. It could be a really complicated idea, but it's probably bad writing. Split it into two sentences or something like that. I really try to write simply and straightforward, because even scientists like to read straightforward things. So that would be my biggest recommendation about writing.

是的，很多人说，关于这点，我有点强迫症，这倒也有点儿对。我确实很努力地这么做。你的导师可能不会这么教你，因为过去的十年、二十年间，世界已经变了。现在，补充材料基本上可以说是无限制的，那你就没有任何借口限制你的写作。如果你测试了其他理论，没有地方写，那就放在补充材料里，告诉读者，我这样做过了，或者我试过其他方式了，你可以去补充材料里看。

关于写作，我特别特别想强调的是：不要高估你的读者。作为科学家、研究生，我们开始倾向于采用高端、学术、正式的风格写作。而我很努力的尽量不去写成那个风格。人们经常感觉他们应该写得更正式，更科学化，因为读者是科学家，受过高等教育的人，对吧？但是千万别高估了你的读者有多忙，有多不想花费时间和精力，包括审稿人。审稿人比一般人更认真一点，但是问问你自己，是喜欢读一篇更通俗易懂的论文还是更诘屈聱牙的论文呢？我认为人们错误地预判了其他人喜欢高端的写作方式。我经常开玩笑说，我的目标就是尽量能让我的稿子过审稿人那一关，因为有时候有些审稿人也会跟我抱怨说，我的写作风格有点太不正式了。但我知道，读者会喜欢这种风格的。我认为审稿人实际上也很感激。如果你写得语言简单，他们不用重读十遍就能看懂，他们会感谢你的。

所以说，别担心，你可以在你的文章中放小要点，更多段落标题。如果你得重读一句话才能理解它的意思，那大概是不好的写作。也许它真的是个很复杂的想法，但大概率是糟糕的写作，所以可以把它分成两个短句子之类的。我真的努力把我的文章写得简单直接，因为即使是科学家也喜欢读简单直接的东西。所以我推荐大家也这样做。

《心理新青年》：That’s a great suggestion, it’s really true. I’ve also noticed that you have a lot of collaborations with people from diverse cultures. Do you have any tips and suggestions for young students seeking international collaborators and building up productive and friendly collaborative relationships?

这个建议非常棒，说得很对。我们同时还看到你和很多不同文化的人都有合作。对于想要寻找国际合作或者建立高产、友善的合作关系而言，你可以和年轻同学们分享一些建议和技巧吗？

Thomas: That's interesting. My experience has been a little bit unusual, because I have weird interests. Rice and wheatis pretty weird, right? When people apply to our program as graduate students, a lot of people do research that fits in common categories, like social cognition or goal pursuit. Very rarely does somebody enter our program interested in rice and wheat. But one thing that I found is that this world has about ten or twenty other really weird people in it who happen to be interested in farming and rice and wheat or regional differences in China or India. And those people find me or I find those people. And so I’ve been collaborating a lot more with people at random places around the world, more than I do with mygraduate students at my university, partly because my interests are so uncommon. If you have uncommon research interests, find those people. If you like, for example, goal setting, a lot of people study this, so if you email such and such person at NYU, they don't have much incentive to collaborate with you, because there are plenty of people who do goal setting around them.

这个问题挺有趣的。我的经历不太寻常，因为我的研究兴趣蛮奇怪的。一般很少见一个进了我们项目的人是感兴趣研究大米和水稻的。但是，我发现了这个世界上大概有那么十到二十个人也是很怪咖的人，也对农耕，大米和水稻、或者中国、印度的地域差别感兴趣。这些人会找到我，或者我也会找到他们。所以，我和世界各地的很多人得以合作，比和我本学校的同事或学生合作更多，主要是因为我的兴趣太不寻常。如果你有不寻常的研究兴趣，去找那些和你一样的人吧。如果你喜欢，比如说目标设定相关的课题，很多人都会研究一样的东西，那么你发邮件给NYU的某某人，那他可能不会有太大的动力和你合作，因为他们身边也有很多做目标设定的人。

《心理新青年》：As you may already know, we founded the Young Chinese Association for Personality and Social Psychology（人格与社会心理学青年联合会）in 2013, and the Youth of Psychology（心理新青年）in 2017. You were one of our keynote speakers for a couple times for our annual event in SPSP. So we'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for your active participation and generous support for our young organization! So our last request is, do you have any final wishes or hopes for the young Chinese students in our field?

你应当知道，2013年我们几位志同道合的年轻老师和学生们创建了《人格与社会心理学华人青年联合会》，并在SPSP期间举办多次华人学生学者交流活动。同时，2017年我们成立了《心理新青年》编辑部，在微信公众平台传播和推广人格与社会心理学的知识体系并积极促进该领域的成果转化。我们希望借此机会感谢您这五年来对我们这个年轻组织的积极参与和慷慨支持！最后，你对我们这些年轻老师和学生们有什么祝福和寄语吗？

Thomas: I think you and I both have this idea of wanting to support social psychology in China. It hasn't traditionally been a priority of funding in China, but I do think people are interested in it. When I write stuff on Zhihu about psychology, people seem interested in it and hungry to learn more. I hope that can continue into the future. I hope we can grow China’s social psychology. If I could say one thing for folks who have grown up in China, I think there's one obstacle that I find that might be cultural...I hesitate to use that word. I find that sometimes I seem weird to people in China, the extent to which I apply science and logic and inference to everyday behavior. I think a lot of times in China, people have this sort of implicit concept that science is something that you do in a lab and it has test tubes, microscopes, and statistics and all this stuff. But anything that happens in the real world, or people’s behaviors, sometimes people think, “you can't explain that,” sort of implying it's not worth trying to analyze rationally or something like that. But if you go back to a lot of really cool research that's been done in the last hundred years, a lot of it starts from noticing something that seemed weird. So I would just encourage people who have grown up in China to not let this implicit thinking stop you and have confidence in your observations about everyday life and treating them scientifically. Thinking of everyday life or things that you read in the news about Xiaoyueyue and things like that is science, or it can be built into science. So I just encourage you to pay more attention to these observations that you have. If you follow these observations, I think it will lead to interesting stuff and maybe success.

其实你和我都有希望支持中国社会心理学发展的想法。在中国社会心理学可能并不是一个得到很多资金支持的科目，但我认为很多人都非常感兴趣。当我在知乎专栏上写心理学的东西的时候，人们似乎很感兴趣，希望学到更多。我希望这种趋势能够持续下去。我希望我们一起努力帮助它的成长。如果我可以对在中国长大的研究者们说一句话，那就是我感到有时候中国研究者可能存在一种文化障碍（我不确定这个词是恰当的），就是中国人似乎认为我用科学、逻辑、归纳法来分析日常行为是古怪的。在中国很多人有一种潜在的概念，就是科学是存在于实验室里，有试管、显微镜、统计等一系列的东西。然而在现实生活中发生的事情，比如人类的心理与行为，人们觉得这些没办法提供科学解释，或者说不值得去思考等等。但如果你回溯过去一百多年来，那些很酷很厉害的研究发现，很多都是从注意到生活中一些不寻常的地方开始的。所以我想鼓励在中国长大的老师和学生们，不要让这样的潜在观念阻止你去思考，要对你自己对于生活的观察以及采用科学的方法研究它们有信心。思考我们所经历的日常生活，或者思考在新闻中看到的小悦悦等事件，这也是科学，或者说，这可以导向科学。因此，我会鼓励大家去多多关注、观察这些事情。如果你能跟随这些观察，我认为是可以走向很有趣的研究结果，乃至成功的。

《心理新青年》：Yeah, I fully agree. Sometimes young students may get discouraged if they try to directly translate their daily observations and behavior into rigorous research. Some people may say “why do you want to study this? It's just anecdotal evidence. Do you have strong theoretical foundations and empirical evidence?” I think Chinese students need to have more confidence about their own original thinking and thoughts. If you have any thoughts you need to be confident about it (even if they are wrong) and try to find answers in scientific ways.

是的，我完全同意。有时候中国学生不被鼓励把日常生活中的观察和行为直接转化为科学研究，比如有人会说，“你为什么要研究这个问题？这仅仅是个像趣闻轶事一样的琐碎证据。你有很强的理论基础或者实证依据吗”？我觉得中国学生需要对自己的原创性思考和想法更有自信。如果你有自己的想法，你应该非常自信去表达和对话，然后通过科学的方法努力探寻答案。

Thomas: Oh man, I love what you said. It’s like first you have to have a theory and then you have to have whatever. Sometimes there are ways in which people think about knowledge and science as having this order to it. You have to base everything on a foundation. Well, things don't always have to proceed in that way. This reminds me of in anthropology (I’m so sorry to pick on anthropology. I love anthropology. It’s in my work a lot.) when they go to a village to do their observations, they'll say, what's your theoretical framework? And I always think, what? （laughs）My intuition is that I’d go there and see what I see first, and then worry about theory later.

是啊，我好喜欢你刚才说的那些，就好像你一定得先有个理论，然后才能有其他东西才行。有时候人们会认为，求知、科学都必须一个顺序和秩序才行。你一定要把一切都建立在一个理论基础之上，但其实不一定非要那样的打开方式。这让我想起在人类学里（抱歉，我不是故意找人类学的茬的，我很喜欢人类学，我在我自己的工作中经常用到人类学）当人类学家去一个村庄去做田野观察的时候，他们会说，你的理论架构是什么？我就会想，你在说啥？（笑）我的直觉是我会先去那个地方走走看看，然后再思考理论框架的问题。

《心理新青年》：That's very valuable suggestions to Chinese students. Thank you so much! We have a series of interviewees lined up this year, and we are very honored and glad to have you for this issue. Do you have any final words to the Youth of Psychology, our editorial team, and our global network?

这对中国学生而言，是十分宝贵的建议。非常感谢！我们编辑部已经邀请了一批国内国际知名心理学家接受我们的系列专访，今天我们非常荣幸和高兴这期邀请到了您。最后，您对我们的《心理新青年》编辑部或者《人格与社会心理学华人青年联合会》有什么祝福和寄语吗？

Thomas: Yeah, well, thanks for having me. And I hope you guys keep getting people to talk. I think YCA and the Youth of Psychology is playing a non-negligible role in promoting social psychology in China. Maybe “non-negligible” sounds modest, but changing the field of psychology in an entire country is a monumental task, so that’s great praise in my book!

首先很感谢你们的邀请。其次我希望你们能够邀请更多人来探讨和对话。我认为你们《人格与社会心理学华人青年联合会》和《心理新青年》在国际舞台上推动中国社会心理学方面发挥了不可忽略的作用。可能“不可忽略”听起来有点谦虚，但是改变一个国家的心理学面貌是一个具有里程碑意义的艰难任务，所以在我的字典里这已经是很高的赞誉了。

《心理新青年》：Thank you so much Thomas! Best wishes for you! 再次感谢Thomas！祝福你！

下期预告：

《心理新青年》对话美国普林斯顿大学Susan Fiske教授：

全球化视野下社会心理学的机遇与未来

《心理新青年》著名心理学家系列专访第七期，我们非常荣幸和高兴的邀请到了美国普林斯顿大学Susan Fiske教授，与大家分享她非同寻常的学术生涯有着怎样的经历和轨迹，她对全球化背景下社会心理学的解读与展望，以及对年轻一代学生们的祝福和寄语。与社会心理学大师面对面对话，精彩纷呈，敬请期待！

4. 采访团队

胡晓檬

清华大学心理系博士后

研究领域：文化与道德、全球化与文化变迁                   

吴珏彧

美国普林斯顿大学心理系博士生

研究领域：群体动态、行为决策、社会影响以及行为改变、行为经济学

王浥濛

美国耶鲁大学心理系博士生

研究领域：潜意识行为、消费行为、跨文化决策、具身认知           

孙卉

美国西北大学商学院博士生

研究领域：计算认知科学、知识社会学、社会网络、组织理论

徐以安

美国东北大学心理系博士生

研究领域：跨文化视野下的认知偏误、心理本质主义、法律心理学                

徐艺姗

美国弗吉尼亚大学临床心理学博士

研究领域：临床心理干预、睡眠失调、压力应对、自我同情与关怀                     

杨涛

清华大学心理系博士后

研究领域：认知年老化、跨文化、情绪与认知神经科学

5. 特别声明

本次心理学家专访由《心理新青年》编辑部制作呈现。具体分工如下：胡晓檬、杨涛起草提纲、实施采访，王浥濛、胡晓檬转录文本、编辑修改，Thomas Talhelm博士审校，编辑部其他成员徐以安、吴珏彧、孙卉、徐艺珊对此文亦有贡献。本文知识产权归《心理新青年》编辑部所有，未经授权，严禁转载。如需转载，请联系编辑部商讨授权事宜。

6. 关于我们

《心理新青年》编辑部创办于2017年1月，作为【人格与社会心理学华人青年联合会】的旗帜性传播平台，本微信公号旨在从心理学视角出发，以人格与社会心理学领域的理论基础和实证依据为依托，倡导“立足中国，影响世界”(China roots, global impact)的理念，促进心理学知识与思想的科学传播，尤其是人格与社会心理学的经典与前沿研究成果，服务于当下处于快速变革与文化变迁中的华人社会，推动心理学科学研究与社会大众日常生活的紧密结合与成果转化。

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