论文摘要怎么写？要写几句话？每句写什么？

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论文摘要怎么写？要写几句话？每句写什么？

1

包特兄发了一条微博，讲Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization （JEBO）主编Daniel Houser如何写论文写作摘要。

Dan说他心中的标准摘要应该有五句。第一句是论文在文献里的定位，第二句是这篇文章做什么，第三句是为什么做，第四句是发现了什么，第五句是这些发现有什么意义。

包特兄指出这五句其实各自对应文章的一部分，第一句是引言，第二句是研究设计，第三句是待检验假设或文献讨论，第四句是研究结果，第五句是结论。

也就是说，摘要每一句话都是正文一个部分的总结。

包兄说：“我之前虽然知道这五句话，但从未从这个角度理解它们存在的原因。现在想想，果然是高深的美学！”

2

现在让我们来看看Houser老师自己是不是真的是这样做的呢？

我先挑一篇他和合作者在PNAS上的文章。这篇文章可能因为有诺奖得主Vernon Smith的参与，所以引用率是Houser老师所有文章里最高的。

但这篇文章的摘要超过了5句话，总共有7句。第一句是Cooperation between individuals requires the ability to infer each other's mental states to form shared expectations over mutual gains and make cooperative choices that realize these gains. 

第二句是From evidence that the ability for mental state attribution involves the use of prefrontal cortex, we hypothesize that this area is involved in integrating theory-of-mind processing with cooperative actions. 

第三句是We report data from a functional MRI experiment designed to test this hypothesis. 

第四句是Subjects in a scanner played standard two-person “trust and reciprocity” games with both human and computer counterparts for cash rewards. 

第五句是Behavioral data shows that seven subjects consistently attempted cooperation with their human counterpart. 

第六句是Within this group prefrontal regions are more active when subjects are playing a human than when they are playing a computer following a fixed (and known) probabilistic strategy. 

第七句是Within the group of five noncooperators, there are no significant differences in prefrontal activation between computer and human conditions.

但仔细看，第一句就是定位（1），第二句是待检验假设（2），第三、四句是结论（3），第五句是结论（4），第六和第七句是进一步展示结论细节（5）。所以大体还是符合这个“五句话”的原则。

3

也许上一篇文章因为写作时间长，Houser老师还没有完全遵循自己的5句话规则。我们再挑一篇近期的作品来看看。

这篇文章的摘要还是超过了5句话。

第一句It is a well-documented phenomenon that a group's gender composition can impact group performance. 

第二句Understanding why and how this phenomenon happens is a prominent puzzle in the literature. 

第三句To shed light on this puzzle, we propose and experimentally test one novel theory: through the salience of gender stereotype, a group's gender composition affects a person's willingness to lead a group, thereby impacting the group's overall performance. 

第四句By randomly assigning people to groups with varying gender compositions, we find that women in mixed-gender groups are twice as likely as women in single-gender groups to suffer from the gender stereotype effect, by shying away from leadership in areas that are gender-incongruent. 

第五句Further, we provide evidence that the gender stereotype effect persists even for women in single-gender groups. 

第六句Importantly, however, we find that public feedback about a capable woman's performance significantly increases her willingness to lead. 

第七句This result holds even in male-stereotyped environments.

但我们仔细分析一下，第一、二句就是文献定位（1），第三句是假设（2），第四句是结合和设计和初步结论（3、4），第五、六、七句都是进一步展示结论细节。

所以Houser老师关于“5句话”的“原则”，大概并不是说你要刻板遵循一定是“5”句话，而是说这个摘要写作的思路要体现这5句话分别对应的文章的各个部分。

最后，一个人要严于律己是真的很难，Houser老师也不例外。