步態真的能揭露一個人的性格嗎?

If you saw a man walk into a bar with a John Wayne swagger, you might assume that he's a confident, tough kind of guy.

如果你看見一個像約翰·韋恩一樣昂首闊步地走進一個酒吧，你可能會認爲他是個自信、堅韌的傢伙。

Or perhaps you'd have less polite thoughts. Either way, you probably wouldn't be able to help yourself from jumping to conclusions about his personality based on his gait.

或者，你還會對他有非分之想。或者，你可能會情不自禁的以他的步態來判斷他的性格。

Psychologists have been studying these assumptions for well over three quarters of a century, and their findings suggest that most of us do tend to make very similar interpretations of other people's personalities based on their walking style. But how accurate are these assumptions?

心理學家對這些假設已經研究了超過了四分之三個世紀了，他們的研究結果表明，我們大多數人傾向於根據別人走路的風格，對其性格作出非常相似的假設。但是這些假設有多準確呢？

US psychologists in the late 1980s found that there are broadly two kinds of walk, which could be characterised by either a more youthful or older style of movement.

上世紀80年代末，美國心理學家發現了兩種主要的走路姿態，可以依靠其將人劃分爲年輕風格或年長風格。

Furthermore, the observers assumed that people who walked with a younger style were happier and more powerful. But the study didn't address the question of whether these assumptions are accurate.

而且，觀察者認爲，走年輕風格步態的人更快樂，更強大。但這項研究並沒有解決這些猜測是否準確的問題。

For that, we must turn to a British and Swiss study published just a few years ago, which compared people's ratings of their own personalities with the assumptions other people made about them based on point-light displays of their walks.

爲此，我們必須求助於幾年前英國和瑞士的一份研究，這項研究對比了參與者對自身性格的評估以及他人根據光點運動軌跡對其性格的描述。

Their results suggested again that there are two main walking styles, although this study described them in slightly different terms: the first was said to be an expansive, loose style, which observers saw as a mark of adventurousness, extraversion, trustworthiness and warmth; the other was a slow, relaxed style, which observers interpreted as a sign of emotional stability.

他們的研究結果再次表明，主要存在兩種走路風格，雖然描述術語稍有不同：第一種是瀟灑放鬆的風格，觀察者認爲這是富於探險的、外向的、值得信賴的和溫暖的；另一種是緩慢輕鬆的風格，觀察者認爲這是情緒穩定的標誌。

But crucially, the observers' judgments were wrong – these two different walking styles were not actually correlated with these traits, at least not based on the walkers' ratings of their own personalities.

但重要的是，觀察者的判斷是錯的--這兩種不同風格的步態風格實際並不與這些特徵相關，至少不能據此判斷他人的性格。

The message from all this research is that we treat a person's gait much like we treat their face, clothing or accent – as a source of information about the kind of person they are. It's just that, whereas the evidence suggests our assessments are rather good for faces, we tend to make false assumptions based on gait.

所有的這些研究最終表明的信息是，我們看待一個人的步態，就像看待他的臉、着裝或口音--僅僅只能作爲判斷他是什麼樣的人的一種信息來源。然而有證據表明，我們根據面孔做出的判斷會更好，但我們對步態的判斷卻常出錯，就是這樣。