Fast Thinkers Are More Charismatic

澳大利亚昆士兰大学教授威廉·冯·希佩尔（William von Hippel）率领一个研究团队以几十组朋友为研究对象，测试他们的智商和性格类型。研究过程中，会要求被测者进行一项快速反应测试，如快速回答“说出一种珍贵宝石名字”之类的30个常识性问题。研究者发现，无论参与者的IQ、知识渊博程度或个性如何，反应速度越快的人，在朋友们眼中就越有魅力。

William von Hippel of the University of Queensland and a team of researchers recruited dozens of small groups of friends for a study. They gave participants intelligence and personality tests and then asked each subject to answer 30 common-knowledge questions—such as “What’s the name of a precious gem?”—as rapidly as possible. Participants also rated their friends’ charisma and social skills. The researchers found that individuals who answered the questions more quickly were perceived to be more charismatic—regardless of their IQ, knowledge, or personality.

冯·希佩尔：我们曾预计大脑的反应速度能反映一个人的魅力，研究证明的确如此。

有魅力的人往往具有变通性，我想这是大家都公认的一点。他们的言谈引人注目，却完全出人意料。他们会反馈出有趣的答案或令人惊讶的联想，你永远弄不明白他们下一步会如何行事。他们都很有趣。这就好比幽默：我以一种开玩笑的方式将你说的话与你不曾意料的一个想法关联起来。如果我有很强的幽默感，会大不相同。然而，最让我们惊讶的是，大脑反应速度似乎与一个人的社交能力毫无关联，影响的仅仅是个人魅力。

Von Hippel: We were expecting to see that fast thinkers were charismatic, and we did. I think we all sense that charismatic people tend to be quick on their feet. They say things that you find compelling but that you don’t expect. They come back with an entertaining answer or a surprising association, and you never quite know what will happen next. They’re interesting. It’s sort of like humor. You say something, and then I make a joke that connects it to an idea you hadn’t thought of. If I can do that quickly, it makes all the difference. What surprised us, however, was that mental speed didn’t seem to correlate to social skills overall. Just to charisma.

HBR：大脑反应速度要多快才能称得上是机智敏捷？

冯·希佩尔：据我们的研究，反应最快的人能在400毫秒内说出一种珍贵宝石的名字，而反应慢的人则要超过900毫秒的时间。

HBR: How fast did you have to be to be considered a quick wit?

The fast thinkers in our study could name a precious gem in 400 milliseconds; the slow ones took more than 900 milliseconds.

HBR：这看起来差别很小啊？

冯·希佩尔：几乎所有人都能在1秒内回答一道简单的问题，或完成模式匹配之类的任务。虽然这里呈现出的差别很小，但是在某种程度上，大脑对简单问题的反应速度会折射出你对更为复杂问题的反应速度。例如，如果你说：“我想也许我该让你知道，我是同性恋。”我可能会对此很惊讶，因为我一直以为你是异性恋。但即使我对此并不在乎或者也认为你是同性恋，对于你这句话我仍要迅速给出反应，因为如果我沉默的时间较长，你可能会对此产生误解。

社会压力迫使我们要迅速做出回应。当我弟弟告知我父母他要结婚时，他们认为他太年轻不应这么早结婚，因此他们沉默了很久，才说出那句 “恭喜你”。然而这已于事无补。每个人都很清楚那短暂的沉默意味着什么。

That seems like a tiny difference.

Nearly everyone can respond to an easy question or pattern-matching task in less than a second. Though the differences may be small here, your mental speed on a really simple task can speak to what it might be on a much more complicated task. For example, if you say, “I should probably let you know I’m gay,” I might be surprised because I thought you were straight. I have to be able to respond quickly, because if I take too long—even if I don’t care or I feel positive—you might misinterpret that pause.

Social pressure requires quick responses. When my brother told my parents he was getting married, they thought he was too young, and there was this long pause on the phone before they said congratulations. You can’t undo that. Everybody knows what it means when nothing comes out of your mouth for a second and a half.

HBR：但在这些情况下，相比回顾事实，难道不是社会互动涉及得更多吗？

冯·希佩尔：的确如此。但我们认为，大脑反应速度已在一定程度上演变成我们给彼此留下深刻印象的一种方式。我们的大脑看似并非要强大到如此，方可让我们有能力处理那些事实。许多人辩称，我们的大脑已进化到可以应对复杂社会环境的程度。因此，我们用来解决抽象问题的许多思维能力，实际上并非大脑为抽象问题而生的。确切地说，大脑如此进化是为了让我们彼此间相处得更为融洽。

But aren’t those situations more about social interaction than about recalling facts?

Yes, but we think that mental speed might have evolved partly as a way for us to impress each other. It doesn’t seem as if our brain got to be as big as it is just so we could deal with facts. Many people have argued that our brain evolved to deal with a complex social environment. Therefore, it’s probably the case that many of the mental abilities we use to solve abstract problems didn’t actually evolve for that purpose. Rather, they evolved so that we could deal with each other more effectively.

HBR：一般来说，难道不是聪明人更具魅力吗？IQ不也能代表一个人的魅力？

冯·希佩尔：大脑反应速度，是一个人实际IQ最为可靠的预测因素，因此我们曾设想IQ会是个人魅力的一个重要预测指标，即你的信息量会影响你作出关联想象的速度。但必须要指出的是，大脑反应速度与IQ并非一回事。许多聪明人的反应速度很慢，而一些反应速度很快的人并不聪明。研究结果表明，一旦我们以速度为控制变量，仅靠IQ无法预测出一个人的魅力指数。对个人魅力而言，大脑反应速度要比IQ更为重要。

Aren’t smart people just more charismatic in general? Wouldn’t IQ predict charisma too?

Mental speed is one of the most reliable predictors of actual IQ, so we expected IQ would be an important predictor of charisma—that how much you know would affect how quickly you made associations. But it’s important to note that mental speed is not the same thing as IQ; some smart people are pretty slow and some fast people aren’t too sharp. As it turned out, IQ itself wasn’t predictive of charisma once we controlled for speed. Your ability to respond quickly was much more important for charisma than your IQ was.

HBR：如果某人回答错了呢？

冯·希佩尔：这并不影响结果。人们几乎很难会发现他们回答错了。“说出一种珍贵宝石的名字”是简单得不能再简单的事了。我们并非想测试出他们究竟有多聪明，我们只想看看他们的反应有多快。

What if someone gave the wrong answers?

It didn’t matter. And people hardly ever got them wrong. “Name a precious gem” is pretty easy. We didn’t want to test how smart they were; we wanted to see how fast they were.

HBR：你如何定义一个人的“魅力”？

冯·希佩尔：个人魅力有点类似色情意味，很难用语言详述，但你一看到它就会知道。在我看来，你可以是一个很有魅力的人，但同时也是个混蛋。例如，唐纳德·特朗普几乎毫无社交性优雅可言，但他魅力不凡。他很让人着迷，让人猜不透接下来会说些什么。

相比之下，杰布·布什（Jeb Bush）简直就是一个无趣沉闷之人。你不仅会猜出他要说些什么，也很清楚他要说的不会有趣到哪里去。但我相信，在宴会上或谈判桌上，他为人一定更为和善。我认为很多政治领导者都魅力不俗，但他们的社交能力却不一定很强。

How do you actually define charisma?

Charisma is a bit like pornography—not very easy to describe, but you know it when you see it. From my perspective, you can be charismatic—but also an asshole. For example, Donald Trump is almost entirely devoid of social grace, but he’s charismatic. People find him fascinating; they don’t know what he’s going to say next. Jeb Bush, in contrast, is a snoozer. You not only know what he’s going to say but also know it’s not going to be very interesting. But I’d bet he’s a lot more pleasant at a dinner party or across a negotiation table. I think a lot of our political leaders are very charismatic, but they’re not necessarily socially skilled.

HBR：这么说思维敏捷、能言善道的管理者对公司来说是件好事，哪怕他们缺乏其他的社交能力？

冯·希佩尔：具有魅力的领导者是很让人着迷的。他们能改变公司发展方向，赢得人们的信任，以及让人们用新的视角看待问题。思维反应速度这项素质，能够反映出一个人是否具备激励组织的能力，却难以通过后天努力来提高。由此可以得出，哪些人具有激发组织的能力，而哪些人不具有。如果你想在公司内推行大的变革，你可能需要引入一位具有魅力的领导者。

So fast-thinking, smooth-talking managers are actually good for a company even if they lack other social skills?

Charismatic leaders are engaging. They can get companies to change direction, they can get people to believe in them, and they can get people to see things in new ways. While there’s not much people can do to enhance their mental speed, it does tell you something about which people have the capacity to inspire your organization and which don’t. If you want to make big changes, you may want to bring in a charismatic leader.

HBR：如果我想让自己看起来很有魅力，在一些事情上说服我的老板，我应该怎么做？

冯·希佩尔：事情是这样的：试图让自己看起来很有魅力是有风险的。我觉得，那些反应迅速的人之所以让我们印象深刻，并不仅仅是因为他们反应迅速，还因为他们能够迅速想出解读一个想法的多种方式。显示自己具备这种能力的惟一方式就是，迅速做出与众不同的反应。但如果你这么做，你就是在冒险，因为你说出的话可能是愚蠢或得罪人的。这是有代价的。既然有那么多魅力不凡且可爱的人，所以我不想继续以特朗普为例。弄巧成拙的几率是很大的。

If I wanted to appear charismatic to convince my boss of something, how could I do that?

Here’s the thing: There’s a bit of risk involved in trying to do that. I think what impresses us about people who are fast is that they’re not just fast, they have quick—what I would call parallel—access to multiple ways of interpreting an idea. The only way to demonstrate that is to respond differently from everybody else and to do so rapidly. But if you do that, you’re taking a risk, because what you say may be stupid or may offend people. There’s a cost. I don’t like to keep using Trump as an example, since there are many charismatic people who are lovely. But there’s a big chance it could backfire.

HBR：我应如何避免弄巧成拙？

冯·希佩尔：我认为，魅力十足却言语不当，意味着灾难。兼具魅力与言语得当才最好不过。

How can I avoid that?

I think that being charismatic and wrong is a disaster. Being charismatic and right is a good thing.

时青靖 | 译  蒋荟蓉 | 校  万艳 | 编辑

本文有删节，原文参见《哈佛商业评论》中文版2016年3月《反应越快，越有魅力》(Fast Thinkers Are More Charismatic)。