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Sexual selection 性选择 Hot wheels 自行车手“选美”赛 A new study suggests a link between cyclists’ looks and their performance 一项新的研究成果表明自行车手的外表与其成绩存在相关性 Feb 8th 2014 | From the print edition of The Economist 译者：gg1122 IT IS unfair, but true, that beautiful people are more successful than ugly ones. Data indicate that this rule applies in both business and politics—and biological theory suggests the underlying reason is that beauty is an indicator of good genes and good health. How that reason translates into success, though, is more questionable. It could be that the pretty and handsome get a helping hand from their colleagues, bosses (and, in the case of politicians, voters) which is denied to the plain and the unseemly. Or it could be that beautiful people’s underlying qualities mean they really are better, on average, at doing things. 长得好看的人比不好看的人更为成功，这虽然不公，但却是事实。数据表明这一规则在商业上和政治上均适用----生物学理论认为根本原因在于外表好看是基因优良，身体健康的一项指标。而这一前提是如何转换为成功的则更值得怀疑。可能是美女帅哥能够从自己的同事，老板（政客与选民之间亦是如此）那里得到帮助，而长相平平和举止不当的人则不行。也可能好看的人的潜在素质意味着他们的做事能力通常确实更胜一筹。 One way to disentangle these explanations is to look at a field of endeavour which is about as close as it is possible to get to a true meritocracy: professional sport. Though favouritism here might put you in the team, it will never land you on the winner’s podium. Erik Postma, of the University of Zurich, has therefore done just that, using long-distance cycling as his example. His results, just published in Biology Letters, suggest that good looks really do reflect underlying fitness, in both the athletic and the biological senses. 验证这些解释的一个途径是看一看非常接近于一个真正的精英社会的奋斗领域：职业体育。虽然在这个领域中偏爱能让你进入运动员队伍，但是永远不可能让你站在冠军的领奖台上。因此苏黎世大学的埃里克·波斯特马便做将长途自行车赛作为自己的实例做了这么一次验证。他的研究结果刚刚发表在《生物学通讯》上，结果表明外貌确实会影响潜在体能，从运动角度和生物学角度均是如此。 Dr Postma recruited 816 volunteers (72% women; 28% men) as judges in a beauty competition. He also assembled a collection of 80 mugshots of participants in the 2012 Tour de France. He showed the pictures, in two groups of 40, to each volunteer, and asked her or him to rate them on a scale of one to five for attractiveness, likeability and masculinity. Volunteers were also asked to note, in each case, if they recognised a rider. If they did, their rating of that individual was discounted. (This happened in 282 of the 32,468 attractiveness ratings made.) 波斯特马博士招募了816名志愿者（女性占72%；男性占28%）作为一次“选美比赛”的评委。他还收集了80张2012环法自行车赛参赛选手的面部照片。他将这些照片分为两组，每组40张，然后将其展示给每一位志愿者，并请他们给这些照片上的选手在吸引力，亲和力及男子气概几项属性中在1到5的范围内打分。在每一项属性评分中，如果志愿者认出其中的一位骑手，则需要注明。如出现这种情况，则该志愿者对这一单项的评分的取信度会降低。（这一情况在32468次吸引力评分中出现了282次。） Both sexes agreed on who was good-looking and who was not, though women tended to give those at the top of the list higher marks than men did—especially if the women in question were undergoing natural menstrual cycles. (Women on the pill gave assessments closer to those of men.) Overall, on the five-point scale Dr Postma used, the top 10% of cyclists in the race were reckoned 25% more attractive than the bottom 10%. 男性和女性对于好看难看的判断是一致的，只不过女性比男性更倾向于给最好看的那些骑手打更高的分数----特别是经期正常的女性志愿者。（在服避孕药的女性的评分与男性的评分更为接近。）总的来说，在波斯特马博士所用的五分制评分中，比赛中成绩前10%的自行车手的吸引力比最后10%的车手要高25%。 Attractiveness turned out to have no link with likeability—in as much as that could be assessed from a picture. (Dr Postma included this category in order to try to steer volunteers away from rating cyclists as attractive merely because they were smiling for the camera, which some did and some did not.) Likeable cyclists were not more likely to be winners. Nor were those rated as more masculine. Only attractiveness showed the correlation. 从对照片的评估结果来看，吸引力与亲和力没什么关系。（波斯特马博士加入这一项属性的目的是避免志愿者仅仅因为自行车手对着相机的微笑而认为车手有吸引力，因为有的骑手微笑了而有的没有。）有亲和力的自行车手获胜的可能性并不比亲和力低的选手高，男子气概项得分更高的车手同样如此。只有吸引力项显示出相关性。 Athletic training, of course, does itself increase physical attractiveness. But given that everyone competing in the Tour de France is trained to the limit, that variable is irrelevant. Remaining differences in attractiveness are most unlikely to reflect that some have trained harder than others. 当然，运动训练本身会提高体态吸引力，但是鉴于每个参加环法自行车赛的选手都训练到了极限，该变量没什么意义。吸引力评分上的差异最不可能反映的便是某些选手训练的是否比其他人更加刻苦。 Dr Postma’s study does not rule out the role of favouritism in other fields of endeavour. But it does support the idea that at least in areas where physical effort is important, and for men, good looks are a reasonable predictor of outcome. Whether a related study using female cyclists would show a similar correlation between performance and attractiveness remains, according to Dr Postma, “in need of investigation”. And this year’s tour might provide him with the relevant data, for the race’s organisers have just announced that, for the first time (and for one day only, as they race to the finish line in Paris) women will be allowed to compete alongside men. 波斯特马博士的研究并没有排除其他奋斗领域中偏爱的作用。但该研究确实支持了一个观点：对于男性来讲，至少在侧重体能的领域中，将外表好看与否作为成绩的预测指标是有道理的。针对女性自行车手的相关性研究能否得出成绩与吸引力依然存在类似的相关性，据波斯特马博士称，“仍有待研究”。今年的环法自行车赛或许能够提供给他相关数据，因为赛事组织者刚刚宣布，将首次（仅限一天，女性可参加在巴黎最终阶段的比赛）允许女性与男性同场竞技。 From the print edition: Science and technology
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