情商2：影响你一生的社交商（第3版）

“天，你已经这么老了！”这是莱恩·哈比卜十几岁的女儿看到一位中年售货员后脱口而出的第一句话。

“她可能不喜欢听到这句话。”哈比卜小声对女儿说。

“为什么？”她女儿问道，“在日本老年人是很受尊敬的。”

这种交流在她们母女之间经常发生。哈比卜花了很多时间来训练女儿对潜在社交规范的意识。^[10] 她女儿和理查德·博切尔兹教授一样，患有阿斯伯格综合征，无法准确把握别人的感受。

她女儿的坦率透着一股纯真。比如，她告诉女儿在与别人告别前应该等别人把话说完，而不要打断别人直接说“我想走了”，然后就径直离开，女儿对此感到非常惊讶。

“我明白了，”女儿回答说，“你是在骗人。人们不可能对别人的话题都那么感兴趣，但是你必须等待别人的停顿，这样你才能离开。”

这种诚实不断给哈比卜的女儿带来麻烦。“我必须教她与人的相处之道，”哈比卜告诉我，“比如说，她需要学会说一些善意的谎言，以免伤害别人的感情。”

哈比卜一直在教那些与女儿类似的孩子学习必需的社交技巧。她说这些技巧可以帮助孩子们“融入社会，而不是被孤立”。“黑三类”了解社交规则的目的是利用别人，而这些阿斯伯格综合征患者则是为了与人相处。

哈比卜指导这些患有阿斯伯格综合征或自闭症的孩子辨认正确和错误的社交方式，比如如何顺利地加入别人的谈话中。哈比卜告诉他们不应该径直上去打断别人的谈话，滔滔不绝地谈论自己感兴趣的话题，而是应该首先聆听别人谈话的内容，然后和他们一起继续讨论原来的话题。

这种人际交流困难是阿斯伯格综合征患者的一个根本问题。看一下下面这个小故事吧。

玛丽非常讨厌去拜访丈夫的亲戚，因为他们实在很无趣。见面后的大部分时间他们都尴尬地沉默着，这次也不例外。

在回家的路上，丈夫问她感觉如何。

她回答说：“哦，好极了。我根本就没有插嘴的机会。”^[11]

玛丽为什么会这样说呢？

答案很简单：她用的是讽刺的口吻，说的是反语。但是阿斯伯格综合征和自闭症患者就连这种简单的推理也无法做到。对讽刺的理解需要我们进行微妙的社交推理，它的前提是能够意识到别人的话语并不是他想表达的真正意思。

解读别人的感受并理解他们的思想对建立良好的人际关系至关重要。如果缺乏这种能力，他们就无法理解最简单的社交推理，比如自闭症患者就无法理解为什么怠慢会伤害别人。^[12]

对自闭症患者的大脑进行监测后发现，在注视他人面部的时候，他们的梭状回区域无法做出反应。梭状回区域在看到面部时会被激活，并且可以对任何我们熟悉或者感兴趣的事物做出反应。比如当鸟类爱好者在看到有鸟飞过，或者汽车爱好者看到宝马车驶过的时候，他们的梭状回区域都会被激活。

但是，自闭症患者的这一区域在看到面部，即使是亲人的面部时也不会兴奋。但在看到其他感兴趣的事物时，他们的梭状回区域会被激活，比如看到黄页中的电话号码时就会有反应。大拇指法则在这里也适用，人们在看到面部时梭状回区域反应越迟钝，他们处理人际关系时就越吃力。

这种社交缺陷在婴儿时期就会显露出来。大多数婴儿在看到别人面部的时候梭状回区域都会活动，而患有自闭症的孩子却不会。但是，他们在看到自己喜爱的物品或者喜爱的行为模式时梭状回区域都会活动，比如看到自己整整齐齐摆在书架上的心爱录像带就会引起这一区域的反应。

在脸上的200多块肌肉中，眼部肌肉特别善于表达情感。在交流中，正常人都会注视别人的眼睛，但是自闭症患者会避开这一区域，因此会错过重要的情感信息。如果孩子在小时候经常避免直视别人的眼睛，他们长大后很可能会患自闭症。

这些孩子不关心人际交往，很少与别人进行眼神交流，因此无法建立人际关系的纽带。眼神交流可以告诉我们许多关于人际关系的基本信息。

这种社交信息的缺失会使他们无法感知别人的感受和思想，也就是无法产生心智直观，从而形成自闭。

患有自闭症的孩子的听觉皮层占用了无用的视觉皮层区域，因此他们对声音高度敏感，这可以弥补他们在眼神交流方面的缺点。^[13]这种对声音的敏感性使得一部分自闭症患者，比如雷·查尔斯成为杰出的音乐家。

患有自闭症的婴儿之所以会避免眼神交流，原因之一是眼神交流会使他们感到焦虑。当他们注视别人眼睛的时候，杏仁核会积极活动，引发强烈的恐惧感觉。^[14]因此他们不会直视别人的眼睛，而是去看别人的嘴巴（但是嘴巴并不能传达多少内心思想），尽管这样可以减轻他们的焦虑，但是也使他们错过了与别人达成一致的机会，他们也就更不可能产生心智直观了。

巴伦·科恩认为，这种对别人情感解读方面的缺陷的研究也许可以帮助我们揭示人类大脑神经系统的运行模式。因此他的研究小组对比研究了自闭症患者和正常人，请他们分别躺下，用一个小型显示器播放我们在第六章提到的那一系列照片，同时用功能性核磁共振成像系统对他们的大脑进行成像。然后这些志愿者可以按动按钮来选择自己认为眼神表达的是何种情感，比如是“同情的”还是“冷漠的”。

不出所料，自闭症患者的正确率很低。而且，这个简单的实验还揭示了大脑中哪部分神经系统与心智直观有关。许多实验都证实，在这一过程中，除了前额叶皮层外，颞上回、杏仁核和其他几个区域也都在活动。

有意思的是，对那些不擅长耍手腕的人的大脑进行的研究也给了我们一些关于大脑社交神经系统结构的启示。巴伦·科恩认为，比较正常大脑和自闭症患者大脑神经活动的区别，有助于人们了解控制社交商的神经系统。^[15]

我们发现，这种神经系统的活动不仅对营造良好的人际关系非常有帮助，而且对我们子女的健康状况、我们关爱他人的能力和我们的健康都是至关重要的。

1. On Asperger’s syndrome, see Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference: Men, Women, andthe Extreme Male Brain (London: Allen Lane, 2003).
2. On testing a child’s grasp of theory of mind, see David Bjorklund and Jesse Bering, “Big Brains,Slow Development and Social Complexity: The Developmental and Evolutionary Origins of SocialCognition,” in Martin Brüne et al., eds., The Social Brain: Evolution and Pathology (Sussex, U.K.:John Wiley, 2003).
3. When actual monkeys (chimps in this case) play a version of Mean Monkey, they fail to learn thelesson that others can have desires different from their own. In the chimp version, one chimp in a pairgets to choose which of two treats they can eat; the chosen treat, however, always goes to the otherchimp, not to the one who selects it. With chimps—unlike four-year-old children—the lesson nevergets learned. The reason seems to be that chimps are unable to restrain their desire for the more luscioustreat, even merely to select the lesser one so that in the end they can get what they want.
4. On children’s stages of empathy, see Phillipe Rochat, “Various Kinds of Empathy as Revealed bythe Developing Child, not the Monkey’s Brain,” Behavioral and Brain Science 25 (2002), pp. 45–46.
5. On mirror neurons, see Marco Iacoboni, presentation at the annual meeting of the AmericanAcademy for the Advancement of Science, Feb. 2005, reported in Greg Miller, “New Neurons Strive toFit In,” Science 311 (2005), pp. 938–940.
6. C. A. Sanderson, J. M. Darley, and C. S. Messinger, “ ‘I’m not as thin as you think I am’ : TheDevelopment and Consequences of Feeling Discrepant from the Thinness Norm,” Personality andSocial Psychology Bulletin 27 (2001), pp. 172–83; Mark Cherrington, “The Sin in Thin,” Amherst(Summer 2004), pp. 28–31.
7. See Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries ofAutism to Decode Animal Behavior (New York: Scribner, 2005).
8. On all these assessments, those with autism or Asperger’s score more poorly than do most men.
9. The differences in what Baron-Cohen calls the “male” and “female” brains emerge only at the farends of a bell curve for the ratio of empathy and systematizing, among the 2 or 3 percent of men andwomen whose brains typify the utmost extremes. A further caveat: Baron-Cohen does not mean toattribute the “male” brain to all men, nor the prototypic “female” one to all women. Some men have a“female” brain, and some women a “male” one—about one in five people with autism are women. Andwhile there are no quick-and-easy ways to estimate the number of men who have superb abilities atempathizing, there is every reason to expect there to be as large a pool of men with this attunementtalent as there are women adept at systems thinking.
10. Layne Habib is with Circle of Friends, Shokan, N.Y.
11. The tale of Marie, which was used in a story comprehension test of theory of mind, comes from S.Channon and S. Crawford, “The Effects of Anterior Lesions on Performance of a Story ComprehensionTest: Left Anterior Impairment on a Theory of Mind-type Task,” Neuropsychologia 38 (2000), pp.1006–17; quoted in R. G. Morris et al., “Social Cognition Following Prefrontal Cortical Lesions,” inBrüne et al., Social Brain, p. 235.
12. For instance, what may seem obvious social facts baffle not just people with autism but those withany of a range of clinical disorders that damage key parts of the social circuitry, such as a commonbrain trauma from an auto accident. These brain deficits undermine a person’s ability for accuratemindsight, and so they lack an accurate sense of what others think, feel, or intend. On brain trauma, seeSkye McDonald and Sharon Flanagan, “Social Perception Deficits After Traumatic Brain Injury,”Neuropsychology18 (2004), pp. 572–79. Related research reveals that the face area coordinates with adistributed network including the amygdala, the medial prefrontal cortices, and the superior temporalgyrus, which together in- terpret for us how to read and react during social interactions. This networkperforms the critical task of recognizing people and reading their emotions, as well as understandingrelationships. Paradoxically, people with deficits in these neural circuits can sometimes haveoutstanding abilities in others. On neural networks for social interaction, see, for example, RobertSchultz et al., “fMRI Evidence for Differences in Social Affective Processing in Autism,” presentationat the National Institute of Child Health and Development, October 29, 2003. Another brain basis ofautism appears to be located in the fusiform, which MRI and other studies find is smaller in autisticthan in nonautistic people. This deficit may lead to difficulties in learning the normal links betweensocial perceptions and reactions—possibly at the most basic level, failing to attend to the appropriatestimuli. The lack of coordinating attention with another person leads autistic children to miss the mostfundamental social and emotional cues, compromising their ability to share feelings—let aloneempathize—with others. On failure to attend, see Preston and de Waal, “Empathy.”
13. F. Gougoux, “A Functional Neuroimaging Study of Sound Localization: Visual Cortex ActivityPredicts Performance in Early-Blind Individuals,” Public Library of Science: Biology 3 (2005), p. e27(e-published).
14. K. M. Dalton et al., “Gaze-fixation and the Neural Circuitry of Face Processing in Autism,”Nature Neuroscience 8 (2005), pp. 519–26.
15. See Simon Baron-Cohen et al., “Social Intelligence in the Normal and Autistic Brain: An fMRIStudy,” European Journal of Neuroscience 11 (1999), pp. 1891–98. In addition, mirror neurondeficiencies are also part of the picture; see Lindsay M. Oberman et al., “EEG Evidence for MirrorNeuron Dysfunction in Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Cognitive Brain Research, 24 (2005), pp. 190–98.