The Four Quadrants of Conformism

July 2020 One of the most revealing ways to classify people is by the degree and aggressiveness of their conformism.

2020 年 7 月 对人们进行分类的最能说明问题的方法之一是根据他们顺从的程度和攻击性。

Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system whose horizontal axis runs from conventional-minded on the left to independent-minded on the right, and whose vertical axis runs from passive at the bottom to aggressive at the top.

想象一个笛卡尔坐标系，其水平轴从左侧的传统思维到右侧的独立思维，垂直轴从底部的被动到顶部的激进。

The resulting four quadrants define four types of people.

由此产生的四个象限定义了四种类型的人。

Starting in

开始于

the upper left and going counter-clockwise: aggressively conventional-minded, passively conventional-minded, passively independent-minded, and aggressively independent-minded.

左上，逆时针方向：积极传统思想、消极传统思想、消极独立思想、积极独立思想。

I think that you'll find all four types in most societies, and that which quadrant people fall into depends more on their own personality than the beliefs prevalent in their society.

我认为在大多数社会中你都会发现这四种类型，而人们属于哪个象限更多地取决于他们自己的个性，而不是他们社会中盛行的信仰。

[ 1 ] Young children offer some of the best evidence for both points.

[1]幼儿为这两点提供了一些最好的证据。

Anyone who's been to primary school has seen the four types, and the fact that school rules are so arbitrary is strong evidence that which quadrant people fall into depends more on them than the rules.

任何上过小学的人都见过这四种类型，而学校规则如此武断的事实有力地证明了人们属于哪个象限更多地取决于他们而不是规则。

The kids in the upper left quadrant, the aggressively conventional-minded ones, are the tattletales.

位于左上象限的孩子，思想激进，思想传统，是爱打小报告的人。

They believe not only that rules must be obeyed, but that those who disobey them must be punished.

他们相信规则不仅必须遵守，而且那些违反规则的人也必须受到惩罚。

The kids in the lower left quadrant, the passively conventional-minded, are the sheep.

左下象限的孩子，思想被动、传统，是羊。

They're careful to obey the rules, but when other kids break them, their impulse is to worry that those kids will be punished, not to ensure that they will.

他们小心翼翼地遵守规则，但当其他孩子违反规则时，他们的冲动是担心这些孩子会受到惩罚，而不是确保他们会受到惩罚。

The kids in the lower right quadrant, the passively independent-minded, are the dreamy ones.

右下象限的孩子是被动独立思想的孩子，是有梦想的孩子。

They don't care much about rules and probably aren't 100% sure what the rules even are.

他们不太关心规则，甚至可能不能 100% 确定规则是什么。

And the kids in the upper right quadrant, the aggressively independent-minded, are the naughty ones.

位于右上象限的孩子，具有积极独立的思想，是顽皮的孩子。

When they see a rule, their first impulse is to question it.

当他们看到一条规则时，他们的第一反应就是质疑它。

Merely being told what to do makes them inclined to do the opposite.

仅仅被告知要做什么就会让他们倾向于做相反的事情。

When measuring conformism, of course, you have to say with respect to what, and this changes as kids get older.

当然，在衡量顺从行为时，你必须说的是关于什么，并且随着孩子年龄的增长，这种情况会发生变化。

For younger kids it's the rules set by adults.

对于年幼的孩子来说，这是成年人制定的规则。

But as kids get older, the source of rules

但随着孩子长大，规则的来源

becomes their peers.

成为他们的同龄人。

So a pack of teenagers who all flout school rules in the same way are not independent-minded; rather the opposite.

所以，一群同样藐视校规的青少年，并不是思想独立的人，而是思想独立的人。相反。

In adulthood we can recognize the four types by their distinctive calls, much as you could recognize four species of birds.

成年后，我们可以通过它们独特的叫声来识别这四种类型，就像您可以识别四种鸟类一样。

The call of the aggressively conventional-minded is "Crush <outgroup>!" (It's rather alarming to see an exclamation point after a variable, but

激进传统思想的呼唤是“粉碎<外群体>！” （在变量后面看到感叹号是相当令人震惊的，但是

that's the whole problem with the aggressively conventional-minded.) The call of the passively conventional-minded is "What will the neighbors think?" The call of the passively independent-minded is "To each his own." And the call of the aggressively independent-minded is "Eppur si muove." The four types are not equally common.

这就是激进传统思想的全部问题。） 消极传统思想的呼唤是“邻居会怎么想？”被动独立思想者的呼唤是“各人各得其所”。积极独立的人的口号是“Eppur si muove”。这四种类型并不同样常见。

There are more passive people than aggressive ones, and far more conventional-minded people than

消极的人比积极进取的人多，思想传统的人比思想保守的人多得多。

independent-minded ones.

有独立思想的人。

So the passively conventional-minded are the largest group, and the aggressively independent-minded the smallest.

因此，消极保守的群体是最大的群体，积极独立的群体是最小的群体。

Since one's quadrant depends more on one's personality than the nature of the rules, most people would occupy the same quadrant even if they'd grown up in a quite different society.

由于一个人的象限更多地取决于一个人的个性而不是规则的性质，因此大多数人即使在完全不同的社会中长大，也会占据同一象限。

Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote: I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would

普林斯顿大学教授罗伯特·乔治最近写道： 我有时会问学生他们对奴隶制的立场是什么

have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition.

如果他们是白人并且在废除死刑之前生活在南方的话。

Guess what?

你猜怎么着？

They all would have been abolitionists!

他们都会成为废奴主义者！

They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it.

他们都会勇敢地公开反对奴隶制，并不懈地努力反对它。

He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't.

他很有礼貌，不会这么说，但他们当然不会。

And indeed, our default assumption should not merely be that his students would, on average, have behaved the same way people did at the time, but

事实上，我们的默认假设不仅应该是他的学生平均而言会像当时的人们一样行事，而且

that the ones who are aggressively conventional-minded today would have been aggressively conventional-minded then too.

今天那些思想激进的人在那时也会是思想激进的。

In other words, that they'd not only not have fought against slavery, but that they'd have been among its staunchest defenders.

换句话说，他们不仅没有反对奴隶制，而且一直是奴隶制最坚定的捍卫者之一。

I'm biased, I admit, but it seems to me that aggressively conventional-minded people are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world, and that a lot of the customs

我承认我有偏见，但在我看来，思想激进、传统观念的人应对世界上不成比例的麻烦负责，而且很多习俗

we've evolved since the Enlightenment have been designed to protect the rest of us from them.

自启蒙运动以来，我们一直在进化，旨在保护我们其他人免受它们的侵害。

In particular, the retirement of the concept of heresy and its replacement by the principle of freely debating all sorts of different ideas, even ones that are currently considered unacceptable, without any punishment for those who try them out to see if they work.

特别是，异端概念的退休，取而代之的是自由辩论各种不同想法的原则，甚至是那些目前被认为不可接受的想法，而对那些尝试这些想法是否有效的人没有任何惩罚。

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