《10到25岁》第三章(5)：在社会问题上的代沟

Disparities over meaning between the generations come to the foreground especially when we look at hot-button social issues. The prominent sociologist and psychologist Dr. Stephen Russell, an expert in the healthy development of LGBTQ+ youth and the adults who interact with them, sees this a lot. He hears from adults who fear that because the terms and acronyms used to describe sexuality and gender change so fast, they’ll get them wrong. According to Russell, adults don’t know if they should say lesbian or gay or queer, if there should be a plus or not, or what order the letters go in. They worry that if they say something wrong, they’ll be labeled bigots. That worry means they say nothing at all. But young people interpret adults’ silence to mean they’re biased and unsupportive, which harms youth even further. Adults feel paralyzed. By the way, this isn’t a problem faced only by straight, cisgender people. I heard the same thing when I interviewed people in their midtwenties who identified as queer and worked full time at LGBTQ+ youth support centers. They told me it’s hard to keep up with teenagers using the latest terminology even when it’s their own or similar identities in question.

当我们关注热点社会问题时，代际之间在意义理解上的差异尤为凸显。著名的社会学家和心理学家斯蒂芬·拉塞尔博士，作为LGBTQ+青少年健康发展和与其互动的成年人专家，经常见到这种情况。他听到成年人担心，由于描述性和性别的术语和缩写变化太快，他们可能会用错。拉塞尔表示，成年人不知道是该说女同性恋、男同性恋还是酷儿，是否应该加上加号，或者字母的顺序是怎样的。他们担心如果说错了话，会被贴上偏执者的标签。这种担忧导致他们选择沉默。但年轻人将成年人的沉默解读为偏见和不支持，这进一步伤害了年轻人。成年人感到无所适从。顺便提一下，这不仅仅是直男直女和顺性别者面临的问题。我在采访一些二十五六岁、自认为是酷儿并全职在LGBTQ+青少年支持中心工作的人时，也听到了同样的情况。他们告诉我，即使涉及到的是他们自己或类似的身份，跟上青少年使用最新术语的步伐也很困难。

Dr. Melissa Thomas-Hunt sees a similar reluctance to talk about race or ethnicity among CEOs and senior management. A distinguished professor of business at the University of Virginia, Thomas-Hunt formerly served as the head of global diversity and belonging at the home-rental company Airbnb. She told me that, especially since the killing of George Floyd in 2020, employers feel stuck. If they said something about race- or ethnicity-based injustices, then young people (and politicians) would find a problem with it no matter what. It was not forceful enough, or too forceful, or not appropriately nuanced. Employers also worried that if they made a statement once, they would have to make a statement about every issue or event. They would then spend an eternity writing press releases to placate the twentysomethings.

梅丽莎·托马斯-亨特博士发现，CEO和高级管理层在谈论种族或民族问题时也有类似的犹豫。作为弗吉尼亚大学杰出的商业教授，托马斯-亨特曾担任房屋租赁公司Airbnb全球多元化和归属感部门的负责人。她告诉我，特别是自2020年乔治·弗洛伊德被杀以来，雇主们感到进退两难。如果他们对基于种族或民族的不公正发表意见，年轻人（和政治家）无论如何都会找出问题。要么力度不够，要么太过强硬，要么不够细致。雇主们还担心，一旦发表声明，就必须对每个问题或事件发表意见。然后他们就会花大量时间写新闻稿来安抚二十几岁的年轻人。

On the other hand, Dr. Thomas-Hunt told me, employers often have a strong economic incentive to get it right. The competition for young talent can be fierce, especially in the technology and engineering fields, and young talent is harder to recruit to a company with a PR problem.

另一方面，托马斯-亨特博士告诉我，雇主们通常有强烈的经济动机去做好这件事。特别是在技术和工程领域，对年轻人才的竞争非常激烈，而年轻人才更难被招募到有公关问题的公司。

This conflict doesn’t have to be intractable. Dr. Thomas-Hunt found that when employers, like Airbnb, showed a willingness to listen, learn, and change—for example, by elevating voices from minority groups rather than complaining about them—they’ve had more success at having meaningful conversations. Why did this work?

这种冲突并非不可解决。托马斯-亨特博士发现，当雇主们，比如Airbnb，表现出愿意倾听、学习和改变的态度——例如，通过提升少数群体的声音而不是抱怨他们——他们在进行有意义的对话方面取得了更大的成功。为什么这样做有效呢？

In 2012, the Stanford social psychologist Dr. Priyanka Carr (who later became the COO at SurveyMonkey) published a fascinating series of experiments that helped us understand this conflict. Carr’s experiments showed that some people believed that the world could be divided into prejudiced versus unprejudiced people. They thought that prejudice was a fixed trait (a fixed mindset about prejudice). Other people believed that people could learn to reduce prejudice over time; for example, by educating themselves about another group’s experiences. To them, prejudice could change (a growth mindset about prejudice).

2012年，斯坦福大学的社会心理学家普里扬卡·卡尔博士（后来成为SurveyMonkey的首席运营官）发表了一系列引人入胜的实验，帮助我们理解这种冲突。卡尔的实验表明，有些人认为世界可以分为有偏见和无偏见的人。他们认为偏见是一种固定特质（对偏见的固定心态）。另一些人则认为，人们可以通过了解另一个群体的经历来减少偏见。对他们来说，偏见是可以改变的（对偏见的成长心态）。

Carr found that the research participants who thought prejudice was fixed tended to also think that small missteps in group relations would mark you as an -ist (e.g., racist, sexist). Then the prejudice-is-fixed believers avoided cross-group conversations because of what they might reveal about them. By contrast, the participants who thought prejudice could be reduced with education were more open to talking with someone from a different group. They didn’t worry as much that a lack of knowledge right now would mean they would always be an -ist.

卡尔发现，认为偏见是固定的研究参与者往往也会认为，群体关系中的小失误会让人被贴上“主义者”（例如，种族主义者、性别主义者）的标签。然后，这些认为偏见是固定特质的人会避免跨群体对话，因为他们担心这会暴露自己的问题。相比之下，认为偏见可以通过教育减少的参与者更愿意与不同群体交谈。他们不太担心，现在缺乏知识意味着他们永远会是一个“主义者”。

Carr’s study helps us understand how the fight over meaning plays out across the generational divide—and how it might be resolved. Young people often act like Carr’s participants who thought that prejudice was fixed. They seem determined to label older adults, based on very little information, as sexist, racist, homophobic, and hateful. Of course, they sometimes have a good reason for this. Young people in an adolescent predicament are often in a perpetual state of status threat detection, coming from the barrier of mistrust. Their sensitivity causes many young people to quickly sort the world into harmful/bad/unsafe people versus helpful/good/safe people to avoid further hurt. This barrier of mistrust can worsen the very problem young people want to solve, however. It leads adults to stay silent for fear of being outed as -ists. Furthermore, when adults say or do something that’s out of step with how they are supposed to talk about group differences, their punishments (e.g., getting canceled) seem out of proportion with their supposed crimes. Then adults dismiss young people as immature, complaining wimps. Both sides end up labeling the other, and neither side learns from the other.

卡尔的研究帮助我们理解代际之间在意义争夺上的表现——以及如何解决这一问题。年轻人的行为，常常表现得像卡尔研究中的那部分参与者，认为偏见是固定特质。他们似乎决心根据很少的信息将年长的成年人贴上性别主义者、种族主义者、恐同者和仇恨者的标签。当然，他们有时这样做是有道理的。处于青少年窘境的年轻人通常持续地检测地位威胁，这源于信任障碍。他们的敏感性导致许多年轻人迅速将世界分为有害/坏/不安全的人和有帮助/好/安全的人，以避免进一步的伤害。然而，这种信任障碍可能会恶化年轻人想要解决的问题。这导致成年人因害怕被称为“主义者”而保持沉默。此外，当成年人说或做一些事情，与如何谈论群体差异的预期不符时，他们受到的惩罚（例如，被排除在外）似乎与他们的所谓罪行不成比例。然后成年人认为年轻人不成熟、爱抱怨。双方最终都给对方贴上标签，任何一方都没有从另一方学到东西.

Think back on our metaphor of an authentic treaty, not a truce. People don’t willingly sign a treaty (i.e., without threat of force) if they believe the other party is fundamentally evil and untrustworthy. Therefore, as a starting point for any treaty between the generations, both sides must abandon the tendency to apply fixed labels. They must have an earnest desire to learn. Successful companies have done just that, as Thomas-Hunt told me.

回想一下我们关于真实条约而非停战协定的隐喻。如果人们认为对方从根本上来说是邪恶且不可信的，他们不会自愿签署条约（即在没有武力威胁的情况下）。因此，作为代际之间任何条约的起点，双方都必须放弃用固定标签的倾向。他们必须有真诚的学习愿望。正如托马斯-亨特告诉我的那样，成功的公司已经这样做了。

Let’s conclude with a remarkable case study of an organization that took this principle to heart.

让我们以一个非凡案例研究来结束本章，该研究中的组织将这一原则铭记于心。