The way your name or a word rolls off the tongue can have some surprising effects on the judgements we make.

你的名字或某个词汇的发音可能对我们的判断有意想不到的影响。

Picture two cartoon characters, one round and the other spiky. Which would you name Bouba, and which one, Kiki? And which do you then think is more outgoing?

想象两个卡通人物，一个圆形，一个尖形。你会给哪个取名为波巴，哪个为奇奇？另外，你觉得两者谁更外向？

Perhaps surprisingly, most of you will probably attribute the same name and characteristics to each of the shapes. A growing body of research suggests that people tend to make a range of judgments based on nothing but the sound of a word or name.

也许出乎意料，你们多数人可能赋予每个形状同样的姓名和性格。越来越多的研究表明，人们倾向于只根据词汇或名字的发音而做出各种判断。

At its most basic, this is known as the bouba-kiki effect, or maluma-takete effect, because of how our minds lix certain sounds and shapes. Across many different languages, people tend to associate the sounds b, m, l and o (as in the made-up words bouba and maluma) with round shapes. The sounds k, t, p and i, as in the nonsense words kiki and takete, are commonly seen as spiky. These associations may be partly rooted in the physical experience of saying and hearing sounds, with some feeling more effortful and abrupt than others.

这种现象本质上被称为波巴-奇奇效应，又称为玛鲁玛-塔科特效应，因为我们的大脑将特定的声音和形状相关联。在许多语言中，人们倾向于把b, m, l, o的发音（正如编造的词汇波巴和玛鲁玛）与圆形相关联。

Surprisingly, the bouba-kiki effect even extends into human relationships, and how we imagine the personalities of people we've never met.

意外的是，波巴-奇奇效应还会影响人际关系，以及预测素未谋面者的性格。

Cognitive psychologist David Sidhu at University College London and psycholinguist Penny Pexman at the University of Calgary have found that people perceive certain personal names such as Bob and Molly as round, and others such as Kirk and Kate as spiky. In French, they and a collaborator showed the same effect with the "round" Benoit versus the "spiky" Éric. In a separate study, participants pictured people with those names as having metaphorically rounded or spiky personalities.

英国伦敦大学学院的认知心理学家戴维·希杜和心理语言学家彭妮·佩克斯曼发现，人们认为某些人名是圆形的，例如鲍勃、莫莉，而某些人名是尖形的，例如柯克、凯特。在法语中，他们与一位合作者发现了相同的效应，贝努瓦是圆形的，埃里克是尖形的。在另一项研究中，参与者从比喻的角度将持有这些名字的人描述为圆形或尖形性格。

"The basic thing we find is that if you compare these very smooth, soft-sounding names, like Molly, to these harsher-sounding names like Kate, that the smoother-sounding names like Molly get associated with things like being more agreeable, more emotional, more conscientious, whereas the harsher, spikier-sounding names are thought of as being more extroverted," says Sidhu.

“如果我们将声音圆润柔和与声音尖利的名字做比较，例如莫莉与凯特，就会发现声音圆润的名字莫莉与随和、情绪化、责任心相关联，而声音尖利的名字凯特与外向性格相关联”，希杜说道。

These far-flung associations may originate in how these sounds feel in our mouth, according to Sidhu. "If you think about pronouncing an 'm' versus a 't', for example, that m-sound feels much smoother, and that, by analogy, captures the smoothness of the rounded shape versus the spiky shape." Sounds like 't' and 'k' may feel more energetic, capturing an extroverted, perky, lively quality.

这些广泛的关联可能源于我们嘴里发出这些声音时的感觉，希杜说道。“举个例子，你想一想m和t的发音，m听起来更随和，相当于圆形的圆润”。t和k的发音听起来更有活力，具有外向、易怒、活泼的特点。

And this mouth-feel of the words we use can influence how we experience the world. At any given moment we use an array of subtle cues to pull together information from all our senses, and make judgments and predictions about our environment.

词汇发音的感觉会影响我们体验世界的方式。我们任何时候都在利用微妙的暗示搜集来自我们所有感官的信息，对我们所处的环境做出判断和预测。

"There's something there about how humans are fundamentally associative," Pexman says. "We want to see patterns in things, we want to find connections between things, and we'll find them even between sounds, and the things those sounds stand for in the world."

“从中可见人类关联的本性”，佩克斯曼说道。“我们喜欢看到事物的模式，喜欢寻找事物之间的联系。我们甚至能在声音中发现联系，以及那些发音代表的事物”。

Such associations can help us with important real-life tasks, such as language-learning and guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words. In English, words for round things are often round-sounding, as in blob, balloon, ball, marble. Words like prickly, spiny, sting and perky are spiky both in sound and meaning.

这种关联能帮助我们完成现实生活中的重要任务，例如语言学习、猜测陌生词汇的含义。在英语中，表示圆形物的词汇通常发音圆润，例如：团、气球、球、玻璃球。有些词汇在发音和含义上都有棱角，例如多刺、带刺、刺、活泼。

Sounds can also indicate size. An i-sound is lixed to smallness, while an o-sound indicates largeness. Some of these lixs exist across thousands of languages, with the i-sound disproportionately popping up in words for "small" around the world.

声音也能显示尺寸。i的发音与小有关，o的发音与大有关。某些联系在数千种语言中普遍存在，全世界表示“小”的词汇里多数包含i发音。

For people learning new words, whether babies, toddlers or adults, these patterns can be very helpful. Toddlers and even babies already match round sounds with round shapes. Parents tend to use sound-shape associations to emphasise the meaning of certain words, such as "teeny tiny". Adults benefit from associations when they learn a new language, finding it easier to guess or remember foreign words when their sound matches their meaning.

对于学习新词汇的人来说，无论婴幼儿还是成年人，这些模式很有帮助。幼儿甚至婴儿就能够将圆润声音与圆形相关联。父母倾向于使用声-形关联来强调特定词汇的含义，例如“极小的”。成年人学习新的语言能从关联中受益，如果将单词发音与含义相关联，就会觉得更容易猜测或记忆外语单词。

Some argue that these intuitive connections between sounds and meaning may even be a leftover from humanity's earliest stages of language evolution, and that human language itself started as a string of such expressive, innately guessable sounds.

有人认为，声音与含义之间的直觉式关联可能是人类语言进化最初阶段的残留物，人类语言最开始是一连串表意、天生就能猜测的声音。

When it comes to people's personalities, however, sound is not a reliable guide at all. Sidhu, Pexman and their collaborators tested whether there was a lix between a person's name and their personality, perhaps because the round or spiky sound of the name rubbed off on the wearer. They found no such association.

然而，根据声音推测人的性格完全不靠谱。希杜、佩克斯曼及其合作者检验过名字与性格之间是否有关联，可能因为圆润或尖利的声音会影响到名字使用者。他们并没有发现这种关联。

"People agonize over baby names. It's this expectation that the label matters so much," Pexman says. "Our data would suggest that although that's what we think, if you call the kid Bob, they're not any more likely to end up with one set of personality traits than another."

“人们绞尽脑汁给婴儿取名，正是这种期待才使名字标签那么重要”，佩克斯曼说道。“我们的数据表明这是自以为是，如果给孩子取名叫鲍勃，他们最终形成一套人格特质的可能性不会比另一套大”。

Instead, our reaction to a name probably reveals more about our own prejudices. "It does suggest that we're prepared to read a lot into somebody's name that probably isn't a cue to what that person is actually like," says Pexman.

相反，我们对名字的反应可能暴露了自己的偏见。“数据表明我们准备从人名中解读大量信息，但从人名中可能无法看出一个人的真面目”，佩克斯曼说道。

Preliminary results from an ongoing study by Sidhu, Pexman and collaborators suggest that the sound of a name has less of an impact as we find out more about people. When participants were shown videos of people with supposedly round or spiky names, the names made no difference to their judgment of them.

希杜、佩克斯曼及其合作者正在开展一项研究，初步结果显示随着我们对他人了解的加深，名字发音产生的影响会下降。研究人员向参与者展示这些人的视频，他们被认为拥有圆形或尖形的名字，结果名字没有影响到他们的判断。
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"When all you have to go on is the name, like in these studies when you're just shown a name and asked about the personality, then maybe these sounds will play a role," Sidhu says. "But as you start getting more information about the person, then that actual information about the personality is probably going to override these biases."

“如果你只能凭名字做出判断，正如在这些研究中只知道对方的名字，被问及这个人的性格，这时名字的发音可能起到作用”，希杜说道。“但随着你获得对方更多的信息，性格的真实信息可能战胜偏见”。

The research feeds into a growing body of evidence that challenges a long-held view in linguistics: that sounds are arbitrary, and have no inherent meaning. Instead, certain sounds have been found to evoke consistent associations not just with shapes and sizes, but even with flavours and textures.

这项研究提供了越来越多的证据，使语言学长期认同的观点面临挑战：声音是随意的，本身没有含义。然而，人们发现特定声音能唤起固定关联，不只是形状和尺寸，甚至与味道和质感相关联。

Milk chocolate, brie cheese and still water tend to be perceived as bouba/maluma, while crisps, bitter chocolate, mint chocolate and sparkling water are more likely to be experienced as kiki/takete.

人们倾向于把牛奶巧克力、布里奶酪、甚至水视为波巴/玛鲁玛；而薯片、纯苦型巧克力、薄荷巧克力、汽水给人的感觉很可能是奇奇/塔科特。

According to Suzy Styles, a psycholinguist at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, such sensory associations also reflect our wider physical environment. Sounds like b, m, and o contain lower frequency components, while sounds like k, t, and i contain higher frequency components. Higher frequencies are in turn associated with brightness, smallness and sharpness, not just in human language.

新加坡南洋理工大学心理语言学家苏西·丝黛尔斯表示，这种感官联系也反映着广大的物理环境。b, m, o发音的频率分量较低，而k, t, i发音的频率分量较高。较高的频率分量与明亮、微小、尖锐相关联，不局限于人类语言。

"You could think of a large drum that makes a lower, louder, longer-lasting sound, versus a tiny little toy drum that makes a smaller, high-pitched, shorter-lasting sound. Those are just physical properties of our environment," Styles says. "So it makes sense that a brain that grows up in this environment will coordinate information in those ways."

“你可以想象大鼓发出的声音低沉、响亮、悠长；小巧的玩具鼓发出的声音较小、高音、短促。这些就是我们所处环境的物理特征”，丝黛尔斯说道。“因此在这种环境下形成的大脑以这些方式协调信息是有道理的”。

As widespread as the bouba-kiki effect is, it can be changed or offset by different factors, such as our own native sound repertoire.

虽然波巴-奇奇效应普遍存在，但这种效应会被各种因素改变或抵消，例如我们本国的发音能力。

Styles and her PhD student Nan Shang tested the bouba-kiki effect with Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin is a tonal language, where the meaning of a word can completely change depending on the tone in which it is said. In English, tone can carry some meaning, for example by signalling a question, but not to the extent it does in Mandarin. The researchers presented English- and Mandarin-speakers with two Mandarin Chinese tones, one high and one falling. The English-speaking participants in the experiment perceived the high tone as spiky, and the falling one as rounded. But Mandarin speakers drew the opposite conclusion, picturing the high tone as rounded, and the falling tone as spiky.

丝黛尔斯及其博士生尚楠使用汉语检验了波巴-奇奇效应。汉语是一种声调语言，词汇含义根据声调可能完全发生改变。在英语中，声调具有一定含义，比如表达提问，但不如汉语那么丰富。研究人员让说英语和汉语的人倾听汉语的升调和降调。说英语的人在试验中认为升调尖锐，降调圆润。但说汉语的人得出相反的结论，认为升调圆润，降调尖锐。

One possible explanation is that if we are unfamiliar with tones in a language, as English-speakers are, then we may mainly hear them as high or low, and form associations based on pitch. But if we are familiar with tones, as Chinese speakers are, we may be able to distinguish finer nuances. In the experiment, the Mandarin speakers heard the high tone as smooth, drawn-out and steady, and therefore, rounded. The falling tone was experienced as abrupt, because it dropped suddenly, making it spiky.

一种可能的解释是，如果我们不熟悉某种语言的声调，就像说英语的人那样，那么我们可能主要倾听声调的高低，并根据声调来形成关联。但如果我们熟悉这种语言的声调，就像说汉语的人那样，也许我们能够分辨出微妙的差异。在试验中，说汉语的人感觉升调悦耳、悠长、平稳，所以很圆润。降调令人感觉生硬，因为声调是突然下降的，所以很尖锐。

Other studies also found variations in the bouba-kiki pattern. The Himba, a remote community in Northern Namibia who speak the Otjiherero language, judged bouba to be round and kiki to be angular, in line with the general trend. But they found milk chocolate to be spiky-tasting, suggesting that our sensory associations are not universal.

其他研究也表明波巴-奇奇效应存在差异。辛巴是纳米比亚北部一个偏远社区，当地人说的是赫雷罗语，他们判断波巴是圆润的，奇奇是有棱角的，这符合一般趋势。但他们觉得牛奶巧克力的味道刺鼻，这表明我们的感官关联并不一致。

When Styles and the linguist Lauren Gawne tested the bouba-kiki effect on speakers of Syuba, a language in the Himalayas in Nepal, they found no consistent response either way. The Syuba speakers seemed confused by the made-up words, possibly because they did not sound like any actual Syuba words. This made it hard to form any meaningful associations. An analogy would be to play an English speaker the made-up word "ngf", and ask if it is round or spiky. It would probably be difficult to make a meaningful choice.

丝黛尔斯和语言学家劳伦·高恩检验了尼泊尔喜马拉雅山区休巴语的波巴-奇奇效应，他们在两方面都没得到一致的回答。说休巴语的人似乎对编造的词汇感到困惑，可能因为听起来不像休巴语中任何真实的词汇，难以形成有意义的关联。同样，让说英语的人倾听编造的词汇ngf，问他们圆润还是尖锐，可能很难做出有意义的选择。
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"When we hear words that don't align with the word-pattern of our native language, it's often hard to do things with that word," Styles says. "We can't hold it in our short-term memory long enough to make decisions about it."

“如果我们听见的词汇不符合本国语言的词形，一般很难对这个词做出选择”，丝黛尔斯说道。“我们的短期记忆无法长时间保留词汇来做出选择”。

Cultural factors are also likely to affect our reactions to the sound of personal names. In English, the sounds k and o are perceived as inherently humorous. English female names are more likely to contain sounds that are perceived as small, such as the i-sound in Emily, and also feature more soft sounds than male names. But in other languages, names can follow a completely different sound pattern.

文化因素也可能影响我们对名字发音的反应。在英语中，k和o的发音本身就有幽默感。女性英文名字很可能包含意为娇小的声音，例如艾米莉中的i，包含的柔和声音也多于男性名字。但在其他语言里，名字可能遵循完全不同的声音模式。

Sidhu hasn't yet tested the name-personality association across different languages, but expects that it would vary. "Your sounds in the language you speak might affect it; which sounds are more common in names might affect it; even cultural things like ideas about personality and which traits are positive versus negative, I can imagine that also playing a role."

希杜没有检验所有语言的名字-性格关联，但猜测存在差异。“你说语言的声音可能有影响；哪些声音在名字里比较常用可能有影响；我甚至想象得到文化因素也有影响，例如对于性格的观念、哪些是积极或消极性格”。

Uncovering these hidden associations holds one important real-life lesson: we probably read too much into other people's names.

揭示这些隐性关联具有重要的现实生活经验：我们可能过分解读别人的名字了。

After all, Sidhu and Pexman found no evidence that Bobs are actually friendlier, or Kirks more extroverted. Their findings may lend weight calls to remove names from important processes altogether, and anonymize CVs or scientific papers under review, to counter unconscious bias. Sidhu supports the idea.

毕竟，希杜和佩克斯曼没发现证据表明鲍勃确实更友好，柯克的性格更外向。他们的发现可能使这些呼吁更有说服力：完全删除重要流程里的人名、简历或接受审核的科学论文保持匿名、从而抵制无意识偏见。希杜支持这个观点。
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"I think that makes a lot of sense," he says. "Whenever someone is being judged, taking away all of these extra things that could bias the judgment is always a good idea."

“我认为这很合理”他说道。“无论何时评价别人，排除可能造成偏见的额外因素永远是个好主意”。

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