You’re in a loud and sweaty Italian dance club when a woman approaches you. To be heard over the techno, she leans in close and yells into your ear, “Hi una sigaretta?” 設想你身處在一個嘈雜的，人人都大汗淋漓的舞廳里，一名女士向你走了過來。你想要從震耳欲聾的電子搖滾樂中聽到她的話，只見她湊過身對你大喊：“Hai una sigaretta?（能給我根煙嗎?）”

If she spoke into your right ear, you would be twice as likely to give her a cigarette than if she asked by your left ear, according to a new study that employed this methodology in the clubs of Pescara, Italy. Of 88 clubbers who were approached on the right, 34 let the researcher bum a smoke, compared with 17 of 88 whom she approached on the left. 研究人員在意大利佩斯卡拉（Pescara）的俱樂部采用這樣的方法調查后得出了結論：如果她朝你的右耳喊，那么你給她香煙的幾率將會是她朝你左耳喊的幾率的兩倍。在88個朝右耳喊的人中，有34個給研究人員遞了根煙；而在88個朝左耳喊的人中，只有17個這么做。

“The present work is one of the few studies demonstrating the natural expression of hemispheric asymmetries, showing their effect in everyday human behavior,” write psychologists Daniele Marzoli and Luca Tommasi of the University G. d’Annunzio in Italy. “現在我們所做的工作，是解釋大腦半球對稱性的自然表達，說明他們對人類日常生活的影響，而這個研究領域很少有涉及。”意大利G. d’Annunzio大學的心理學家丹尼爾?馬澤里（Daniele Marzoli）和盧卡?托馬西（Luca Tommasi）如是寫道。

It’s the latest in a series of studies that show that sound from both human ears is processed differently within the brain. Researchers have noted that humans tend to have a preference for listening to verbal input with their right ears and that given stimulus in both ears, they’ll privilege the syllables that went into the right ear. Brain scientists hypothesize that the right ear auditory stream receives precedence in the left hemisphere of the brain, where the bulk of linguistic processing is carried out. 最新的一系列研究表明，從人類的左右耳傳入的聲音在大腦中是得到不同處理的。研究人員注意到，人類往往喜歡用右耳進行語言輸入，并且如果給予雙耳同等的刺激，右耳所聽到的音節在大腦中往往占優勢。腦科學家繼而提出假設：右耳的聽覺系統優先進入左半腦，而左半腦是大量語言處理進行的地方。

Marzoli and Tommasi write that some work has shown that the left and right hemispheres of the brain appear to be tuned for positive and negative emotions, respectively. Talk into the right ear and you send your words into a slightly more amenable part of the brain. 馬澤里和托馬西寫道，一些研究表明，大腦的左右半腦似乎是各自處理積極的抑或是消極的情緒，好比某種情緒是對它的胃口一般。別人朝你的右耳講話，你就會把所聽到的內容傳到一個更對味的半腦中。

In addition to the direct cigarette-ask study, they also simply observed people interacting and also asked for cigarettes without directing their requests towards a particular ear. The Italian researchers picked the night club setting because the loud music allowed the cigarette-asker to approach people and speak directly into one ear without seeming “odd.” 除了直接的以問別人要煙的方式研究，他們也單純觀察人們的互動行為，比方說問別人要根煙，但不向特定某個耳朵說話。這兩名意大利研究人員先前挑選了夜總會的環境，是因為吵鬧的音樂聲能夠讓要煙的人接近對方，直接對某一只耳朵說話，而不會讓對方感到奇怪。

（來源：網絡 英語點津Jennifer編輯）

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