心理學版本的心想事成。說白了就是：你對別人友好，別人就喜歡你；你要是怕別人對你不友好，自己先把架子擺起來，對方可就真不喜歡你了。

    The mystical-sounding 'acceptance prophecy' is simply this: when we think other people are going to like us, we behave more warmly towards them and consequently they like us more. When we think other people aren't going to like us, we behave more coldly and they don't like us as much.

    It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because if we predict acceptance we get it, if not we don't. It's also an intuitively appealing explanation for how people come to like （or dislike） each other. But the question for psychologists is whether it is really true or just a neat fairy story.

    The waters are, of course, muddied by all the usual individual and cultural differences-some people care more about other's acceptance and some people are naturally more accepting-but let's set those aside for a moment and just imagine two people who are identical except that one expects others to accept her and one expects others to reject her.

    What the research has found, according to a new paper just published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, is that one part of the acceptance prophecy has strong evidence to support it, while the other part does not. Until now.

    The first part, in a model put forward by Dr Danu Anthony Stinson at the University of Waterloo and colleagues, is that the interpersonal warmth people project predicts how much others like them （Stinson et al., 2009）. For psychologists this is uncontroversial; people take better to others who are genuinely warm with accurate judgements about their warmth made in only 30 seconds （Ambady et al., 2000）.

    Pleased to meet you

    What has proved more controversial is whether anticipating acceptance really does increase the interpersonal warmth that people project towards others. It's this question that Stinson et al. （2009） set out to test by manipulated people's expectations about a person they were about to meet for the first time.

    They told 14 of 28 men recruited for their study that the attractive woman they were going to meet was nervous and worried about how she would be perceived by them. Quite naturally when these men found that the woman was nervous and insecure it made them feel better in comparison. This had the effect of making the men much less anxious about the interaction （actually about half as nervous as judged by independent observers） and consequently much warmer.

    In comparison the other 14 sweaty-palmed participants were only given basic demographic information about the woman they were going to talk to, nothing that would calm their fears of rejection. This manipulation created two groups, then, one that was anticipating acceptance more than the other.

    What the results showed was that when the risk of rejection was lower, men acted more warmly towards the woman to whom they were talking. This extra warmth also lead to a panel of observers liking them more in comparison with those who were more fearful of risk and therefore interpersonally colder.

    So this provides evidence that the acceptance prophecy holds true. In this experiment people who expected to be accepted did act more warmly towards a stranger and consequently they were perceived as more likeable.

    Social optimist or pessimist?

    There was an exception, though, to the results of this study. One sub-group were not affected by the experimental manipulation to increase how much they expected to be accepted. That's because they already expected to be accepted. These are the social optimists （or at least people who think rather a lot of themselves!）.

    Social optimists, of course, are in the happy position of expecting to be accepted and finding that, generally speaking, they are. Social pessimists, though, face the dark side of what sociologist Robert K. Merton-who coined the expression 'self-fulfilling prophecy'-has called a 'reign of error'. Expectation of rejection leads to the projection of colder, more defensive behaviour towards others, and this leads to actual rejection. "Uh-huh," mutters the social pessimist, "I knew they wouldn't like me".

    And so it goes.

    看似神秘的"接納預言"實則很簡單：當我們認為自己受到其他人喜歡時，我們在他們面前就會表現(xiàn)得更加友善，結果對方也會相應地變得更喜歡我們。當我們認為自己不被他人喜歡時，就會表現(xiàn)得更加冷淡，這樣一來，對方就更不喜歡我們了。

    這就是一個自我實現(xiàn)預言，因為當我們預期會被他人所接納時，我們獲得了接納，而當我們預期不被接納時，就不會被接納。對于人們?yōu)槭裁磿�喜歡或不喜歡彼此，上述也是個直觀上很有吸引力的解釋。但是對心理學家而言，重點是這個解釋是事實，還是僅僅是一個"看起來很美"的童話故事。

    在這個問題上，把水攪渾的正是所有那些通常的個體和文化差異--有些人更在意來自他人的接納，有些人天性就比較容易接納別人--但是讓我們暫時把這些放到一邊，只考慮兩個人，他們在所有方面都一模一樣，只除了其中一個預期其他人會接納他，而另一個人預期其他人會拒絕他。

    根據(jù)最近發(fā)表在《人格和社會心理學公報》上的一篇論文，研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，"接納預言"有一部分得到了有力的證據(jù)支持，其他部分則不然。直到現(xiàn)在。

    Waterloo大學的Anthony Stinson博士及其同事提出的一個模型中，第一部分是：人們表達出的人際友善可以預測其他人對他們的喜愛程度（Stinson et al., 2009）.對于心理學家而言，這一點是毫無疑問的。人們更喜歡那些真正友好的人，而且他們在30秒內就能對他人的友好程度作出準確的判斷。

    很高興見到你

    被認為更有爭議的一點是預期的接納是否確實增加了人們表達友善的程度。Stinson等人（2009）對此做了個實驗，通過操縱人們對于將要初次見面的另一個人的預期。

    他們?yōu)樵撗芯空骷��?8名男性被試，并告知其中的14人他們將要見到一位富有魅力的女子，并且這位女子對于他們將會怎樣看待她感到十分緊張和擔憂。很自然地，當這些男士發(fā)現(xiàn)這名女性在緊張害怕時，他們的感覺相比較而言變好了。這在很大程度上減輕了這些男士對于交談的焦慮（事實上，獨立的觀察者判斷他們的焦慮程度減輕了大約一半）,并且他們也更加熱情了。

    與此相對比，另外14名緊張得滿手是汗的參與者只得到了他們將要與之交談的女性的基本信息，沒有任何東西可以緩和他們對于被拒絕的恐懼。從而這一操縱產生了兩個被試組，其中一組將會預期比另一組得到更多的接納。

    結果顯示，當被拒絕的風險降低時，男性會對他們與之交談的女性表現(xiàn)出更多的熱情。而這一額外的友善表現(xiàn)也令得旁觀者喜歡他們勝過那些因為恐懼而表現(xiàn)冷淡的男士。

    從而，這一結果為接納預言的正確性提供了證據(jù)。在這個實驗中，預期會得到接納的人們的確對陌生人更友善，結果他們也被認為是更加令人喜愛的。

    社交樂觀主義者或悲觀主義者？

    然而，該研究結果有個例外。有一小組人沒有被實驗操縱所影響而提高他們預期被接納的程度。這是因為他們已經(jīng)預期會獲得接納。這些人是社交樂觀主義者（或者至少是考慮自己比較多的人）.

    當然，社交樂觀主義者處在一個愉快的立場上，他們預期會獲得接納，并且一般都會發(fā)現(xiàn)事實的確如此。然而，社交悲觀主義者則面臨著術語"自我實現(xiàn)預言"的創(chuàng)造者，社會學家Robert K. Merton所說的"錯誤支配".預期被拒絕導致對他人更加冷淡、防御性的行為表現(xiàn)，而這一點又反過來導致他們真的被拒絕。"啊哈，"社交悲觀主義者咕噥著，"我就知道他們不會喜歡我。"

    事情果如他們所言。