Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a sociology class.

旁白：听一段社科学的讲座

Professor: Ok. So, I'm sure every one of you has worked in a group of er…one form or another. You know, maybe a…a group project you've done for school or some kind of planning for an extracurricular activity.

我相信你们每个人都曾在某种形式的小组中工作过，比如学校里的小组项目，或者为课外活动做计划。

Anyway, I bet you've got at least an intuitive sense of what makes a group successful or not.

无论如何，我猜你们至少有一种直觉上的感觉，知道是什么让一个小组成功，或者不成功。

Well, today, I wanna talk about one attempt to formalize those intuitions a little, to pin down what it is that makes a group successful.

那么，今天我想谈一谈尝试将这些直觉形式化一点，找出究竟是什么让一个小组能够成功。

And I think we should start by looking at a study done by a sociologist named Bales. It's usually referred to as the Bales experiments.

我觉得我们应该从一位名叫Bales的社会学家所做的研究开始说起，这通常被称为Bales实验。

So, Bales' idea was to put small groups of people together. Well, he actually just used undergraduate males.

Bales的想法是把一些小群体的人放在一起，实际上他只用了本科男生。

You know, he was at a university, and they were just handy.

你知道，他在一所大学里工作，而这些男生正好方便获取。

So Bales put these guys together, who, er, by the way, had never met each other.

Bales把这些彼此从未见过面的男生放在一起。

He gave them various problems to solve.

然后，给他们各种问题去解决。

Then, as the students interacted, Bales and his assistants classified each aspect of their behavior, or what Bales called their various acts, into different categories.

随着学生们互动，Bales和他的助手们将他们的每一个行为，或者说是Bales所说的“各种行为”，分类到不同的类别中。

So, after observing lots of group interactions, Bales hypothesized that every single act, basically everything that the participants did, fit into 1 of 2 basic categories, each act was either what he called instrumental or expressive.

在观察了许多小组互动之后，Bales假设每个行为，也就是参与者做的每一件事，都可以归入两个基本类别之一：要么是工具性的行为，要么是表达性的行为。

Now, Bales defined instrumental acts as any activity which was directly concerned with solving whatever problem the group is faced with, such as giving information, making a suggestion, anything that could directly contribute to the completion of the task.

Bales将工具性行为定义为任何直接与小组所面临的解决问题相关的活动，比如提供信息、提供建议，或者任何能够直接促进任务完成的行为。

So, you know, saying something like, “I think we should look at this factor”, or “why don't we try this or that solution”. These are instrumental acts.

所以，比如说“我认为我们应该考虑这个因素”，或者“我们为什么不试试这个或那个解决方案”，这些都是工具性行为。

Or taking notes, for example, is instrumental, or even writing up a report.

比如做笔记也是工具性的，甚至撰写报告也是。

Expressive acts, on the other hand, are pretty much everything else.

而表达性行为则几乎是其他所有行为。

They're all the comments and behaviors that are not specifically designed to solve the problem at hand.

它们是所有并非专门用于解决手头问题的评论和行为。

Something like, “hey, that was a great suggestion”. Or “I appreciate you guys doing such hard work”. These are expressive comments.

比如“嘿，那是个很棒的建议”，或者“我很欣赏你们这么努力工作”，这些都是表达性的评论。

Or jokes, for example, are expressive.

比如笑话，也是表达性的。

And then there are negative expressives too, showing disagreement or dissatisfaction, such as “you're totally wrong”.

然后还有消极的表达性行为，比如表示不同意或不满，例如“你完全错了”。

OK, so now that we've got Bales' categories down, we can talk about his conclusions.

现在我们已经理解了Bales的分类，我们可以来谈谈他的结论了。

Bales was primarily concerned with what ratio of instrumental and expressive acts caused a group to be most effective.

Bales主要关注的是工具性和表达性行为的比例，到底是什么让一个小组最有效率。

Now, before I read his results, I expected that the group with the highest percentage of instrumental acts would be the most successful group.

在我读到他的结果之前，我本以为工具性行为比例最高的小组会是最成功的小组。

You know, the more instrumental acts, the more the group would be working on its objective, and the more productive it would be.

你知道，工具性行为越多，小组就越专注于目标，效率也就越高。

But that, in fact, is exactly what did not happen.

但事实上，完全不是这样。

Groups that had a high percentage of instrumental activity weren't very productive at all.

工具性活动比例很高的小组效率并不高。

Now, here's how Bales explains this.

现在，让我们来看看Bales是怎么解释这一点的。

He says that positive expressive acts, they grease the wheels, you might say. They make things flow more smoothly.

他说，积极的表达性行为就像是润滑剂，能让事情更顺利地进行。

If everybody in the group acts instrumentally, if everybody that is, is offering different suggestions on how to proceed, and everybody is coming up with their own plan, then all the group members are basically just butting heads.

如果小组里的每个人都只做工具性行为，也就是说，每个人都提出不同的建议，每个人都想出自己的计划，那么小组成员们基本上只是在互相冲突。

Nothing gets done, and everybody is at odds.

什么也做不成，每个人都意见不合。

Positive expressive acts, on the other hand, help people get along, removing the tension or hostility that might have developed among the members of the group as a result of instrumental activity.

而积极的表达性行为，另一方面，能帮助人们相处融洽，消除因工具性活动而产生的紧张或敌意。

But of course, at the same time, a group with too much expressive activity is also unproductive.

但当然，与此同时，一个小组如果表达性行为过多，也会效率低下。

If all of a group's acts are expressive then the group isn't doing anything to further their goals.

如果小组的所有行为都是表达性的，那么这个小组就无法推进自己的目标。

So Bales' major finding is that the most successful groups were those that had about 50% instrumental acts and 50% expressive acts.

所以Bales的主要发现是，最成功的小组是那些工具性行为和表达性行为各占约50%的小组。

Of the expressive acts, about 2/3 were positive. And 1/3 negative.

在表达性行为中，大约2/3是积极的，1/3是消极的。

Bales also observed a…a recurring pattern in the sequencing of activity.

Bales还观察到一种反复出现的活动顺序模式。

He found that in successful groups, group leaders usually began the session by exchanging information about the problem, what the problem is, who were the people involved in the problem, etc.

他发现，在成功的小组中，小组领导通常首先通过交流问题的相关信息来开始会议，比如问题是什么，涉及问题的人是谁等等。

After exchanging information, they devoted some time to the exchange of opinions, opinions about why the problem might have occurred, what went wrong, things like that, before moving on to making suggestions as to how to solve the problem.

在交流信息之后，他们会花一些时间交换意见，比如问题可能产生的原因，哪里出了错等等，然后才开始提出解决问题的建议。

Now, some of the groups he observed, they didn't define the problem. They sort of reversed this order and instead, started off with making suggestions for solutions.

他观察到的一些小组并没有定义问题，而是颠倒了这个顺序，一开始就提出解决问题的建议。

They ended up having a long period of dissension filled with negative responses, negative expressive acts, wasted a lot of time before moving on.

于是，他们经历了一段充满分歧的时期，充满了消极的反应和消极的表达性行为，浪费了很多时间才继续下去。