活着的最伟大的社会心理学家:理查德·尼斯贝特教授

理查德·尼斯贝特教授荣耀退休

今天（美国时间5月19日）下午，美国密歇根大学心理学系特为我的研究生导师理查德·尼斯贝特（Richard Nisbett）教授举行了退休仪式。来自世界各地的尼斯贝特教授的合作者、过去的学生和现在的教师和学生代表今天欢聚在安阿伯（Ann Arbor），以学术报告会的形式庆祝尼斯贝特的退休。

尼斯贝特教授是密西根大学心理学系讲座教授，也是我的导师、好友、合作者，更是现在还活着的最多产、最有名、最伟大的社会心理学家。他的研究目前已经被引用超过75000次。他曾经获得美国心理学会杰出科学贡献奖、美国心理学会威廉·詹姆斯终身成就奖，美国古根海姆奖。2002年，他成为第一位当选美国科学院院士的社会心理学家。

尼斯贝特教授1962年毕业于位于波士顿的塔夫茨大学，1966年获哥伦比亚大学的心理学博士学位，师从著名的社会心理学家斯坦利·沙赫特（情绪沙赫特理论的作者）。1971年开始执教密西根大学心理学系。1992年成为密西根大学纽坎伯大学的讲座教授。

尼斯贝特的研究兴趣广泛，早年研究人类的思维与决策，后来研究文化与认知，然后是健康、智慧、意义等积极心理品质。在每一个领域他都做出了伟大贡献，培养出了一大批优秀的学者。

尼斯贝特教授也是第一个访问中国大陆的美国社会心理学家。1982年他受荆其诚教授的邀请访问了北京大学心理学系，给我们上了一个月的社会心理学。当时我是北大心理学系三年级的学生，非常认真地跟他学习了一个月。可惜现在记得的只是他那英俊如电影明星般的风范，内容基本都忘光了。

1990年，我有幸成为尼斯贝特教授的学生，开始进行文化与认知领域的研究。我清楚地记得在他的办公室，我们在密西拫大学的记事本上，随手写下东西方文化差异对人类11个思维工具的影响。我们从研究人的归因过程开始，再到归类和概念形成，然后是决策和判断，用心理学的实验方法证明了其中十个假设是正确的。唯一没有能够得到实证的反而是诺贝尔物理学奖获得者杨振宁教授提出的东方人喜欢演绎，西方人喜欢归纳的假设。由此开始，文化与认知研究成为社会心理学的经典研究领域。到今天为止，根据谷歌学者数据库的统计，受我们影响的文化与认知研究报告，公开发表的已经高达18200篇！2003年，在其畅销书《思维的版图》的第一页，尼斯贝特教授特意描绘了我们当时讨论这些问题的场景，令我感动不己。

密西根大学校方非常重视尼斯贝特教授的退休，特意安排了小型晚宴招待前来参加活动的嘉宾。今天（19日）正好也是清华大学已故校长梅贻琦先生逝世55周年纪念日。早在八十年前他就提出：“所谓大学者，非谓有大楼之谓也，有大师之谓也。”密西根大学如此重视尼斯贝特教授的退休，也是大学情怀的自然流露，中外贤士，感受莫不相同。

应尼斯贝特教授的请求，校方特地安排我在晚宴上做祝酒致辞。现将我的英文祝酒辞分享在此。

Toast to Professor Richard Nisbett

Thank you for the honor of inviting me to make a toast for Dick Nisbett. I know you didn’t invite me for my roasting skill or eloquent speech, as both have become a bit rusty recently, though this may be in part due to my long flight from Beijing to Ann Arbor. Professor Incheol Cho, I know you may want to compete with me for the title of Farthest Traveler to This Conference, but I checked online and Beijing is 692 miles further away than Seoul to Ann Arbor. It could be the fact that I was Dick’s first Chinese student; The first time I met Dick was actually in 1982, when Dick visited Beijing University’s psychology department and gave one-month crash courses to us on social psychology. That was the first social psychology course ever taught in China since 1949. Unfortunately, we were more impressed by Dick’s incredible good looks than the course itself.

Dick is a great mentor, not just in research but in life. I still remember vividly that in 1996, I had a job opportunity in Hong Kong, and they ask me for a reference. Obviously, I put Dick’s name down, expecting an eager response. But Dick didn’t write the letter, and instead he invited me to his house, where his dog ran around as we sat in his small garden. He then asked me some very philosophical question: Why do you want me to be your mentor? Why do you want to stay in Ann Arbor to work with me as a graduate student? What’s your ultimate goal for these plans? I was quite surprised, because my impression of Dick is a very rational, serious scientist. The meaning of life was not his favorite topics; at least not in my memory. It was then I realized that he wasn’t just an extraordinary scholar, but an extraordinary individual with a strong sense of purpose in life. He asked these questions in order to help many others discover their own purposes in life, which was the reason I returned to China giving up my professional career in the US.

I also remember in 1991 when Dick, Claude, Hazel and Larry were discussing the now-famous Culture and Cognition graduate training program. We had a meeting in his office to discuss East -West cultural differences. On a Michigan legal pad, we jotted down 11 possible ways that Chinese and Americans may differ. We started with experiments in attribution, then categorization, then decision making, so on. We went on to prove all the hypotheses true, with one exception: cultural differences in preference for deduction or induction. Oh how much fun we had working on these projects. The last time I counted on Google Scholar, there were over 18200 articles on these topics. Dick, you are one of the founding fathers of the field of culture and cognition research, and the inspiration for psychologists worldwide; tens of thousands of ideas, studies, papers, degrees and jobs were generated because of you.

I was fortunate enough to meet Dick at the right place and the right time. Thank you for taking me in as your student when I was in self-exile, for giving me hope in pursuing a career as a psychologist, for working relentlessly to recommend me for 15 different faculty position in the US in 1997, in which I received all of the in return. Words can hardly describe my gratitude towards you, so on behalf the Tsinghua HLab, of which I am the co-chair, we hereby offer to dedicate an experimental psychology lab in Michigan in your name. Hopefully we will see the official announcement be made at the bicentennial celebration this fall.

Let all of us toast to, a good friend, a great mentor, a wonderful person, and one of the best psychologists to ever live, Professor Richard Nisbett.

责任编辑 | 吴卫国

执行编辑 | 张素荣

彭凯平个人公众号

个人公众平台独家刊发，欢迎转载，敬请注明出处！公众媒体转载需授权，谢谢！