Why smart people are better off with fewer friends 为什么聪明人最好少交朋友 作者:Christopher Ingraham @ 2016-03-18

翻译:小聂(@PuppetMaster)

校对:小册子(@昵称被抢的小册子)

来源:The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/18/why-smart-people-are-better-off-with-fewer-friends/ Hell might actually be other people — at least if you're really smart.

他人没准还真是地狱——至少对一个真正聪明的人来说是这样的。

That's the implication of fascinating new research published last month in the British Journal of Psychology. Evolutionary psychologists Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Norman Li of Singapore Management University dig in to the question of what makes a life well-lived. While traditionally the domain of priests, philosophers and novelists, in recent years survey researchers , economists , biologists and scientists have been tackling that question.

这是上个月在《英国心理学杂志》发表的一篇有趣的新研究中说的。两位进化心理学家，伦敦政治经济学院的Satoshi Kanazawa和新加坡管理大学的Norman Li，对于如何活出幸福人生进行了深入的研究。这个传统上被神父、哲学家和小说家把控的议题，近年来却被问卷调查者、经济学家、生物学家和科学家所关注。

Kanazawa and Li theorize that the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of our ancient ancestors form the foundation for what make us happy now. "Situations and circumstances that would have increased our ancestors’ life satisfaction in the ancestral environment may still increase our life satisfaction today," they write.

Kanazawa和Li提出的理论是，我们祖先的狩猎采集生活方式决定了我们感受幸福的底层机制。他们认为，“在原始环境中能够使我们祖先得到满足的情境，或许在今天仍然可以提升我们的满足感。”

They use what they call "the savanna theory of happiness" to explain two main findings from an analysis of a large national survey (15,000 respondents) of adults aged 18 to 28.

他们使用了这个所谓的“关于幸福的热带草原理论”来解释两个主要的研究发现，被研究对象是一项涵盖了15,000个18到28岁成年人的大型全国调查。

First, they find that people who live in more densely populated areas tend to report less satisfaction with their life overall. "The higher the population density of the immediate environment, the less happy" the survey respondents said they were. Second, they find that the more social interactions with close friends a person has, the greater their self-reported happiness.

第一个发现是，在高人口密度地区生活的人们对他们的生活总体上更缺乏满足感。被调查者回应说“周围人口密度越大，就越感觉不幸福”。第二个发现是，和亲密朋友的更多交往伴随着更多的幸福感。

But there was one big exception. For more intelligent people, these correlations were diminished or even reversed.

但是有一个明显的例外，对于高智商人群，上述相关性会变弱，甚至反转。

"The effect of population density on life satisfaction was therefore more than twice as large for low-IQ individuals than for high-IQ individuals," they found. And "more intelligent individuals were actually less satisfied with life if they socialized with their friends more frequently."

“所以，对于低智商人群来说，人口密度对于生活满足度的影响会比对于高智商人群大一倍以上”他们还发现，“高智商人群的生活满意度甚至会因为和朋友交往过多而下降。”

Let me repeat that last one: When smart people spend more time with their friends, it makes them less happy.

容我重复一下后一个发现：如果聪明人在与朋友交往上花更多的时间，他们反倒会感觉不开心。

Now, the broad contours of both findings are largely uncontroversial. A large body of previous research , for instance, has outlined what some have called an "urban-rural happiness gradient." Kanazawa and Li explain: "Residents of rural areas and small towns are happier than those in suburbs, who in turn are happier than those in small central cities, who in turn are happier than those in large central cities."

现在，两个研究发现的粗线条概要大体是无争议的。例如，曾有一大批研究项目概括出被有些人称为“市区-郊区幸福梯度”的东西。Kanazawa和Li解释说：“乡村和小镇的居民比近郊居民更幸福，后者又比生活在小型中心城市的居民幸福，而小型中心城市的居民又比生活在大城市的人幸福。” Why would high population density cause a person to be less happy? There's a whole body of sociological research addressing this question . But for the most visceral demonstration of the effect, simply take a 45-minute ride on a crowded rush-hour Red Line train and tell me how you feel afterward.

为什么高人口密度会使一个人不开心呢？现在已有大量的社会学研究瞄准了这个问题。但是如果要最感同身受地体现这种影响，莫过于在高峰期搭乘45分钟的拥挤地铁，然后告诉我你的心情如何。

Kanazawa and Li's second finding is a little more interesting. It's no surprise that friend and family connections are generally seen as a foundational component of happiness and well-being . But why would this relationship get turned on its head for really smart people?

Kanazawa和Li的第二个发现则更有意思一些。毫无疑问，亲情和友情往往是构成个人生活幸福快乐的基础之一。但是为什么对于聪明人来说，这种关系会被反过来呢？

I posed this question to Carol Graham, a Brookings Institution researcher who studies the economics of happiness. "The findings in here suggest (and it is no surprise) that those with more intelligence and the capacity to use it ... are less likely to spend so much time socializing because they are focused on some other longer term objective," she said.

我就此问题请教了在布鲁金斯学会研究幸福经济学的Carol Graham。“这个发现（毫不奇怪地）表明具有高智商并且能将其驾驭自如的人……较不愿意将大量时间花费在与人交往上面，因为他们专注于其他更长期的目标，”她解释道。

Think of the really smart people you know. They may include a doctor trying to cure cancer or a writer working on the great American novel or a human rights lawyer working to protect the most vulnerable people in society. To the extent that frequent social interaction detracts from the pursuit of these goals, it may negatively affect their overall satisfaction with life.

想想你认识的真正聪明人。他们也许是一个试图治愈癌症的医生，一个想要写出一部杰出的美国小说的作者，或是一个关注保护社会弱势群体的人权律师。如果社交活动过于频繁，以至妨碍他们追求这些远大目标，就会降低他们整体的生活满意度。

But Kanazawa and Li's savanna theory of happiness offers a different explanation. The idea starts with the premise that the human brain evolved to meet the demands of our ancestral environment on the African savanna, where the population density was akin to what you'd find today in, say, rural Alaska (less than one person per square kilometer). Take a brain evolved for that environment, plop it into today's Manhattan (population density: 27,685 people per square kilometer ), and you can see how you'd get some evolutionary friction.

但是Kanazawa和Li的热带草原幸福理论提供了一个不一样的解释。该理论始于一个前提，即人类大脑进化是为了适应我们祖先在非洲大草原上的生存环境。在这种环境下的人口密度近似于如今的阿拉斯加荒野（每平方公里不到一人）。从这种环境下进化出的大脑，被丢进当今的曼哈顿（人口密度每平方公里27,685人），这种进化上的摩擦可想而知。

Similarly with friendship: "Our ancestors lived as hunter–gatherers in small bands of about 150 individuals," Kanazawa and Li explain. "In such settings, having frequent contact with lifelong friends and allies was likely necessary for survival and reproduction for both sexes." We remain social creatures today, a reflection of that early reliance on tight-knit social groups.

对友情来说也近似：“我们祖先作为狩猎采集者，生活在一个个约为150人的小集体里，”Kanazawa和Li解释说。“在这样的环境中，和终生朋友以及盟友的频繁接触对于生存和繁衍 很可能是必要的，无论是男性还是女性。”我们至今仍是社会性的物种，这反映了我们早期对于被社会关系纽带紧密编织起来的小集体的依赖。

The typical human life has changed rapidly since then — back on the savanna we didn't have cars or iPhones or processed food or "Celebrity Apprentice" — and it's quite possible that our biology hasn't been able to evolve fast enough to keep up. As such, there may be a "mismatch" between what our brains and bodies are designed for, and the world most of us live in now.

从那时起，人类生活有了极大改变——在热带草原时期我们可没有汽车、iPhone、加工食品或是“明星学徒”【 译注：电视真人秀节目 】——而我们生理特性的进化极可能赶不上这些改变。因此，在我们的身心设定与我们生存的世界之间，可能会存在着“错配”。

To sum it all up: You've heard of the paleo-diet . But are you ready for paleo-happiness?

简而言之，你知道有旧石器食谱，但是你想不想试试旧石器幸福感？

There's a twist, though, at least as Kanazawa and Li see it. Smarter people may be better equipped to deal with the new (at least from an evolutionary perspective) challenges present-day life throws at us. "More intelligent individuals, who possess higher levels of general intelligence and thus greater ability to solve evolutionarily novel problems, may face less difficulty in comprehending and dealing with evolutionarily novel entities and situations," they write.

但是剧情到这里有个反转，至少Kanazawa和Li这么觉得。聪明人可能更擅长处理现代生活中的新（至少从进化的观点看）挑战。“那些更有智慧，更具有高等的通用智能从而可以更好的解决新进化问题的个体，可能会较易于理解和应对进化上的新实体或是新问题，”他们写道。

If you're smarter and more able to adapt to things, you may have an easier time reconciling your evolutionary predispositions with the modern world. So living in a high-population area may have a smaller effect on your overall well-being — that's what Kanazawa and Li found in their survey analysis. Similarly, smarter people may be better-equipped to jettison that whole hunter-gatherer social network — especially if they're pursuing some loftier ambition.

如果你更聪明，并且更有能力适应环境，你应能更容易处理好先天进化不足和现代社会生活的错配。所以住在高人口密度地区可能对你的总体生活舒适程度影响很小——这就是Kanazawa和Li的调查研究发现。同样的，聪明人更有能力能力人更有可能完全放应对进化上的新实体或是情景说有些人称为“市中舍弃那套狩猎采集式的社交网络——特别是当他们有远大目标的时候。

It's important to remember that this is an argument Kanazawa and Li are proposing and that it's not settled science. "Paleo-" theories — the idea that our bodies are best adapted to the environment of our earliest ancestors — have come under fire in recent years , especially as food companies and some researchers over-hyped the alleged benefits of the paleo-diet fad.

值得注意的是，这只是Kanazawa和Li提出的论点，绝非科学定论。以“旧石器”开头的理论——基于我们的身体仍与我们最早期的祖先所处环境相适应之假设——在近年来饱受争议，特别是由于食品公司和某些学者过于推崇当下流行的旧石器食谱所带来的可能好处。

Kanazawa and Li's main findings about population density, social interaction and happiness are relatively uncontroversial. But Brookings's Carol Graham says one potential flaw in their research is that it defines happiness in terms of self-reported life satisfaction ("How satisfied are you with your life as a whole?"), and doesn't consider experienced well-being ("How many times did you laugh yesterday? How many times were you angry?" etc.). Survey researchers know that these two types of questions can lead to very different assessments of well-being.

Kanazawa和Li对于人口密度，社会交往以及幸福感的主要观点相对来说并没有太大的争议。但是布鲁金斯学会的Carol Graham认为他们的研究有个潜在的缺陷，即用受访者自我报告的生活满意程度来定义幸福（“整体上来说，你对自己的生活满意么？”），而不考虑受访者关于舒适生活的实际体验（“你昨天笑了几次？生气了几次？”等等）。问卷调查者都知道这两类问题对于幸福生活的衡量可以得出完全不同的结果。

For their part, Kanazawa and Li maintain that that distinction doesn't matter too much for their savanna theory. "Even though our empirical analyses ... used a measure of global life satisfaction, the savanna theory of happiness is not committed to any particular definition and is compatible with any reasonable conception of happiness, subjective well-being, and life satisfaction," they write.

Kanazawa和Li则认为这一区别对他们的热带草原理论影响不大。“虽然我们的实证研究……使用了总体的生活满意度，关于幸福的热带草原理论并不局限于任何一种定义，并且适用于任何对于幸福、主观幸福感和生活满意度的合理的概念化处理，”他们写道。

Kanazawa himself is no stranger to controversy. In 2011 he wrote a blog post for Psychology Today entitled "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?" The post ignited a firestorm of criticism and was swiftly taken down.

Kanazawa本人也经常处于争议之中。2011年他给《今日心理学》写了一篇名为“为什么黑人女性在生理上不如其他女性具有吸引力？”的博客文章。该文引发了猛烈的批评，并且被迅速撤下了。

His current research on well-being is not likely to generate as much criticism as that blog post. But the evolutionary perspective on happiness and intelligence is likely to prompt some heated discussion in the field.

他现在关于幸福的研究不大可能引发类似的抨击。但从进化角度解读幸福和智力很可能会在该领域引发一些热烈的讨论。

In an email, Kanazawa said that his approach to understanding happiness is fundamentally different than the arguments about, say, the benefits of a paleo-diet. "Blindly introducing our ancestors’ diet when we do not have other aspects of the ancestral life seems like a dangerous and nonsensical prescription to me," he said.

在一封电子邮件里， Kanazawa认为他理解幸福的方式和关于比如说旧石器食谱的好处的论证有着本质的区别。“盲目的引入我们祖先的食谱，而不考虑到我们生活的其他方面与祖先有异，在我看来是危险且毫无道理的，”他说。

"I only explain nature; I do not tell people what to do or not to do," he added.

“我只是解释自然现象；我并不是告诉人们去做什么或是不做什么，”他补充道。

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