人為什么會(huì)感到孤獨(dú)？

Nobody likes feeling lonely, and some recent research suggests that the ache of isolation isn't only a psychological problem; unwanted solitude impacts physical health, too. Loneliness increases a person's risk of mortality by 26 percent, an effect comparable to the health risks posed by obesity, according to a study published this spring.

沒(méi)有人喜歡孤獨(dú)的感覺(jué)。最近某調(diào)查顯示，孤獨(dú)造成的痛苦不僅是心理問(wèn)題，不是出自本意所需的孤獨(dú)還會(huì)影響到身體健康。根據(jù)一項(xiàng)今年春季發(fā)布的研究，孤獨(dú)會(huì)使一個(gè)人的死亡風(fēng)險(xiǎn)提高26%，這與過(guò)度肥胖造成的健康風(fēng)險(xiǎn)程度相當(dāng)。

And because of this new evidence of the serious ramifications of loneliness, some researchers are investigating what it is, exactly, that makes lonely people stay lonely. In particular, could some behavior be at the root of their isolation?

由于新發(fā)現(xiàn)了這一孤獨(dú)導(dǎo)致的嚴(yán)重后果，一些研究人員正在著手研究具體是什么東西使人處于孤獨(dú)之中，特別是，會(huì)不會(huì)有某些行為是孤獨(dú)的根源。

In a paper recently published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Franklin & Marshall College professor Megan L. Knowles led four experiments that demonstrated lonely people's tendency to choke when under social pressure. In one, Knowles and her team tested the social skills of 86 undergraduates, showing them 24 faces on a computer screen and asking them to name the basic human emotion each face was displaying: anger, fear, happiness, or sadness. She told some of the students that she was testing their social skills, and that people who failed at this task tended to have difficulty forming and maintaining friendships. But she framed the test differently for the rest of them, describing it as a this-is-all-theoretical kind of exercise.

在最近于《個(gè)性與社會(huì)心理學(xué)通報(bào)》發(fā)表的一篇論文中，富蘭克林與馬歇爾學(xué)院的教授梅根.L.諾爾斯指導(dǎo)了4個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)，這些實(shí)驗(yàn)顯示出，孤獨(dú)的人在社交壓力之下有不能正常運(yùn)用社交技巧的傾向。在其中一個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)中，諾爾斯和她的團(tuán)隊(duì)對(duì)86名大學(xué)生的社交技巧進(jìn)行了測(cè)試。她在電腦屏幕上給他們展示了24張人臉圖像，并讓他們說(shuō)出每一張臉表達(dá)的基本情緒：憤怒、恐懼、快樂(lè)或是悲傷。她告訴其中的一些學(xué)生，說(shuō)她測(cè)試的是他們的社交技巧，而沒(méi)有通過(guò)測(cè)試的人很可能在友誼的建立和維系上有困難。但是她對(duì)另外的學(xué)生卻有不同的說(shuō)法，她說(shuō)這完全是個(gè)理論性質(zhì)的練習(xí)。

Before they started any of that, though, all the students completed surveys that measured how lonely they were. In the end, the lonelier students did worse than the non-lonely students on the emotion-reading task — but only when they were told they were being tested on their social skills. When the lonely were told they were just taking a general knowledge test, they performed better than the non-lonely. Previous research echoes these new results: Past studies have suggested, for example, that the lonelier people are better at accurately reading facial expressions and decoding tone of voice. As the theory goes, lonely people may be paying closer attention to emotional cues precisely because of their ache to belong somewhere and form interpersonal connections, which results in technically superior social skills.

在所有的測(cè)試之前，所有的學(xué)生都完成了一份衡量他們孤獨(dú)程度的調(diào)查。結(jié)果，孤獨(dú)的學(xué)生在情感辨別測(cè)試上比不孤獨(dú)的學(xué)生做得要差，但這種情況只有在告訴他們這是個(gè)社交技巧測(cè)試時(shí)才會(huì)出現(xiàn)。當(dāng)孤獨(dú)的人被告知他們只是在做常識(shí)測(cè)試時(shí)，他們比不孤獨(dú)的人表現(xiàn)得更好。更早以前的研究也得出過(guò)相似的結(jié)果：比如過(guò)去有研究表明，孤獨(dú)的人更善于準(zhǔn)確識(shí)別面部表情，解讀說(shuō)話者語(yǔ)氣中蘊(yùn)含的信息。這個(gè)理論認(rèn)為，孤獨(dú)的人可能會(huì)更細(xì)致地關(guān)注情感暗示，因?yàn)樗麄兛释玫綒w屬感、建立起人與人之間的聯(lián)系。確切意義上來(lái)講，這使得他們擁有了更優(yōu)秀的社交技巧。

But like a baseball pitcher with a mean case of the yips or a nervous test-taker sitting down for an exam, being hyperfocused on not screwing up can lead to over-thinking and second-guessing, which, of course, can end up causing the very screwup the person was so bent on avoiding. It's largely a matter of reducing that performance anxiety, in other words, and Knowles and her colleagues did manage to find one way to do this for their lonely study participants, though, admittedly, it is maybe not exactly applicable outside of a lab. The researchers gave their volunteers an energy-drink-like beverage and told them that any jitters they felt were owing to the caffeine they’d just consumed. (In actuality, the beverage contained no caffeine, but no matter — the study participants believed that it did.) They then did the emotion-reading test, just like in the first experiment. Compared to scores from that first experiment, there was no discernible difference in scores for the non-lonely, but the researchers did see improvement among the lonely participants — even when the task had been framed as a social-skills test.

不過(guò)，就像因過(guò)度緊張而無(wú)法正常發(fā)揮的排球發(fā)球手或是在考場(chǎng)中緊張的考生一樣，總想著不把事情弄糟會(huì)使你對(duì)事態(tài)的進(jìn)展顧慮重重，如此一來(lái)，結(jié)果必然還是會(huì)搞砸，盡管你已經(jīng)努力避免把事情弄糟了。換句話說(shuō)，問(wèn)題大概還是在于降低對(duì)自我表現(xiàn)的焦慮，諾爾斯和她的同事也確實(shí)找到了方法幫助參與他們研究的孤獨(dú)者，雖然不可否認(rèn)的是，這可能不適用于實(shí)驗(yàn)室外的情況。研究人員讓志愿者喝下一種看上去像能量飲料的液體，并跟他們說(shuō)他們的緊張感都是他們剛剛吸收的咖啡因引起的。(實(shí)際上那些飲料里不含咖啡因，不過(guò)沒(méi)關(guān)系，志愿者相信里面有。)然后他們做了情感識(shí)別測(cè)試，就像第一個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)?zāi)菢?。與第一個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)的分?jǐn)?shù)比起來(lái)，不孤獨(dú)的人的得分沒(méi)有明顯的變化，但研究者卻發(fā)現(xiàn)孤獨(dú)的志愿者得分提高了，甚至在告訴他們這是個(gè)社交技能測(cè)試后也是如此。

It may be difficult to trick yourself into believing your nerves are from caffeine and not the fact that you really, really, really want to make a good impression in some social setting, but there are other ways to change your own thinking about anxiety. One of my recent favorites is from Harvard Business School's Alison Wood Brooks, who found that when she had people reframe their nerves as excitement, theysubsequently performed better on some mildly terrifying task, like singing in public. At the very least, this current research presents a fairly new way to think about lonely people. It's not that they need to brush up on the basics of social skills — that they've likely already got down. Instead, lonely people may need to focus more on getting out of their own heads, so they can actually use the skills they've got to form friendships and begin to find a way out of their isolation.

要欺騙自己去相信緊張感是咖啡因的作用而不是真的、真的、真的想在社交場(chǎng)合中留下好印象，這或許很難，但是我們有其他方法來(lái)改變我們對(duì)焦慮的看法。哈佛商學(xué)院的艾莉森·伍德·布魯克斯的研究是我最近的最愛(ài)之一，她讓人們把緊張重新界定為興奮，之后他們?cè)谕瓿梢恍┥晕⒂行﹪樔说娜蝿?wù)時(shí)表現(xiàn)得更好了，比方說(shuō)在公共場(chǎng)合唱歌。不管怎樣，當(dāng)前的這項(xiàng)研究給我們展現(xiàn)了一個(gè)看待孤獨(dú)者的新方式。他們并不需要提高基本的社交技巧，他們大都已經(jīng)掌握了。他們需要的是努力不讓自己胡思亂想，這樣他們就可以真正地用上自己已經(jīng)擁有的社交技巧去建立友誼、走出孤獨(dú)。