2017年搞笑诺贝尔奖
We love to talk and want to be listened to, but we stand less and less chance of being believed
我们喜欢交谈，希望被倾听，但是我们对信念的追求越来越少了。
People love propagating information and sharing opinions. You can see this online: every day, 4m new blogs are written, 80m new Instagram photos are uploaded and 616m new tweets are released into cyberspace. It appears that the opportunity to impart your knowledge to others is internally rewarding.
人们喜欢传播信息并分享意见。每天，你可以在网络上看到4百万个新的博客。80万张照片上传到Instagram，616万条新的推特发布到网络空间。如此看来，向他人传授知识的机会是出自于内在的奖赏。
A study conducted at Harvard University found that people were willing to forgo money so that their opinions would be broadcast to others. We are not talking about well-crafted insights here. These were people’s opinions regarding mundane issues, like whether coffee is better than tea. A brain-imaging scan showed that when people received the opportunity to communicate their opinions to others, their brain’s reward centre was strongly activated.
哈佛大学进行的一项研究发现，人们愿意放弃金钱，这样，他们的意见就会被传播给别人。我们要在这里谈的事情，不是精心设计的见解，而是那些人们对世俗问题的看法，比如咖啡是否比茶好。脑部成像扫描显示，当人们有机会向他人表达自己的意见时，大脑的奖励中心就被强烈地激活了。
We experience a burst of pleasure when we share our thoughts, and this drives us to communicate. It is a useful feature of our brain, because it ensures that knowledge, experience and ideas do not get buried with the person who first had them, and that as a society we benefit from the products of many minds.
我们在分享我们的想法时体验到一阵快乐，这促使了我们去交流。这也是我们大脑的一个有用特性，因为它确保知识、经验和想法不会被最先拥有的人埋没，同时，作为一个社会，我们受益于许多人的言谈作品。
Of course, in order for that to happen, merely sharing is not enough. We need to cause a reaction – what Steve Jobs aptly referred to as making a “dent in the universe”. Each time we share our opinions and knowledge, it is with the intention of having an impact on others. Here’s the problem, though: we approach this task from inside our own heads. When attempting to create impact, we reflect on what is persuasive to us, our state of mind, our desires and our goals. But if we want to affect the behaviours and beliefs of the person in front of us, we need to understand what goes on inside their head.
当然，为了做到这一点，仅仅是分享是不够的。我们需要引起一种反应——史蒂夫·乔布斯恰如其分地称之为“活着就是改变世界”。我们每一次分享我们的意见和知识，其的意图是对他人产生影响。这就是问题所在：我们在自己的头脑中着手处理这项任务。当我们试图产生影响时，我们会思考是什么说服了我们自己、我们的心态、我们的欲望和我们的目标。但是，如果我们想着去影响我们面前之人的行为和信仰，我们需要了解他们脑子里正在想些什么？
What determines whether you affect the way others think and behave or are ignored? You may assume that numbers and statistics are what you need to change their point of view. As a scientist I certainly used to think so. Good data, coupled with logical thinking – that’s bound to change minds, right? So I set out to test whether information alters people’s beliefs. My colleagues and I conducted dozens of experiments to figure out what causes people to change their decisions, update their beliefs and rewrite their memories. We peered into people’s brains, recorded bodily responses, and documented behaviour.
是什么决定了你是否影响了别人的想法和行为的方式，或者完全被忽视了？你可以假设，统计数据是你需要改变改变他们观点的要素。作为一个科学家，我曾经就是这么认为的。好的数据加上逻辑思维——一定会改变主意，对吧？所以我开始检验数据信息可否改变了人们的信仰。我和同事们进行了几十次实验，找出促使人们改变决定、更新信念、重述记忆的原因。我们观察人们的大脑，记录身体反应，记录行为。
Well, you can imagine my dismay when I discovered that all these experiments pointed to the reality that people are not driven by facts. They are not enough to alter beliefs, and they are practically useless for motivating action. Consider climate change: there are mountains of data indicating that humans play a role in warming the globe, yet approximately 50% of the world’s population doesn’t believe it. What about health? Hundreds of studies demonstrate that exercise is good for you and people believe this to be so, yet this knowledge fails miserably at getting many to step on a treadmill.
当我发现所有这些实验都表明，人们不被事实驱使之时，你可以想象我的懊恼。这些事实数据都不足以改变信仰，而且对行为的激励也几乎毫无用处。例如，对气候变化的思考：有大量的数据表明人类在全球变暖中扮演了一个角色，但是，大约50%的世界人口不相信这一点。那么，对于健康，人们又是怎么想的呢？成百上千的研究表明，锻炼对你的健康是有好处的，人们也相信这是事实，但是，这种知识无法让人更多的从事于锻炼。
The problem with an approach that prioritises information is that it ignores the core of what makes us human: our motives, our fears, our hopes, our desires, our prior beliefs. In fact, the tsunami of information we are receiving today can make us even less sensitive to data because we’ve become accustomed to finding support for absolutely anything we want to believe with a simple click of the mouse. Instead, our desires are what shape our beliefs; our need for agency, our craving to be right, a longing to feel part of a group. It is those motivations we need to tap into to make a change, whether within ourselves or in others.
优先考虑数据信息，这种方法存在着一个问题，它忽视了使我们成为人类的核心：我们的动机，我们的恐惧，我们的希望，我们的欲望，我们先前的信念。事实上，我们今天收到的信息海啸会使我们对数据感到迟钝，因为我们已经习惯于只需点击鼠标就可以找到我们绝对相信的任何支持。相反，我们的欲望塑造了我们的信念；我们需要力量，我们渴望正确，渴望成为团队的一部分。这才是我们需要汲取的动机，不管是在我们自己还是在别人身上。
The Influential Mind by Tali Sharot is published by Little, Brown on 31 August
