What if Trump is actually a master of empathy?
如果特朗普的确是位共情大师会怎样?
Richard A Friedman/卫报
陈明 编译
‘Trump made a strong empathic connection with his supporters.’ Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
特朗普和他的支持者建立了非常强的共情链接。”
摄影:Brendan Smialowski /AFP/Getty Images
Many Americans see President Trump’s preoccupation with the protesting NFL athletes – and his near silence on the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico – as evidence that Trump has no empathy. Wrong.
许多美国人认为特朗普总统念念不忘于橄榄球运动员的抗议,而且他沉默于最近在波多黎各展开的人道主义危机,人们以这些为依据来证明特朗普不具同理心。这是错误的。
科林·凯普尼克在去年NFL一场联赛开始前奏美国国歌的环节中并没有起立,而是单膝下跪且拒唱美国国歌,他说:“我不会起立对这个压迫黑人和有色人种的国家表达尊敬。”特朗普在上月26日在记者会上指出,NFL奏国歌下跪抗议是对为这个国家奋斗的老兵的一种藐视,是十分可耻的。
Actually, Trump is a master of empathy. Most people confuse empathy with sympathy and don’t understand the nature – or power – of empathy. There is nothing necessarily nice about empathy, which is essentially the ability to imagine and intuit how other people think and feel.
事实上,特朗普是一位共情大师。大多数人混淆了共情和同情,不理解共情的本质或力量。共情不一定是好的,本质上,共情是想象和凭直觉知道他人所思所感的能力。
It has nothing to do with genuinely identifying with others or actually feeling their pain; that would be sympathy. Instead, empathy is really about having an accurate theory of mind of other people – and getting under their skin.
这与真正认同于他人或真实的体会到他们的痛苦都无关,那是同情。相反,共情是对他人真正准确的心理理论——并且钻到他们的皮肤下面。
Trump has lots of empathy. What he doesn’t have is sympathy – he doesn’t really feel badly for other people. He is not using his considerable empathy skills for Puerto Rico for a simple reason: they are not his base and he has little interest in them.
特朗普很有共情心。他没有同情心——他并不觉得对不起别人。在波多黎各飓风灾害上,他并没有利用他可观的共情技能,其原因很简单:波多黎各不是他们的根据地,他对他们没有什么兴趣。
All successful politicians have unusually high levels of empathy. That is what makes their supporters feel and believe that they are understood, regardless of the true motives of the political figure.
所有成功政治家的共情水平都非常高。这让他们的支持者觉得自己被理解,并且相信自己被理解,而不管政治人物的真正动机是什么。
The same is true of successful demagogues and psychopaths who have an uncanny ability to read the mind of their victims in order to manipulate and control them. Thus, depending on the moral compass of a leader, empathy could be a very positive or very destructive force.
蛊惑人心的政客和精神病患者也是如此,他们有一种不可思议的了解受害者心智的能力,以便操纵和控制他们。因此,基于领导者道德准则的共情,可以是一种非常积极的或非常有害的力量。
Trump made a strong empathic connection with his supporters by acknowledging their pain and economic hardship and by promising to Make America (and by extension, them) Great Again. How? It hardly mattered once he made people feel he understood and liked them, something far more effective than policy details.
特朗普承认支持者们经济困境的痛苦,并承诺使美国(以及他们)再次伟大起来,通过这些 ,他与他的支持者建立了强烈的共情链接。这是如何产生的呢?答案是:一旦他让人们觉得他理解他们,并且喜欢他们,一切就都好说了,这比政策细节更为有效。
But there is an extra twist to what Trump has done when it comes to empathy that helps us understand not only his success, but the puzzling and enduring loyalty of his core supporters, many of whom are unemployed, angry and stressed.
但是,特朗普在共情方面所做的事情有一个特别的扭曲,这不仅帮助我们理解了他的成功,也让我们了解了他的核心支持者的困惑和持久的忠诚,他们中的许多人都失业了,愤怒并压力重重。
Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, they still believe he will deliver on his campaign promises because the empathic connection he’s made with them, which emphasizes fear and threat, is psychologically and neurobiologically much more powerful than mere facts. Why?
尽管有许多相反的证据表明,他们仍然相信他会履行他的竞选诺言,由于强调恐惧与威胁,特朗普与他们产生了共情的连接,这些在心理学上和神经生物学上比仅有的事实更强大。为什么?
Studies of humans and other animals show that chronic stress tends to makes us more fearful while at the same time less critical and analytical in our thinking.
对人类和其他动物的研究表明,慢性压力往往让我们更加恐惧,同时,我们也会让我们的思维缺乏批判性和分析性。
The reason is that chronic stress is toxic to the prefrontal cortex, which is the brain’s reasoner-in-chief and allows us to rationally evaluate evidence, among other things. In response to chronic stress, neurons in our prefrontal cortex shrink and, as a direct result, we lose some of our ability for flexible and critical thinking.