手机和真实社交，你选哪个?

Your Phone vs. Your Heart

手机和真实社交，你选哪个?

CAN you remember the last time you were in a public space in America and didn’t notice that half the people around you were bent over a digital screen, thumbing a connection to somewhere else?

你记不记得，曾几何时美国的公共空间不是像现在这样，周围半数的人都低头对着一块数码屏幕，用手指和另一个地方保持联络?

Most of us are well aware of the convenience that instant electronic access provides. Less has been said about the costs. Research that my colleagues and I have just completed, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, suggests that one measurable toll may be on our biological capacity to connect with other people.

我们对即时电子通讯带来的便利都深有体会。但很少有人提到它的代价。我和我的同事们刚刚完成一项研究，即将在下一期《心理科学》(Psychological Science)发表，研究的结果表明我们与他人交流的生理能力可能会因此蒙受相当大的损失。

Our ingrained habits change us. Neurons that fire together, wire together, neuroscientists like to say, reflecting the increasing evidence that experiences leave imprints on our neural pathways, a phenomenon called neuroplasticity. Any habit molds the very structure of your brain in ways that strengthen your proclivity for that habit.

我们的固有习惯会改变我们。通过观察神经学家常说的“一起发射则连在一起”的神经元(赫布理论的总结性表述，原话为“一起发射的神经元连在一起” ——译注)，我们越来越确信经历会在我们的神经通道上留下印记，这种现象叫“神经可塑性”。任何习惯都会对你的大脑结构产生塑造作用，并进一步加强你对该习惯的倾向性。

Plasticity, the propensity to be shaped by experience, isn’t limited to the brain. You already know that when you lead a sedentary life, your muscles atrophy to diminish your physical strength. What you may not know is that your habits of social connection also leave their own physical imprint on you.

可塑性，也就是经历作用下的倾向，并不仅限于大脑。久坐的生活会带来什么你已经很清楚，你的肌肉会萎缩，从而削弱你的肢体力量。但你可能不知道，社交联络的习惯也会在你身上留下实实在在的印记。

How much time do you typically spend with others? And when you do, how connected and attuned to them do you feel? Your answers to these simple questions may well reveal your biological capacity to connect.

你通常花多少时间和别人来往?来往的时候，你觉得和对方有多亲近、多合拍?你对这些简单问题的回答，可以很好地说明你与人交流的生理能力。

My research team and I conducted a longitudinal field experiment on the effects of learning skills for cultivating warmer interpersonal connections in daily life. Half the participants, chosen at random, attended a six-week workshop on an ancient mind-training practice known as metta, or “lovingkindness,” that teaches participants to develop more warmth and tenderness toward themselves and others.

我和我的研究团队做了一项纵向的实地试验，了解在日常生活中人是否可以通过学习技能来促成一种更温暖的人际关系。随机征募的实验对象中，有一半人参加了一个为期六周的学习班，学习一种叫做“慈悲”(metta)的古代心法，它会教导参与者用一种更温和、亲切的方式对待自我和他人。

We discovered that the meditators not only felt more upbeat and socially connected; but they also altered a key part of their cardiovascular system called vagal tone. Scientists used to think vagal tone was largely stable, like your height in adulthood. Our data show that this part of you is plastic, too, and altered by your social habits.

我们发现经过这种冥想的人会显得更乐观，愿意交际;但同时他们的迷走神经张力——心血管系统的一项重要机能——也发生了改变。科学家一度认为迷走神经张力大体上是稳定的，就像人在成年后的身高。而我们得到的数据表明这部分也是可塑的，会被你的社交习性改变。

To appreciate why this matters, here’s a quick anatomy lesson. Your brain is tied to your heart by your vagus nerve. Subtle variations in your heart rate reveal the strength of this brain-heart connection, and as such, heart-rate variability provides an index of your vagal tone.

为了帮助理解这一点的重要性，我们简要讲一些解剖学知识。你的大脑是通过迷走神经和心脏连动的。从心率的细微变化可以得出心脑联系的强度，因此心率变异度就成了迷走神经张力的一项指标。

By and large, the higher your vagal tone the better. It means your body is better able to regulate the internal systems that keep you healthy, like your cardiovascular, glucose and immune responses.

总的来说迷走张力是越高越好的。高意味着你的身体对内部系统的管理能力更强，比如心血管、葡萄糖和免疫反应，有助于保持健康。

Beyond these health effects, the behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges has shown that vagal tone is central to things like facial expressivity and the ability to tune in to the frequency of the human voice. By increasing people’s vagal tone, we increase their capacity for connection, friendship and empathy.

除了在健康方面的影响，行为神经学家史蒂芬·珀格斯(Stephen Porges)还发现迷走张力对面部表现力和接收人声频率的能力也起到关键作用。增加迷走张力可以促进我们建立关系、友情和同感的能力。

In short, the more attuned to others you become, the healthier you become, and vice versa. This mutual influence also explains how a lack of positive social contact diminishes people. Your heart’s capacity for friendship also obeys the biological law of “use it or lose it.” If you don’t regularly exercise your ability to connect face to face, you’ll eventually find yourself lacking some of the basic biological capacity to do so.

简单来说，一个人越是能和他人和谐相处，身体就越健康，反之就越不健康。这种相互影响也解释了为什么缺乏积极的社交联络会让人消沉。你的心对友谊的容纳能力同样遵循“用进废退”的生理法则。如果不时常练习面对面交流的能力，你最终会发现自己开始缺乏这方面的一些基本生理能力。

The human body — and thereby our human potential — is far more plastic or amenable to change than most of us realize. The new field of social genomics, made possible by the sequencing of the human genome, tells us that the ways our and our children’s genes are expressed at the cellular level is plastic, too, responsive to habitual experiences and actions.

多数人都没有意识到人体及我们潜能的可塑性或应变能力有多强。人类基因排序技术帮助我们开辟了社交基因学这一新领域，通过它我们了解到，我们以及我们的子女在细胞水平上的基因表达途径也是可塑的，会对惯性经历和行动做出反应。

Work in social genomics reveals that our personal histories of social connection or loneliness, for instance, alter how our genes are expressed within the cells of our immune system. New parents may need to worry less about genetic testing and more about how their own actions — like texting while breast-feeding or otherwise paying more attention to their phone than their child — leave life-limiting fingerprints on their and their children’s gene expression.

社交基因学的研究成果表明，我们的个人社交史，比如寂寞的体验，会造成基因表达的变化，这种变化发生在免疫系统的细胞中。新生儿的父母应该少去操心什么基因测试，多留意自己的行为——例如一边哺乳一边发短信，或注意力更多地放在手机而不是孩子身上——这会给他们以及他们的孩子的基因表达带去造成生活障碍的印记。

When you share a smile or laugh with someone face to face, a discernible synchrony emerges between you, as your gestures and biochemistries, even your respective neural firings, come to mirror each other. It’s micro-moments like these, in which a wave of good feeling rolls through two brains and bodies at once, that build your capacity to empathize as well as to improve your health.

当你对着一个人微笑或大笑时，你们之间会产生一种明显的同步，你们的姿态和生化指标，甚至神经元的发射，都会构成一种镜像的对应。在这些细微的瞬间里，两个人的大脑和身体都会产生一种美好的感觉，这有助于增强你的同感能力，同时也会改善你的健康状况。

If you don’t regularly exercise this capacity, it withers. Lucky for us, connecting with others does good and feels good, and opportunities to do so abound.

如果你不经常去锻炼这种能力，它就会枯萎。和他人交流会有好处，感觉也很好，这是我们的幸运，而且我们随时有这个机会。