Hell might actually be other people — at least if you're really smart.（薩特的一句話：他人即地獄雨女。即人經(jīng)常會考慮身邊人的感受）

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 Universitydig intothe 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 beentacklingthat question.

單詞

dig into：仔細研究宇弛，刻苦鉆研

例：These people will dig into the code base and improve the documentation.

這些人將會深入研究基礎(chǔ)代碼并相應(yīng)改進文檔。

tackle：處理

例：That depends on how you tackle the problem.

那取決于你如何處理這個問題腰耙。

Kanazawa and Li theorize that the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of our ancient ancestors/form the foundation for/what make us happy now.（Kanazawa和Li建立了一套理論榛丢，他們認為我們祖先捕獵和采集的生活方式，組成了我們現(xiàn)在感受快樂的基礎(chǔ)沟优。）"Situations and circumstances that would have increased our ancestors’ life satisfaction in the ancestral environment may still increase our life satisfaction today," they write.

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

First, they find that people who live in moredenselypopulated 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.

But there was one big exception.For more intelligent people, these correlations were diminished or even reversed.（對于更聰明的人來說涕滋，這些關(guān)聯(lián)性不僅會減弱，甚至?xí)嵉惯^來挠阁。）

單詞

savanna：熱帶草原

densely：稠密地宾肺，濃密地

例：Java is a densely populated island.

爪哇是一個人口稠密的島嶼溯饵。

diminish：減少，減小

例：The threat of nuclear war has diminished.

核戰(zhàn)的威脅變小了锨用。

reverse：逆轉(zhuǎn)丰刊，顛倒

例：They have made it clear they will not reverse the decision to increase prices.

他們已經(jīng)明確表示不會為了提高價格而轉(zhuǎn)變這一決定。

"The effect of population density on life satisfaction was thereforemore than twiceas large for low-IQ individuals than for high-IQ individuals,"（人口密度對于低智商群體生活滿意度的影響增拥，是對高智商人群影響的兩倍以上啄巧。）they found. And "more intelligent individuals were actually less satisfied with life/?if theysocialized with（與盆友聯(lián)系）their friends more frequently."

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

Now, the broadcontoursof both findings /are largely uncontroversial. A large body of previous research, for instance, has outlined /what some have called an "urban-rural happinessgradient梯度，傾斜度." 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."

圖說明掌栅，人越多越不幸福

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 mostvisceral發(fā)自肺腑的; 出自內(nèi)心的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.

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?（但是秩仆，為什么這些關(guān)聯(lián)會在聰明人身上徹底顛倒呢？）

單詞

contour：輪廓

例：the contours of the body.

身體的曲線猾封。

gradient：梯度澄耍，傾斜度

visceral：發(fā)自肺腑的; 出自內(nèi)心的

例：the visceral joy of being alive.

對能夠活著的完全發(fā)自肺腑的喜悅。

turned on its head：徹底改變晌缘，完全顛覆

例：I really hope that doctors can turn the system on its head.

我真的希望醫(yī)生們能徹底改變現(xiàn)在的系統(tǒng)齐莲。

Report: Denmark world's happiest country Embed Share Play Video1:07

A United Nation's report ranking the world's happiest countries puts Denmark at the top, and Burundi at the bottom of the 157 country list. (Reuters)

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) thatthose 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(擁有高智商并且有能力支配它們的人們，可能會花更少的時間去社交磷箕，因為他們會集中注意力處理其他更長遠的目標选酗。)," she said.

Think of the really smart people you know. They may include adoctor/trying to cure cancer or awriterworking on the great American novel or a human rightslawyerworking 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.

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

單詞

premise：前提

例：The premise is that schools will work harder to improve if they must compete.

前提是各學(xué)校如必須競爭就會更加努力改進

akin to：相似的岳枷，類似的

例：Listening to his life story is akin to reading a good adventure novel.

聽他的生活故事就像讀一部好的探險小說

Similarly with friendship: "Our ancestors lived ashunter–gatherers獵人抱團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.

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.

To sum it all up: You've heard of the paleo-diet. But are you ready for paleo-happiness?（總結(jié)起來：你聽說過“原始人飲食法”注：即只吃原始人能獲得的食材芒填，肉，魚嫩舟，水果等氢烘。但是你準備好接受“原始人的幸福”了嗎家厌？）

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 evolutionarilynovel新奇的problems, may face less difficulty in comprehending and dealing with evolutionarily novel entities and situations," they write.

If you're smarter and more able to adapt to things, you may have an easier timereconciling調(diào)和播玖，使和解your evolutionarypredispositions傾向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 tojettison拒絕接受that whole hunter-gatherer social network — especially if they're pursuing someloftier崇高的，高聳的ambition.聰明人能夠更好調(diào)節(jié)人口暴增對他們的影響饭于，放棄原始社會中必要的一些行動蜀踏。

單詞

novel：新奇的；小說

例：It’ll be a novel experience

它將成為一段新奇的經(jīng)歷

reconcile：調(diào)和掰吕，使和解

例：It's difficult to reconcile the demands of my job and the desire to be a good father.

協(xié)調(diào)我工作的要求與我當個好父親的愿望很難果覆。

predisposition： 傾向

jettison：拒絕接受

例：The governor seems to have jettisoned the plan.

州長似乎已經(jīng)拒絕了這個計劃。

lofty：崇高的殖熟，高聳的

例：Virtue is lofty, but it requires you to give.

美德是高尚的局待，但美德需要付出和給予。

It's important to remember/that this is an argument Kanazawa and Li/are proposing and/that it's not settled science.（值得注意的是，這只是Kanazawa和Li提出的一個論點钳榨，還不是一個確定的科學(xué)依據(jù)舰罚。）"Paleo-" theories — the idea that our bodies are best adapted to the environment of our earliest ancestors — have comeunder fire被批評in recent years, especially as food companies and some researchers over-hyped theallegedbenefits of the paleo-dietfad.

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.

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 iscompatiblewith any reasonable conception of happiness, subjective well-being, and life satisfaction," they write.

單詞

alleged：所謂的，聲稱的

例：the alleged conspirators

所謂的共謀者

fad：時尚薛耻，一時的狂熱

例：He does not believe environmental concern is a passing fad.

他不相信對環(huán)境的關(guān)注是一時的狂熱营罢。

compatible：相容的，兼容的

例：how can you ensure that the file is compatible?

你如何確保這個文件是可兼容的呢饼齿？

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.

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.

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.

"I only explain nature; I do not tell people what to do or not to do,"（我只解釋自然現(xiàn)象饲漾，我并不會告訴人們?nèi)プ鍪裁椿蛘卟蛔鍪裁础＃?/b>he added.

重點句子

Hell might actually be other people — at least if you're really smart.

他人即地獄缕溉，至少如果你足夠聰明的話考传，確實是這樣的。

Kanazawa and Li theorize that the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of our ancient ancestors form the foundation for what make us happy now.

Kanazawa和Li建立了一套理論倒淫，他們認為我們祖先捕獵和采集的生活方式伙菊，組成了我們現(xiàn)在感受快樂的基礎(chǔ)。

For more intelligent people, these correlations were diminished or even reversed.

對于更聰明的人來說敌土，這些關(guān)聯(lián)性不僅會減弱，甚至?xí)嵉惯^來运翼。

The effect of population density on life satisfaction was therefore more than twice as large for low-IQ individuals than for high-IQ individuals

人口密度對于低智商群體生活滿意度的影響返干，是對高智商人群影響的兩倍以上血淌。

But why would this relationship get turned on its head for really smart people?

但是，為什么這些關(guān)聯(lián)會在聰明人身上徹底顛倒呢悠夯？

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

擁有高智商并且有能力支配它們的人們癌淮，可能會花更少的時間去社交，因為他們會集中注意力處理其他更長遠的目標沦补。

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

總結(jié)起來：你聽說過“原始人飲食法”乳蓄。但是你準備好接受“原始人的幸福”了嗎夕膀？

It's important to remember that this is an argument Kanazawa and Li are proposing and that it's not settled science.

值得注意的是虚倒，這只是Kanazawa和Li提出的一個論點，還不是一個確定的科學(xué)依據(jù)产舞。

I only explain nature; I do not tell people what to do or not to do

我只解釋自然現(xiàn)象魂奥，我并不會告訴人們?nèi)プ鍪裁椿蛘卟蛔鍪裁础?/p>

重點單詞

·?dig into：仔細研究，刻苦鉆研

·?tackle：處理

·?savanna：熱帶草原

·?densely：稠密地易猫，濃密地

·?diminish：減少耻煤，減小

·?reverse：逆轉(zhuǎn)，顛倒

·?contour：輪廓

·?gradient：梯度，傾斜度

·?visceral：發(fā)自肺腑的; 出自內(nèi)心的

·?turned on its head：徹底改變

·?premise：前提

·?akin to：相似的哈蝇，類似的

·?novel：新奇的

·?reconcile：調(diào)和嘴办，使和解

·?predisposition： 傾向

·?jettison：拒絕接受

·?lofty：崇高的，高聳的

·?alleged：所謂的买鸽，聲稱的

·?fad：時尚涧郊，一時的狂熱

·?compatible：相容的，兼容的