-
Lesson 19 It's a Glad, Sad, Mad
World
主观幸福感
Where you live, as much a show you
live, is a key influence on the
feel
-
good factor
你住在哪里，就像你在现场表演一样，是影响你感觉良好的关键因素
By Walter Kirn
It's
almost
impossible
for
most
people
in
well
-
off
countries
to
begin
to
understand how it feels to live in the
extreme poverty of Calcutta, surviving in India's
third largest city in a shack, or on
the street with little access to clean water,food
or
health care.
对于生活在富裕国家的大多数人来说，
他们几乎不可能开始理解生活在印度第三
大城市加尔各答的极度贫困中是什么感觉，
在一个简陋的棚子里生存，<
/p>
或者在没
有干净的水、食物或医疗保健的街道上生存。
The filth. The crowds. The
disease.
污秽、人群、疾病。
From
the
perspective
of
the
comfortably
housed
and
amply
fed,
these
conditions
sound hopeless, and the suffering they
must breed seems unimaginable.
< br>从那些住得舒舒服服、
吃得饱的人的角度来看，
这些条件
听起来让人绝望，
它们
所带来的痛苦似乎难以想象。
But
not
as
unimaginable
as
this:
according
to
a
researcher
who
employs
a
method of ranking human happiness on a
scale of 1 to 7, poor Calcuttans score about
a 4, meaning they'
reslightly more happy than not.
但没有这么不可思议
:
根据一位研究人员使用一种方
法给人类幸福打分，
分值从
1
到
7
，贫穷的
Calcuttans
给出的了
4
分，表示他们的幸福程度稍微高一些。
And
that's
certainly
happier
than
one
might
expect.
The
assumption
behind
this
finding, of course, is
that happiness, like Olympic figure skating, can
really be scored
numerically at all and
that the judges who score it don't even need to
come from the
same countries or speak
the same languages as the people they' re
judging.
这当然比人们预期的要快乐。当然，这一发
现背后的假设是，快乐，就像奥运会
花样滑冰一样，
真的可以用
数字来打分，
给它打分的裁判甚至不需要来自相同的
国家或说相
同的语言。
Robert
Biswas
-
Diener, has worked
extensively with his father, the noted University
of
Illinois
psychologist
Ed
Diener,
to
evaluate
what
they
term
the
Subjective
Well
-
Being(SWB)
of people around the globe, from Masai warriors in
East Africa to
Inughuit hunters in
Northern Greenland, inviting them to answer
questions about their
moods and
outlook.
罗伯特
?
比斯瓦斯
-
迪纳为他的父亲做了大量的工作<
/p>
,
指出伊利诺斯州大学的心理
学家
Ed
Diener,
评估他们的术语主观幸
福感
(
主客观
)
世界各地的人们
,
从东非的马
赛勇士
极地因纽特人猎人在格陵兰岛北部
,
邀请他们来回答关于他们的
心情和前
景问题。
The
results
have
led
them
to
one
sweeping
conclusion:
human
beings,
no
matter
where they live, and
almost without regard to how they live, are, in
the elder Diener’s
words,
结果让他们得出了一个笼统的结论
:
人类，
无论他们住在哪里，也几乎不管他们
如何生活，用老迪纳的话来说，都是
“
预设的幸福
”
。
He
thinks of this predilection as a
helps
us adapt and flourish even in fairly trying
circumstances.5 But there are other
theories.
他认为这种偏
爱是进化赋予人类的
“
礼物
”
，
即使在相当艰难的环境中，
它也能帮
助我们适应和繁荣。但是也有其他的理论。
Maybe, he says, we're
functioning.
也许，他
说，我们
“
社会化
”
< br>是为了快乐，
“
为了促进平稳的社会功能。
”
Whatever
the
reasons
for
this
gift,
however,
its
benefits
don't
seem
to
beevenly
distributed around the
globe.
然而，
无论这份礼物的
原因是什么，
它的好处似乎并没有均匀地分布在全球各地。
Latin
Americans,
for
example,
are
among
the
happiest
people
in
the
world,
according to study after study.
例如，根据一项又一项的研究，拉丁美洲人是世界上最幸福的
人之一。
A survey of college
students in the mid
-
1990s
compared so
-
called national
differences
in positivity and ranked
Puerto Rico, Colombia and Spainas the three most
cheerful
locales.
上世纪
90
年代中期，一项针对大学生的调查比较了所谓的
国家积极性差异，并
将波多黎各、哥伦比亚和西班牙列为最快乐的三个地方。
This
may
surprise
those
who
equate
happiness
with
flat
-
screen
TVs
and
ice
-
cube
-
dispen
sing refrigerator doors. But not to Ed
Diener.
这可能会让那些把幸福等同于平板电视和冰箱
门的人感到惊讶。但
Ed
Diener
不
是。
For him, the high spirits
of the relatively poor Puerto Ricans and
Colombians stem
from a
of
believing in aspects of life in general to be
good.
对他来说，相对贫穷的波多黎各人和哥伦比亚人的
高昂情绪源于一种
“
积极的倾
向
”
，这种倾向
“
可能
根植于文化规范中，认为生活的各个方面都是好的。
”
Translation: Latin Americans are
happier because they look on the sunny side of
life.
换言之
:
拉丁美洲人更快乐，因为他们看到生活的光明面。
That tendency does not seem
to be popular in East Asia.
这种趋势似乎在东亚并不流行。
Among the bottom five in the study are
Japan, China and South Korea, the outliers of
unhappiness.
在这项研
究中，
排名最后五名的国家是日本、
中国和韩国，
它们都是不快乐的局
外人。
computing their
life satisfaction,
迪纳在报告中说
:“
我们发现，东亚人在计算生活满意度时，倾向于把生活中最糟<
/p>
糕的方面考虑在内。
”
That
may
be
a
reflection
of
a
difference
in
cultural
expectation,
says
Shinobu
Kitayama,
a
professor
of
psychology
at
the
University
of
Michigan,
who
does
research on the
connection between culture and
well
-
being.
密歇根大学
(University
of
Michigan)
的心理学教
授北山信
(Shinobu
Kitayama)
说，
-
-
-
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-
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