关系2.0：让爱永驻

这里是《Hidden Brain》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。几个月前，我把《Hidden Brain》开播十年来最精华的七条洞察带到了旧金山和西雅图的现场演出。那两晚气氛火爆，两场售罄的演出收获了大量好评，于是我们决定在未来几个月里巡演十几座城市。

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Some months ago, I brought seven key insights from the first decade of Hidden Brain to live stage performances in San Francisco and Seattle. The evenings were electric. We got so much positive feedback from those two sold out shows that we've decided to launch a tour to more than a dozen cities in the coming months.

我将前往波特兰、丹佛、明尼阿波利斯、芝加哥、奥斯汀、达拉斯、波士顿、多伦多、克利尔沃特、劳德代尔堡、凤凰城、巴尔的摩、华盛顿特区和洛杉矶。预售票现在就向你们这样的听众开放，预售只持续五天。要抢票，请访问 hiddenbrain.org/tour，预售密码是全大写的 BRAIN。

I'll be coming to Portland, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Austin, Dallas, Boston, Toronto, Clearwater, Fort Lauderdale, Phoenix, Baltimore, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. Presale tickets are available right now for listeners like you. The presale only runs five days. To snap up your tickets, please go to hiddenbrain.org/tour. The presale password is brain, all caps.

你还可以报名来跟我打招呼并合影。在部分城市，还能报名参加我和少数粉丝的小型亲密聊天。我很期待在那里见到你。再次提醒，请访问 hiddenbrain.org/tour。好了，进入今天的节目。

You can also sign up to say hello and get a photo with me. In some places, can sign up for an intimate chat with me and a handful of other fans. I'd love to see you there. Again, go to hiddenbrain.org/tour. Okay, on to today's show.

这里是《Hidden Brain》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。我们直说吧：恋爱关系很难。找到合适的人，再把这段关系维系下去，需要努力、技巧，还要靠运气。在我们“关系2.0”系列最近几周里，我们探讨了人际连接的力量、谈判的洞见，以及日常微小互动的作用。

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Let's just say this out loud: romantic relationships are hard. Finding the right relationship and then keeping it alive this requires effort, skill, and luck. In the last few weeks of our Relationships two point zero series, we've looked at the power of human connection, insights into negotiation, and the role of tiny interactions in our daily lives.

如果你错过了，请去听听那些集数，里面汇集了全球顶尖研究者关于这些话题的宝贵见解。今天，在“关系2.0”系列的最后一章，我们直面那个大问题：爱情。我们关注一个似乎与人类历史同样古老的难题：如何让爱情保鲜？我们都曾在餐厅里见过坐在一起却几十年无话的夫妻。

Please check out those episodes if you've missed them. They are filled with valuable insights from some of the world's most distinguished researchers on these topics. Today, in the final chapter of our Relationships two point zero series, we tackle the big question: Love. We look at a problem that seems to be as old as humankind: How do we keep love alive? We've all sat in restaurants next to couples who look like they have been together for decades.

他们彼此不说话，不触碰，甚至不看对方一眼。也许你曾好奇，他们一直这样吗？有没有过曾经疯狂相爱的时光？

They don't talk to each other. They don't touch one another. They barely look at each other. Perhaps you wondered, were they always like this? Was there a time they were madly in love?

本周《Hidden Brain》带来令人惊讶的洞见，揭示让爱情保鲜的神奇配料。本节目由戴尔赞助。搭载英特尔酷睿Ultra处理器的戴尔AI电脑大幅优惠来袭，全新设计助你事半功倍：生成代码、编辑图像、无卡顿多任务、起草邮件、总结文档、实时翻译，甚至延长续航。这就是内置英特尔的戴尔AI力量。

This week on Hidden Brain, surprising insights into the magic ingredients that keep love alive. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Dell. Huge savings on Dell AI PCs with Intel Core Ultra processors are here, and they are newly designed to help you do more faster. They can generate code, edit images, multitask without lag, draft emails, summarize documents, create live translations, and even extend your battery life. That's the power of Dell AI with Intel Inside.

立即升级，请访问 dell.com/deals。本节目也由AT&T赞助。有人罩着的感觉最棒。这种可靠难得，但AT&T正通过“AT&T保障”让它成为常态。保持连接至关重要。

Upgrade today by visiting dell.com/deals. Support for Hidden Brain comes from AT and T. There's nothing better than feeling like someone has your back. That kind of reliability is rare, but AT and T is making it the norm with the AT and T Guarantee. Staying connected matters.

获得值得信赖的连接，这就是“AT&T保障”。AT&T——连接改变一切。条款与条件适用，详情请访问 att.com/guarantee。

Get connectivity you can depend on. That's the AT and T Guarantee. AT and T Connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

停下来充电很重要。但如果你要去度假，千万别把家门钥匙藏在门垫下，那只是“貌似安全”。我们图省事用这些“安全-ish”的小把戏，可省事不等于安全。ADT提供可定制的安防系统，真正保护你和你的家，还提供24小时监控、摄像头等多种工具与服务，让你随时随地通过ADT+应用查看家中情况。

Taking a break to recharge is so important. But if you're heading out on vacation, do not hide your house keys under the mat. That's kinda like safe ish. You know, we go for the safe fish security hacks because they're easy, but easy doesn't mean safe. ADT has customizable security systems designed to actually protect you and your home, And they offer a variety of tools and services like twenty four seven monitoring and cameras so you can check-in from anywhere using the ADT plus app.

别满足于“差不多安全”。选择ADT。访问adt.com

Don't settle for safe ish. Get ADT. Visit adt.com

当我们谈论坠入爱河时，通常把它看作一段非常特别且罕见的时期，这一时期以令人兴奋的欣快感和愉悦感为特征。人们普遍认为，这些强烈的激情与浪漫无法永远持续，最终会让位于日常生活的平凡现实。但事情必须如此吗？在石溪大学，心理学家亚瑟·阿伦几十年来一直在思考这个问题。亚瑟·阿伦，欢迎来到《隐藏的大脑》。

When we talk about falling in love, we usually refer to it as a very special and unusual period, one characterized by thrilling feelings of exhilaration and euphoria. It's widely assumed that these intense feelings of passion and romance cannot last forever, that they will eventually give way to the mundane realities of daily life. But does that have to be so? At Stony Brook University, psychologist Arthur Aron has pondered this question for decades. Arthur Aron, welcome to Hidden Brain.

谢谢。

Thank you.

阿特，2009年2月，你和你的研究助理出发去寻找一种“独角兽”——一种非常特别的个体。你们在寻找什么样的人？又是如何找到他们的？

Art, in 02/2009, you and your research assistant set out to look for what you might call a unicorn for a very unusual kind of individual. What kind of people were you looking for, and how did you go about finding them?

嗯，我们在寻找那些非常强烈地相爱的人们。这些人平均结婚已有二十年。我们基本上只是询问了我们认识的、以及合作者认识的各类人，我当时还是研究生的比安卡·阿索韦多——她现在已经是教授了——她对他们进行了访谈，确认他们真的如此。结果，我们确实找到了不少。

Well, we were looking for people, we were looking for couples that were very intensely in love. These were people who'd been married on the average for twenty years. And we basically just asked various people we knew that my collaborators knew, and my then graduate student, Bianca Asovedo, who's now a professor, she interviewed them just to see that they really meant it. And sure enough, we were able to find, you know, plenty.

我很好奇，当这些夫妻来到你们的实验室时，他们告诉了你什么。再说一遍，这些人在一起已经很久了，有时是几十年。我了解到，有一对六十多岁的夫妻给你们和比安卡留下了特别深的印象？

I'm curious what these couples told you when they came into your lab. Again, these are people who had been together for a long time, sometimes decades. I understand one couple in their sixties really stood out to you and Bianca?

我们基本上只是问他们。他们坐在一起，我们让他们描述一下他们的关系现状。你知道，这些都是自称非常强烈相爱的人。我们问他们这意味着什么，又是如何做到的。比安卡最喜欢的故事是，她告诉我有一对夫妻说：我们总是让朋友们抓狂，因为我们总是肢体上黏在一起。

Well, we just basically asked them. They would sit together and we'd ask them to describe, you know, what's going on in their relationship. You know, these were all people who said they were very intense intensely in love. And we asked them what does that mean and how does that work? And Bianca my favorite story is Bianca told me that one couple said, we always annoy our friends because we're always all over each other physically.

所以他们在说话时，会互相触碰，做类似的事情。

So while they're talking, they're touching each other and doing things like that.

当然，也有可能当人们说自己深爱、热恋时，他们只是为了让你认为他们的关系很幸福才这么说。鉴于这与我们对关系随时间衰退的刻板印象如此相悖，你们对他们所说的话一定有些怀疑吧。

So now it's possible that, of course, that when people say that they are deeply in love and passionately in love, they're just telling you that because they want to make you think that they are in a very happy relationship. So you must have been a little skeptical of what they were saying given that this runs so counter to the stereotype we have about how relationships decline over over time.

嗯，我们确实怀疑。事实上，这正是我们做这项研究的原因。我们把他们放进扫描仪，观察他们的大脑状态，也就是当他们看伴侣照片时哪些区域会活跃。我们之前对刚坠入爱河的人做过很多研究，关键发现是多巴胺奖赏区会在他们看伴侣照片而非中性朋友照片时亮起。我们发现这些人也表现出了同样的反应。

Well, we we were. In fact, that's why we did the study. So we put them in the scanner to look at what their brains look like, you know, what areas become active when they look at pictures of their partner. We'd done many earlier studies of people who'd just fallen in love, and the key finding was known as the dopamine reward area that would pick up when they looked at a picture of their partner versus a neutral friend. And we found that these people showed the same thing.

他们发现多巴胺奖赏区被激活了。

They showed that activation of the dopamine reward area.

所以如果我理解得没错，你们把人放进脑部扫描仪里，给他们看照片，要么是他们心爱的人，要么是某个中性的人或熟人。

So if I'm visualizing this correctly, you're putting people in a brain scanner and you're showing them pictures of either their beloved or somebody who is just a neutral person or an acquaintance.

嗯，这个熟人和他们的伴侣是同一性别，而且吸引力也差不多。我们会测试所有这些，他们交替看两张照片，我们看他们看照片时大脑里发生了什么。这正是我们在刚坠入爱河的人身上做的初步研究，我们发现多巴胺奖赏区非常活跃。

Well, it's an acquaintance that is of the same gender as their partner, is fairly is attractive as attractive as their partner. We test for all of that, and, they look at the two pictures. I mean, they alternate the two, and we're looking at what goes on in their brain when they're looking at that one. This is exactly what we did in the initial study of people who've just fallen in love. We find that strong dopamine reward area.

另一件在长期伴侣中没发现的事是，我们发现了焦虑和紧张的迹象。你知道，如果你刚爱上某人，你很可能会担心：他们会离开我吗？他们会不会出事？而如果你和某人在一起二十年了，你就不会那么担心这些了。

One other thing that we didn't find in the long term, we find an indication of anxiety, tension. You know, if you just fall in love with someone, you're likely to worry, are they gonna leave me? Are something gonna happen to them? Whereas if you've been to with someone for twenty years, you don't worry about that as much.

所以当你扫描那些在一起很久但仍报告说非常相爱的伴侣的大脑时，除了看到伴侣时多巴胺激增，你还指出他们似乎比刚恋爱不久的人更满足。

So when you scan the brains of people who'd been together for a long time but who reported that they were intensely in love, besides experiencing this dopamine surge when they saw their partners, you also indicate that they also seem to be a little bit more contented compared to people who had just fallen in love a short time ago.

嗯，还有另一个大脑区域，主要在动物研究中被发现，它们有终生的依恋纽带。我们在长期伴侣中也看到了这一点。如果你在一起久了，而且一切顺利，有这种共同的安全感是很自然的。

Well, there's another area of the brain that has been found mostly in animals where they've got, you know, a lifelong bond, attachment bond. And we saw that also in the long term couples. I mean, it's kind of natural if you've been together a while and you and you things are going well to have that kinda common security.

我惊讶的是，这些伴侣打破了我们固有的刻板印象——激情之爱会随时间消退。你知道，蜜月期过后浪漫强度会下降。Art，谈谈这个刻板印象，我们有多普遍地认为关系一开始非常热烈，然后随时间减弱。

I'm struck that these couples went against the stereotype that we have that passionate love fades over time. You know, the honeymoon period is followed by a decline in romantic intensity. Talk about that stereotype, Art, how widespread it is that we believe that relationships start out very intensely and then they decline over time.

嗯，总的来说，有很多研究表明关系往往会随时间减弱。你知道，十年后，至少在美国，有一半已经离婚或接近离婚。总体而言，虽然不是每个人，但趋势是下降。这似乎就是我们认为的常态。

Well, overall, there's lots of research showing that relationships tend to decline over time. You know, after ten years, half of them, at least in The US, are divorced or close to half. You know, and overall, not for everybody, but they tend to decline. And so that seems to be what we think is the standard.

所以你做了一项调查，发现这些伴侣其实不一定是独角兽。他们可能不是恋爱人群中的多数，但数量也不少，对吧？

So you ran a survey and found that in fact these couples are not necessarily unicorns. They might not be a majority of the people who are in relationships, but there is a sizable number of them. Right?

是的。当我们做了一项全美代表性调查时，发现结婚十年或以上的人中，有百分之四十声称自己非常强烈地相爱。这意味着只有百分之二十的结婚者还在一起。但仍然，这比我们预期的要多。

Yeah. When we did a US nationally representative survey, we found that of people married ten years or longer, forty percent claim to be very intensely in love. Now that means only twenty percent of those that got married that are still together. But still, that's more than we expected.

当你把这些发现分享给他人时，你发现相当一部分人可能会感到受到威胁，甚至抗拒“夫妻可以长期非常幸福”这一观点。请谈谈这一发现及其原因，先生。

When you shared these findings with others, you found that some significant number of people might feel threatened by the findings or even resistant to the idea that couples could be very happy over a long period of time. Talk about this finding and why that might be the case, sir.

嗯，有来自其他实验室的研究表明，夫妻让自己感觉良好的方式之一，就是拿自己和其他夫妻比较。比如，离开聚会后说，哦，那俩人总吵架，我们可没那样。所以，如果突然被告知，其实有些人真的拥有充满激情的关系，而大多数人并没有，这可能会让人有点不爽。另一方面，这也提醒我们，也许我们可以做点什么。

Well, there is findings, not from my lab but from others, showing that one of the ways couples often feel good about themselves is by comparing to other couples. You know, you leave a party and say, oh, those people always argue, you know, we don't do that as much. But so it's kind of hard to then be told that, no, some people have really passionate relationships. If you don't, as most people don't, it could be a little annoying. On the other hand, it's a reminder that maybe you could do something.

我们不该默认自己无能为力，而应该想办法让关系更像那样，而不是随波逐流。

We shouldn't just assume that there's nothing we can do. We should look for some way to make it more like that and not just go along with how things are.

我们很多人以为长期关系必然会随着时间褪色。但如果事实并非如此呢？如果真是这样，那些几十年仍保持激情的夫妻秘诀是什么？稍后回来，探讨让长期关系保持活力的科学。您正在收听《Hidden Brain》。

Many of us assume that long term relationships necessarily wither over time. But what if that's not true? And if it's not true, what's the secret of couples whose passion has lasted for decades? When we come back, the science of keeping a long term relationship vital. You're listening to Hidden Brain.

我是尚卡·维丹塔姆。《Hidden Brain》由WhatsApp赞助。群聊本应让我们更紧密，却常带来混乱，比如策划集体旅行时。出行日期被无尽消息淹没，有人把模糊的航班截图看错了，结果一半人以为旅行是下个月，而不是下周末。

I'm Shankar Vedanta. Support for Hidden Brain comes from WhatsApp. Group chats are meant to connect us, but they often lead to confusion instead, like when you're planning a group trip. Travel dates get buried under endless messages. Someone misreads a pixelated flight itinerary sent via SMS, and suddenly half the group thinks the trip is next month, not next weekend.

再加上不同手机，就更乱。幸好有WhatsApp。WhatsApp投票让集体决策——比如定旅行预算——又快又顺畅。置顶消息把酒店预订、航班时间等关键信息始终可见。活动邀请带来结构，高清媒体确保跨设备清晰，让你轻松分享精彩假期照片。

Add different phones into the mix, even more chaos. Luckily, there's WhatsApp. WhatsApp polls make collective decisions, like choosing a travel budget, fast and frictionless. Pinned messages keep key details, like the hotel reservations or flight times, visible and accessible. Event invites bring structure, while high res media ensures clarity across devices so you can easily share incredible vacation pics.

凭借端到端加密，对话完全私密。连播客主持人也能用WhatsApp置顶节目主题、收集音频片段或分享新节目Logo。是时候用WhatsApp了。与所有人私密畅聊。《Hidden Brain》由领英赞助。

And with end to end encryption, conversations stay completely private. Even podcast hosts can benefit from WhatsApp by pinning episode themes, collecting audio clips, or sharing new show logos. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Support for Hidden Brain comes from LinkedIn.

经营小企业，工作日不会在五点结束。即使休息日，生意也总在脑中。所以招聘时，你需要一个同样努力的伙伴。这个招聘伙伴就是LinkedIn职位。你可以免费发布职位，分享给网络，一站式管理合格候选人。

When you own a small business, the workday doesn't end at five. Your business is always on your brain, even on days off. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn jobs. You can easily post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place.

LinkedIn的新功能帮你撰写职位描述，并用详细洞察快速触达合适人选。归根结底，小企业最重要的是候选人质量。有了LinkedIn，你可以放心获得最优秀人才。在linkedin.com/hb免费发布职位。就是linkedin.com/hb，免费发布职位。

LinkedIn's new feature helps you write job descriptions and quickly reach the right candidates with detailed insights. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Post your job for free at linkedin.com/hb. That's linkedin.com/hb to post your job for free.

适用条款与条件。这里是《Hidden Brain》。我是尚卡·维丹塔姆。亚瑟·阿伦是石溪大学的心理学家，研究亲密关系如何随时间发展。

Terms and conditions apply. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Arthur Aron is a psychologist at Stony Brook University. He studies how intimate relationships develop over time.

我们大多数人以为，一段萌芽关系中的激情会随时间消退。事情本该如此。但阿特发现并不一定如此。在一系列研究中，他发现许多夫妻在一起几十年后仍自称深爱对方。阿特顿悟后，便着手解释这一现象。

Most of us assume that the passion that characterizes a budding relationship will fade with time. That's just the way it is. But Art has found it doesn't have to be that way. In a series of studies, he's found many couples who report being passionately in love even after being together for decades. Once Art had this epiphany, he set out to explain it.

阿特，解开这个谜题的一条线索来自你职业生涯早期在温哥华做的一项研究。它成了心理学领域的经典实验，被广称为“吊桥实验”。你能给我讲讲实验设计吗？

Art, one clue to the puzzle came from a study you'd conducted in Vancouver very early in your career. It became an iconic study in the field of psychology and was widely known as the bridge study. Can you describe the setup for me?

好的。我们去了温哥华一处横跨大河、会摇晃的大吊桥。走上去有点吓人，很容易掉下去。我们让一位年轻漂亮的女士站在桥上，当有适龄男性独自过桥时，她就拦住说：“我能问您几个问题吗？”

Yeah. What we did is we went to a part of Vancouver that has a very large bridge way over a river that wobbles. And so when you walk over it, it's a little scary. You could easily fall off. And so we had an attractive woman, young woman standing on the bridge, and when men of appropriate age by himself would walk across, she would stop and say, could I ask you a few questions?

“我是研究员。”她问几个问题，然后让对方画一张小图。我们说“非常感谢”，如果想了解更多，可以给我打电话，并留下号码。我们也在附近一座很安全的小桥上让她拦下同样数量的男性。

I'm a researcher. And she asked some questions and showed him a little thing where he would write, make a little picture of something. And we said, thank you very much, and if you want to know more about it, you can phone me. And she'd give them the phone number. We also had her stop an equal number of men on a very safe nearby bridge.

好的。也就是说，一种情况是她在这座吓人、摇晃的桥上拦下男性提问，另一种情况是在稳固的桥上对另一组男性提完全相同的问题。结果如何？

Okay. So in one case, she's basically stopping men on this shaky bridge that is scary, and she's asking them these questions. And in the other condition, she's standing on a very stable bridge and asking another group of men the very same questions. So what happens?

我们发现，在摇晃的桥上，男性画出的图或写下的评论明显更富浪漫和性意味，也更可能给她打电话。这就是发现。我们还做了后续研究。逻辑是：如果你情绪被激起，却又不确定原因，此时遇到有魅力的人，就容易想“哦，我是因为TA才这样”。后来多项重复研究也表明，若被激起后遇到无魅力的人，反而会强烈厌恶。

What we found is that on the shaky bridge, the things that the pictures they wrote or the comments they made were much more had much more romantic and sexual content, and they were much more likely to phone her. So that was the finding. And we've done follow-up studies too. And the logic is that if you're shaken up and you're not entirely sure of why, and you meet someone who's attractive, you're likely to think, oh, that's why I'm feeling this. And it turns out that in some other studies done later, it's been replicated many times in various ways, they found that if sort of worked up and you meet someone who's unattractive, you're likely to feel strongly disgusted.

换句话说，你会把已有的生理唤醒重新解释为某种情绪。

In other words, you retake the emotion the arousal you've gotten, you reinterpret it.

我在想，这或许能解释恐怖片为何经久不衰：年轻情侣一起坐在影院看吓人的片子。

You know, I'm wondering whether this might explain some of the enduring popularity of horror movies where young couples might go and sit in a movie theater and watch something really scary.

嗯，得小心点。我可以讲个小故事。研究做完几年后，有个上过我的课的学生跑来跟我说：“哦，阿伦博士，我想跟您讲讲最近发生的事。”

Yeah. You have to be a little careful. I can tell you a little story. I some years after we did this study, I ran into a student who attended one of my classes and he said, oh, Doctor. Aaron, I just wanted to tell you what happened recently.

“我在印度一家酒店遇到一位迷人的年轻女子，我想，哦，我读过您的研究。于是我说：‘咱们坐人力三轮车去吃午饭吧。’那种车在拥挤车流里挺吓人。他们坐了三轮车，到了餐厅下车，她就说：‘哎呀，那个车夫真帅。’”

I was in India and I met at this hotel, this attractive young woman, and I thought, oh, I know his research. So I said, let's take a bicycle taxi and go out to lunch. Well, those are sort of scary in the heavy traffic. So they took the bicycle taxi. They arrived at the place they're gonna have lunch, and they got off and she said, oh, that taxi driver is so attractive.

所以

So

这个研究实验是有效的，但我想你得小心设计方式。

the the research experiment works, but you have to be careful how it's designed, I suppose.

是的，没错。

Yes. Right.

当然，当情侣初次相遇并坠入爱河时，他们会经历很多像在摇晃吊桥上的感受：你会感到不安、不确定，甚至有点害怕，心里七上八下、小鹿乱撞。你们在吊桥实验中发现，几乎可以逆向操作这个过程：如果你让人产生紧张感，而身边又有一位潜在的浪漫对象，他们就更可能把对方视为恋爱对象。

So, of course, when couples meet and fall in love for the first time, they experience a lot of what happens on a shaky bridge. You know, you feel unsure, you're uncertain, Maybe even a little afraid. You feel jitters and butterflies in your stomach. What you found in the BRIDGE study is that you can almost reverse engineer the process. If you give people the jitters and they are around someone who could potentially be a romantic partner, they're more likely to see the other person as a romantic partner.

对，这只是坠入爱河的其中一个原因。还有其他情境也能强烈促成爱情，我们也做过相关研究。

Yeah. I mean, it's only one of the causes of falling in love. I mean, there's other circumstances that can strongly create it, and we've done research on that.

我想起心理学家丽莎·费尔德曼·巴雷特曾经给我讲的一个故事。她在东北大学工作，她告诉我很多年前她读研究生时，有个人想约她出去，她当时并不感兴趣。她最终同意和这家伙出去喝杯咖啡。然后她坐在他对面，突然感觉脸发烫，额头一阵发热。她心想，天哪。

I'm reminded of this story that the psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett once told me. She's at Northeastern University and she told me that many years ago when she was in graduate school, there was someone who wanted to go out on a date with her and she wasn't very interested. She finally agreed to go out and have coffee with this guy. And then she's sitting across from him and suddenly her face is feeling flushed and she's feeling like, you know, a rush of temperature in her forehead. And she's like, oh my god.

难道我其实被这家伙吸引了，我不该一开始就拒绝他？也许我该继续发展。约会结束时，他说：‘我们下次一起吃晚饭好吗？’她说：‘好啊，咱们去吧。’

Do I maybe I actually was attracted to this guy and I shouldn't have, you know, dismissed him out of the hand. You know, maybe I should, you know, pursue this. And at the end of the date, he says, can we go out for dinner next? And she says, yeah. Let's let's do it.

她回到家，六秒后就开始呕吐，因为她得了流感。她当时感受到的是流感的早期症状，而不是什么浪漫吸引。但道理不是一样吗？我们的大脑会接收到这些信号，某种程度上必须解读这信号意味着什么，并得出结论：这信号是关于我对这个人的感觉。

And she comes home, and then six seconds later, she has to throw up because she's coming down with the flu. And what she was experiencing was the early symptoms of flu and not sort of romantic attraction. But it's the same idea, isn't it? Which is that we have these signals that come to us in our minds, and in some ways, brains have to interpret what the signal is about. And they have to draw a conclusion, this signal is about my feelings for this other person.

没错。在新关系里确实如此。但在一段持续的关系中，当你们一起经历时，就不只是‘我对他们的感觉’，而是‘我们是什么’。

Right. Well, that's certainly what happens in a new relationship. But in an ongoing relationship, when you do it together, it's not so much that it's about my feelings about them. It's what we are.

“摇晃吊桥实验”和丽莎·费尔德曼·巴雷特那段令人困惑的约会故事指向同一个核心洞见：我们常常搞不清自己情绪的真正来源。吊桥上的年轻男子因为桥不稳而心跳加速；当他们恰好遇到一位年轻女性时，便把对桥的紧张误当成对女性的浪漫吸引，结果更多人事后打电话约那位女性。

The Shaky Bridge study and Lisa Feldman Barrett's story of the confusing date both point to the same underlying insight. We are often not very good at identifying the source of our feelings. Young men on the shaky bridge experienced jitters because the bridge was unstable. When they happened to meet a young woman, the men confused their jitters about the bridge as romantic attraction for the woman. More of them followed up and gave the young woman a call.

当阿特开始研究长期关系中的伴侣时，他有一个洞见。随着伴侣们陷入日常——早上送孩子上学、晚上在厨房餐桌吃饭、周末和同一群朋友邻居社交——这些活动开始变得熟悉。久而久之，即便这些活动本身令人愉快，也变得可预测，接着就可能变得无聊。如果走在摇晃吊桥上的人会把紧张误当成浪漫吸引，那么在长期关系里，若你总在无聊时面对同一个人，会发生什么？

As Art began studying couples in long term relationships, he had an insight. As couples fall into routines getting kids ready for school in the mornings, dinner at the kitchen table in the evenings, social activities on the weekends with the same set of friends and neighbors these activities start to become familiar. Over time, even if these activities are pleasant, they become predictable. Then they can become boring. If people on a shaky bridge confuse their jitters for romantic attraction, what happens if you're in a long term relationship with someone and constantly find yourself around the same person when you're feeling bored?

我觉得无聊影响很大。如果一切都只是‘还行’，那就‘还行’。你知道，我们就继续在一起，享受一起养孩子、享受一起拥有房子、了解彼此。但我们发现，随着时间推移，如果你感到无聊，你就不太可能，你知道，感受到爱，甚至不会感到那么亲密，对伴侣的亲近感会减少。

I think boredom has a big effect. If everything's going fine, fine. You know, we'll just stay together and enjoy raising our children or enjoy having our house together, know, each other. But we've shown that over time, if you're bored, you're less likely to, you know, to feel love or feel even closeness, as much closeness to your partner.

谈谈你做的纵向研究：你在一段时间内访谈伴侣，问他们的无聊程度，然后再评估他们日后对关系的满意度。

Talk about the work that you have done on a longitudinal basis where you interviewed couples over a period of time and asked them about their levels of boredom and then evaluated how satisfied they were with their relationships down the road.

其实他们没有接受面对面访谈。他们早期填了一份问卷，回答了很多问题，其中三四题跟无聊有关。然后我们在大概五年后、八年后又给他们一份问卷，用我们的标准量表测量亲密程度。结果发现，那些八年前更无聊的人，现在满意度更低。

Well, they weren't interviewed in person. They did a questionnaire early on where they answered a bunch of different questions, three or four of which had to do with boredom. And then we gave them a questionnaire, I don't know, five years later, eight years later or something that focused on closeness using our standard measure of closeness. And those who had been more bored eight years earlier were likely now to have less satisfaction.

那阿特，请说说为什么会这样。大多数人想到破坏关系的因素时，不会把无聊当成主要元凶。他们可能想到出轨或虐待行为，但正是这种日常、平凡的无趣，其实比很多人想象的更伤感情？

So talk about why this might be the case, Art. I mean, when most people think about the factors that can undermine relationships, they don't think about boredom as being a prime culprit. They might think about infidelity or abusive behavior, but just the ordinary mundane factor of boredom plays a bigger role than many people consider?

嗯，我觉得尤其在咱们的文化、在大多数现代文化里，你对一段关系有更高期待。所以如果你觉得无聊，就意味着你没从关系里得到你想要的一切。

Well, I think, especially in our culture and in most modern cultures, you hope for more in a relationship. So if you're feeling bored, you're not getting everything you'd like from it.

所以当你多年思考这些想法后，你发展出一套更精细的理论：人有一种根本的“自我扩展”欲望，而关系常常是实现这种扩展的途径。阿特，你这是什么意思？

So as you've thought about these ideas for many years, you've developed a more sophisticated theory about what might be going on here. You say that people have a fundamental desire to expand the self and that this often occurs through relationships. What do you mean by this art?

嗯，我们已证明，大量进化研究指出，进化的一大主题是生存，另一大主题是成长、变化、扩展——我们称之为扩展——你想增加你是谁，增加你的资源、增加你的知识。我们的研究还显示，当你建立一段关系时，对方就成了你的一部分。关系是让你快速扩展的主要方式。所以当你亲近某人，你就把他纳入自我。

Well, we've shown that there's a whole bunch of evolutionary work is that one of the one main evolutionary thing is survival. The other is growth, change, expansion, what we call expansion, is you want to increase who you are, to increase your resources, increase your knowledge. And the other thing we've shown in our research is that when you form a relationship, the other becomes part of who you are. Relationships are a major way that you can expand rapidly. So when you get close to someone, you include them in the self.

这意味着你成长了，因为你纳入了对方的资源、知识、经历，于是你扩展了。关系初期，这种自我快速扩展非常令人满足。随着时间推移，它不再那么刺激，因为不再是新的扩展。而且

And that means that you grow because you've included their resources, their knowledge, their experiences. So you grow. And when that happens at the beginning, it's a rapid expansion of the self, and it's very rewarding. Over time, it's not that exciting anymore because it's not new expansion. And

你说伴侣帮助我们扩展，仅仅是因为他们带来新的兴趣、新的热情、新的业余爱好进入我们的生活吗？

when you say that our partners help to expand us, is it just because they bring new interests, new passions, new avocations of their own into our lives?

嗯，是的。但它们也成了我们的一部分。所以它们的能力和资源，我们其实会和自己的混在一起，你知道的。我们做了很多研究表明我们会混淆记忆，会混淆谁有什么品质，各种东西。我有时会觉得我知道我伴侣知道而我不知道的事情，或者你知道，就是那种感觉。

Well, yes. But they're also become part of us. So their abilities and their resources, we actually mix up with our own, you know. We've done a lot of research showing that we mix up memories, we mix up, you know, who's who has what qualities, all sorts of stuff. I sometimes think I I know things my partner knows that I don't or that you know, that sort of thing.

所以你会觉得自己比原来懂得更多。你觉得自己拥有比原来更多的资源。你知道，各种事情。

So you feel you know more than you did. You feel you have more resources than you did. You know, all sorts of things.

你能说说这种驱动力是什么吗？这种成长和扩张的基本驱动力。你把它描述为一种根本的驱动力。再多谈谈这个。它从哪里来，又如何在Art我们的生活中体现？

And can you speak a moment about what that drive is about? The drive of basically growth and expansion. You sort of describe it as a fundamental drive. Talk a little bit more about that. Where does that come from, and how does that manifest in our lives, Art?

嗯，我觉得人就是想做得更多，得到更多，拥有更多。这很正常、很自然，去探索、发现让生活更好的新事物。所以我们天生就有这种倾向。这种成长、想知道更多、探索、寻求扩张和创造力的理念，是进化心理学里长期被充分记录的理解。

Well, I think you want to to be able to do more, to get more, to acquire more. It's just normal natural and to explore and find new things that make life better. And so we're we're wired to have that. This idea of growth and and, you know, wanting to know more, explore, all of that, seeking growth and expansion and creativity. All of that is a long term understanding and evolutionary psych, and it's well documented.

我在想，这是否意味着我们会被那些承诺能让我们自我扩展的潜在伴侣所吸引？

I'm wondering whether this means that we are drawn to potential partners who promise us the possibility of expanding ourselves?

是的。如果伴侣有资源，那是一种加分。伴侣有社会价值，也是一种加分。伴侣懂很多东西，也是加分。这让我们变得比以前更强大。

Yes. If we have a partner who's got resources, that's kind of a plus. A partner who is socially valuable is a kind of a plus. A partner who knows a bunch of things is a kind of a plus. It's making us more than we were before.

它给我们更多机会去做以前做不到的事。不仅仅是金钱和资源，还有创造力，还有去做事、更广泛感受事物的机会。所有这些我们作为个体渴望的东西，通过伴侣我们可以更容易地获得。

It's giving us more opportunities to do things we couldn't do before. It's not just money and resources, it's it's, you know, it's creativity, it's opportunities to be able to do things, to feel things more broadly. All of those things we desire as individuals, we can get through a partner in some ways much more easily.

我在想，那么“异性相吸”有没有道理？因为如果你被与自己很不同的人吸引，你扩展自我的潜力可能更大。

I'm wondering whether there is any truth to the idea then that opposites might attract. Because, of course, if you are drawn to somebody who's very different from you, potentially your ability to expand yourself must be greater.

大多数人觉得相似性很重要。其实没那么重要。事实上，我们总体上是喜欢差异的，我们在研究中证明了这一点：如果你觉得对方兴趣与你不同，而且不与你竞争，那就是加分。所以如果你对艺术感兴趣，而对方对科学感兴趣，你们会互相受益。

Mostly people think that similarity matters hugely. It doesn't matter that much. And in fact, overall, we do like to have differences and we've shown that in the study, that if you think the other person has different interests than you do, and they're not competing with you, that's a plus. So if you're interested in the arts and they're interested in science, you're going to each gain from each other.

我在想，这个模型的一个含义是不是，当我们初次坠入爱河时，自我扩张的感觉会超速运转。有没有可能我们感受到的某些狂喜，不只是因为我们被这个人吸引，而是某种程度上，我们被正在成长成的那个自己所吸引。也就是说，我们被自己的自我扩张所吸引，而这正是坠入爱河的狂喜的一部分。

I'm wondering if one of the implications of this model is that when we first fall in love, you know, the sense of self expansion is an overdrive. And is it possible that some of the euphoria we feel when we fall in love is not just because we are drawn to this other person, but in some ways we are drawn to the kind of person that we are growing into. That in some ways, we are drawn to our own self expansion and that's part of the euphoria of falling in love.

是的。我们想要感受到那种“我现在要变得更丰富”的感觉，因为和他们在一起。我要拥有更充实的生活。我要有更多的机会、更多的知识、更多的兴趣、更多让生活变得愉快和有趣的方式，所有这些东西。

Yes. We want to feel we like to feel that sense of I'm gonna be more now being with them. I'm gonna have a fuller life. I'm gonna have more opportunities, more knowledge, more interests, more ways to make life enjoyable and interesting, all of that stuff.

所以从那个角度来看，我想知道这项研究对长期关系的影响有什么说法。换句话说，当我们处于长期关系中时，显然会产生某种熟悉感，因为你当然了解这个人。你已经和这个人在一起五年、十年、十五年、二十年了。有没有可能这个人自然就停止帮助你扩展了，因为在某些方面你非常了解那个人，他们也非常了解你，而这可能就是一种无聊的源头？

So from that perspective, I'm wondering what this research has to say about the effects of long term relationships. In other words, when we are in long term relationships, there's obviously a certain amount of familiarity that creeps in because, of course, you know this other person. You've been with this other person for five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years. Is it possible that this other person just naturally then stops helping you expand because in some ways you know that person very well and they know you very well and this might be a source of boredom?

嗯，是的。我的意思是，对方，你已经通过把他们纳入自己而实现了扩展。我的意思是，如果你和他们分手，你就会失去那部分。我们已经表明，如果你把对方纳入自我、感受到很多扩展感，分手就很难。所以，不，达到那里的过程是令人兴奋的。

Well, yes. I mean, the other person, you've already expanded by including them. I mean, if you were to break up with them, you would lose that. We've shown it's hard to break up a relationship if you have a lot of sense of expansion, including them in the self. So, no, the process of getting there is is exciting.

但一旦到了那里，你就习惯了。你不会想失去它，但你习惯了。现在，如果你或你的伴侣一起做一些令人兴奋的事情，你会把那种兴奋与伴侣联系起来。如果你们一起有某种扩展，或者你的伴侣有个体扩展，而你能感受到与它的连接，那也可以对自我产生扩展作用。

But once you're there, you get used to it. You wouldn't wanna lose it, but you get used to it. Now if you or your partner if you do something exciting together, you associate that with a partner. If you have some expansion together, or if your partner has an expansion that you can feel connected to even as an individual, that can be expanding to the self.

阿瑟关于新奇与挑战的影响以及自我扩展过程的研究，提出了一个诱人的可能性：让长期关系保持浪漫与激情的钥匙，就掌握在我们自己手中。稍后回来，我们将介绍实用方法，驱散无聊，让关系持续感到兴奋与有活力。您正在收听《Hidden Brain》。我是尚卡·维丹塔姆。《Hidden Brain》的支持来自SurveyMonkey。

Art's research on the effects of novelty and challenge and on the process of self expansion suggests a tantalizing possibility. It's the key to keeping long term relationships romantic and passionate in our own hands. When we come back, practical ways to keep boredom at bay and make a relationship continue to feel exciting and alive. You are listening to Hidden Brain. I am Shankar Vedanta Support for Hidden Brain comes from SurveyMonkey.

看，我们明白。如今你几乎去哪儿、做什么，都免不了听到这个AI那个AI。如果你和大多数人一样，对AI既惊叹又有点担忧。但如果AI不是用来取代人，而是用来更好地理解人呢？SurveyMonkey的AI正是为此而生。

Look, we get it. You can hardly go anywhere or do anything these days without hearing about AI this or AI that. And if you're like most people, when it comes to AI, you're impressed but have a few concerns. But what if AI was used not as a tool to replace people but as a way to help understand people better? AI from SurveyMonkey is designed to do just that.

从设计完美的调查（比你想的更难）到深入分析、快速发现模式并呈现趋势，SurveyMonkey强大的AI工具套件让你比以往更快、更容易地从真人那里获得洞察，帮助你为企业做出自信决策。今天就到 surveymonkey.com/brain 试用。《Hidden Brain》的支持也来自Vitamix。你有没有注意到，选择越多，我们反而越不满足？心理学家称之为“选择的悖论”。在当今世界，我们面对无尽选项与无限噪音。

From crafting the perfect survey which is harder than you might think to analysis that digs deep, finds patterns, and surfaces trends quickly SurveyMonkey's powerful suite of AI capabilities makes it faster and easier than before to get insight from real people helping you make confident decisions for your business. Try it today at surveymonkey.com/brainsupport for Hidden Brain comes from Vitamix. Ever notice the more options we have, the less satisfied we feel? Psychologists call this the paradox of choice. In today's world, we are faced with endless options and infinite noise.

重要的是要剔除杂音，直达真正必需的核心。Vitamix搅拌机正是那种稀有而必需的存在，专为持久性能与强大多功能而设计，让你有目的地创造。访问 vitamix.com，选购你需要的搅拌机。这里是《Hidden Brain》，我是尚卡·维丹塔姆。

It's important to cut through to what's truly essential. Vitamix blenders are that rare essential engineered to deliver lasting performance and powerful versatility so you can create with purpose. Visit vitamix.com for the blender you need. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

阿瑟·阿隆是石溪大学的心理学家，他研究如何让爱保持鲜活。阿瑟，20世纪60年代末，你在加州大学伯克利分校攻读博士项目。你是助教，在协助授课。那门课结束时，你人生中发生了一件重要的事。

Arthur Aron is a psychologist at Stony Brook University. He studies how to keep love alive. Art, in the late 1960s, you were enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of California Berkeley. You were a teaching assistant and helping to instruct a class. Something important in your life happened at the end of that class.

你能为我描绘一下当时发生了什么吗？

Can you paint a picture of what happened for me?

班上有个学生，我跟她有很多冲突。课程的最后一天，我们一起走出教室，彼此对视。我至今仍清晰地记得那一刻。我们对视了一会儿，然后接吻了。

There was a student in the class who I had a lot of sort of conflict with. The last day of class, we walked out. We looked at each other. I can still remember this so vividly. We looked at each other a minute and we kissed.

从那一刻起，我们就开始同居。我们刚刚庆祝了金婚纪念日。那种感觉非常强烈。事实上，正是这段经历促使我开始研究爱情。我当时是社会心理学的研究生，当时的想法是找一个人们认为无法用科学方法研究的主题，然后去做。

And from that moment on, we've been living together. We just celebrated our fiftieth anniversary. It, it was so intense. And in fact, it's really what prompted my studying love. I was a graduate student in social psychology, and the idea then was to look for a topic that people think can't be studied scientifically and do it.

那时关于爱情的研究非常少。于是，我决定研究这个。但确实，我深深地爱上了这个女人。

And there was very little research on love at that time. So that became, you know, what I decided to study. But, no, I fell intensely in love with this woman.

那么，Art，在你和那位名叫Elaine的学生在一起的早期日子里，你们的关系是怎样的？最初的那几天和几个月是什么样的？

So what was it like in the early days of the relationship, Art, when you and the student whose name was Elaine got together? What was it like in those first few days and months?

那感觉太棒了。大约两个月后，我们开始同居。那段时光非常浓烈而美好，几年后我们做了一个重大决定——要个孩子。我们不想结婚，因为你知道，我们来自伯克利，那个年代我们不喜欢婚姻这个概念。但儿子四岁时，他回家问：‘妈妈，什么是私生子？’

It was wonderful. About two months later, we started living together. It was it was very intense and wonderful, and we made a big decision a couple years later to have a baby. We didn't wanna get married because, you know, coming from Berkeley in those years, we didn't like the idea. But when our son was four years old, he came home and said, mommy, what's a bastard?

我们觉得这婚还是结吧。所以我们实际上同居了五十七年，但结婚已经五十年了。

And we thought we'd better get married. So we've been living together actually for fifty seven years, but we've been married for fifty.

鉴于Art是心理学家，他审视自己和Elaine坠入爱河的那一刻，并自问他们之间在心理上发生了什么，这并不奇怪。后来，他和同事们探讨是否能让两个陌生人产生爱情。他们列出一系列问题，让人们互相提问，从而敞开心扉、分享、变得脆弱。多年后，这项研究因《纽约时报》一篇题为《通往爱情的36个问题》的文章而走红。Art说，在这项研究中，他们把陌生人配对，让他们面对面坐着。

Given that Art is a psychologist, it's perhaps not surprising that he examined the moment he and Elaine fell in love and asked himself what happened between them psychologically. In time, he and his colleagues explored whether love could be engineered between two strangers. They came up with a list of questions that people could ask one another that would get them to open up, to share, to make themselves vulnerable. Years later, this research went viral in a New York Times article titled The 36 Questions That Lead to Love. Art said that in this research, they paired up strangers and had them sit across from one another.

这些问题分为三个部分。在45分钟的互动中，这对男女会从每一部分中互相提问。研究人员给志愿者具体的指示。

The questions were divided into three sections. Over a forty five minute encounter, the couple would pose questions from each section to each other. The researchers gave volunteers specific instructions.

一是每个人先回答问题，然后另一个人回答，如此交替。这样他们能听到彼此的回答，并有机会回应。另一个要素是，问题的设计从不太亲密或亲近，逐渐过渡到越来越私密的内容。你知道，如果你在飞机上坐下就和别人聊你生命中最激烈的事，可能会把对方吓跑。所以如果你从小事开始，然后逐步深入，双方都是如此。

One is that each would answer the question and then the other would answer, and they'd go on. So they could hear each other and have a chance to be responsive. Another element was the questions were designed so that they move from not being very intimate or close to being more and more intimate stuff. You know, if you get on a plane and you talk about, sit down with someone, you start talking about the most intense things in your life, can put them off. So if you start with, you know, smaller things and then gradually move to bigger, and you go both ways.

所以第一组问题相当平常，比如，如果你能跟历史上任何一个人共进晚餐，你会选谁？然后问题变得越来越私人。

So it's just the first set is fairly mundane, you know, if you go out to dinner with anyone in the world throughout history, who would you go out to dinner? You know, and then they get more and more personal.

研究人员鼓励志愿者找出彼此的共同点。当然，人们在现实生活中一直都在这样做。我们会喜欢那些和我们一样热爱音乐或运动的人。研究人员所做的，就是迫使志愿者去识别这些共同点。

The researchers encouraged volunteers to identify things they had in common. Of course, people do this in real life all the time. We like others who share our passions for music or sports. What the researchers were doing was to force the volunteers to identify such commonalities.

让人们想要亲近的其中一个因素，是感觉彼此有共同点。真正拥有这些共同点，不如“感觉有”来得重要。在第二组里，我觉得我们有一个题目说，说出一些你注意到你们有共同点的事情。我们从来没说“说出一些你们没有共同点的事情”。

One of the things that makes people want to get close is to feel they have things in common. Actually having them isn't as important as feeling they do. In the second set, I think we have an item that say, name some things you've noticed you have in common. We never say name some things you don't have in common.

所以在第一组里，我现在正看着问题清单。你会看到像“对你来说，完美的一天是什么样的？”或者“你最近一次对自己唱歌是什么时候？”又或者“如果你能活到90岁，但在人生最后六十年里只能保留30岁时的头脑或身体之一，你会选哪一个？”这些问题，我想，算是挺有趣的。

So in set one, I'm looking at the list of questions right now. You you have questions like what would constitute a perfect day for you? Or when did you last sing to yourself? Or if you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or the body of a 30 year old for the last sixty years of your life, which would you want? And these are, I guess, are interesting questions.

这些是你可能会在酒吧问陌生人的问题，但它们并不算特别私密或深刻。

These are the kind of questions you might ask a stranger at a bar, but they're not particularly intimate or deep.

是的。而且即便在第一组的12道题里，后面的也会稍微深入一点。但总体还是温和的。

Yeah. And even those get a little stronger as you move ahead. But yes, within the first 12.

于是接下来的12道题开始问得更深入：你最珍贵的记忆是什么？你最痛苦的记忆是什么？爱与亲昵在你的生活中扮演什么角色？你如何看待你与母亲的关系？

And so the next 12 starts to ask even deeper questions. What is your most treasured memory? What is your most terrible memory? What roles do love and affection play in your life? How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

这些是你能想象在稍微熟悉某人之后才会问的问题。通常，我觉得大多数人在现实生活中可能要认识几周或几个月后才会聊到这些。某种程度上，你们在第二轮的15分钟里加速了这个过程。

And these are the questions that you could imagine asking someone once you've gotten to know them. Now typically, I think most people in real life might get to asking those questions after getting to know someone for a few weeks or a few months. You're sort of accelerating the process in some ways by having them ask these questions in the second fifteen minute bout.

没错。就是这样。我们想在45分钟内创造出亲密感。

Yeah. That's right. That's the idea. We wanna create closeness in forty five minutes.

我在想，当你这么做的时候会发生什么。最后一组问题在某些方面变得非常激烈：你最近一次在别人面前哭是什么时候？如果你今晚就会死去，却没有任何机会与任何人交流，你最遗憾没告诉别人的是什么？我是说，非常、非常私密而强烈的问题。

And I'm wondering what happens as you do this. The last set of questions in some ways get to very intense questions. You know, when did you last cry in front of another person? If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? I mean, very, very intense and personal questions.

当你让志愿者经历这些题目时，会发生什么，阿特？

What happens when you put volunteers through these sets of questions, Art?

嗯，他们会变得更亲近。这个四十五分钟的“最亲近练习”确实有效。虽然它不一定能长期维持亲密，但在练习刚结束时，参与者常常报告说，他们感觉与一起完成活动的人就像与自己生命中最亲密的人一样亲近。它真的能产生一种强烈的亲密感。

Well, they get closer. This this closest procedure in forty five minutes really works. It doesn't necessarily keep them close in the long term, but certainly right afterwards, they often report feeling as close to the person they were doing the activity with as to the closest person in their life. It really creates a sense of intense closeness.

阿特说，这项实验干预凸显了几个重要观点。首先，自我表露——向别人透露关于自己的事情——是加深关系的关键。但这不仅仅是因为人们会对那些听到秘密的人感觉更亲近，而是因为当我们分享真正揭示自我身份的事情时，它能让别人以同情和理解回应。自我表露是激发他人回应性的触发器。

Art says the experimental intervention underscored a number of important points. First, self disclosure, revealing things about yourself to someone else, is key to deepening relationships. But it's not just because people feel closer to those to whom they reveal secrets. It's because when we share things that reveal who we really are, it allows other people to respond with compassion and understanding. Self disclosure is a trigger for other people's responsiveness.

阿特以及像《隐藏的大脑》往期嘉宾哈里·里斯这样的研究者都认为，回应性才是关系的粘合剂。

Art and researchers like former Hidden Brain guest Harry Rees feel that it's responsiveness that is the glue for relationships.

自我表露为深度回应提供了机会。你知道，当你和某人互动时，你说些什么，你感觉他们听见了你、理解你、关心你，这非常重要。

Self disclosure provides an opportunity for deep responsiveness. You know, when you interact with someone and, you know, you you say something and you feel they've heard you, they understand you, they care about you, that matters a lot.

这可能听起来显而易见，但这些问题中蕴含的另一个有力想法是，它们让人们分享彼此欣赏的地方。在生活中，我们常常注意到别人身上喜欢或钦佩的地方，却很少大声说出来。这会带来多大差别呢？

It might seem obvious, but another powerful idea embedded in the questions is they ask people to share what they like about each other. Very often, as we go through life, we notice things about other people that we like or admire. Few of us take the time to actually voice these thoughts aloud. How much of a difference does that make?

这个影响巨大。感觉某人喜欢你，对与他们亲近真的很关键。事实上，这是我们发现的坠入爱河的主要因素之一。我们做过很多调查，问最近坠入爱河的人发生了什么，一个主要回答就是：我发现对方喜欢我。

That's a huge effect. Feeling someone likes you really matters for getting close to them. In fact, it's a major factor that we found in falling in love. You know, we've done a lot of surveys where we ask people who had recently fallen in love, what happened? And a major thing is that I discovered the other person liked me.

比如，有人会说，我遇到了这个女人，我有点喜欢她，后来我在商店碰到她，她看着我并对我微笑，就在那一刻，我坠入了爱河。我听过很多类似的故事，就在那一刻我发现，或者我朋友告诉我，嘿，这个人喜欢你，你不知道吗？这些事情真的很重要。

So for example, a person is saying, you know, I've met this woman and, you know, I kind of liked her and I ran into her at a store and she looked at me and she smiled at me. And at that moment, I I fell in love. I've heard so many stories like that at that moment where I discovered my friends said, oh, you know, this person likes you, don't you? Those sorts of things. They they really can matter a lot.

我又碰到这个人，他坐到我旁边，这类小事真的很关键。

I ran into this person again and he sat down next to me. Those kinds of things really matter.

在更长时间的干预中，阿特和同事甚至更进一步，刻意在两人之间营造亲密感。

In a longer intervention, Art and his colleagues went even further to engineer a feeling of closeness between two people.

较长的版本是一个半小时，最后有很多问题，比如想象你已经爱上了这个人，告诉他你的感受等等。它还包括人们常谈到的、并不在那36个问题里的环节，比如最后互相凝视对方眼睛三分钟，那些环节确实旨在制造浪漫情感。

The longer one is an hour and a half, and it has a lot of questions towards the end that, you know, are, you know, imagine you've fallen in love with this person, tell them what you feel. You know, things like that. It also has the item people talk about a lot that are not in the 36 questions, but you know, look in their eyes for three minutes in each other's eyes, things like that towards the end that really are aimed at creating romantic feelings.

嗯哼。

Uh-huh.

我们在做那项研究时非常小心，排除了已经处于恋爱关系的人。我实验室里的两个学生亲自试了试，当作实验，结果他们真的相爱了，还结了婚。

We tried to be very careful doing that study not to include people who are already in relationships. Two of the students in my lab tried this out, you know, to experiment and they they they literally fell in love and they got married.

哇。哇。我们已经讨论过，这36个问题原本是为了在陌生人之间建立亲密感，并不一定是为了改善或加深已经在一起十年、二十年的伴侣关系。但你发现，有一种方法能让这些问题对长期伴侣也有用，而且这个方法还涉及其他伴侣。

Wow. Wow. So we've discussed how the 36 questions were intended to create a sense of closeness between strangers. They were not intended necessarily to improve or deepen an already existing relationship between people who had been together for, you know, ten years or twenty years. But but you found that there's a way to make the questions useful for couples who've been together for a long time, and this insight involves other couples.

阿瑟，给我讲讲这个想法。

Walk me through this idea, Art.

嗯，之前也有很多问卷研究表明，拥有亲密朋友会让伴侣关系更好。所以我们随机安排一些伴侣与另一对伴侣一起做这个练习。四个人一起回答每个问题。我们发现，四人一起完成后，他们彼此间的激情之爱大大增加了。这并不会让你爱上别人。

Well, there had been, again, a lot of survey research showing that when you have close friends, relationships are better. So we were able to randomly assign couples to do this as a couple with another. So all the four of them answered each question. And we found that after doing this as a foursome, it much increased their passionate love for each other. It doesn't make you love the other people.

它会让你更喜欢他们，感觉更亲近，同时增加你对伴侣的激情之爱。

It makes you like them better, feel more close to them. It increases your passionate love for your partner.

你觉得为什么会这样？

And why do you think that's happening?

我们做了一些测试，主要原因是回应感。当你们和另一对伴侣在一起谈论深刻话题时，你会更倾向于回应自己的伴侣。四个人一起回答每个问题，正是这种更强的回应感带来了真正的不同。

Well, we did some tests of why and the main reason seems to be responsiveness. When you're with another couple and you're talking about deep things, you tend to be more responsive to your own partner. All four of you answer each question, And it's that greater sense of responsiveness that you experience that really makes a difference.

近年来，阿瑟和他的同事开始寻找其他方法，帮助长期伴侣保持爱情活力。其中很多方法都回到了BRIDGE研究的那个洞见：当人们在他人陪伴下体验某种情绪时，会把那种情绪与那个人联系起来。如果你和某人在一起总感到无聊，你就会觉得这个人很无聊；但如果你能和他一起做些有趣又新鲜的事，你就会把惊喜和成长与这个人联系在一起。

In recent years, Art and his colleagues have started to look for other ways to help couples in long term relationships keep love alive. Many of them go back to that insight from the BRIDGE study. When people experience an emotion when they are in the company of another person, they tend to associate that person with the emotion they are feeling. If you spend a lot of time around someone and feel bored, you'll come to think of that person as boring. But if you can spend a lot of time around the person doing interesting and novel things, you'll come to associate that person with surprise and growth.

阿瑟说，他和伊莱恩会努力把这个想法付诸实践。

Art says he and Elaine try to put this idea into practice.

你知道，我们每周至少都会尝试做点新鲜不同的事，还会进行一些大冒险。通常每年夏天，我们都会去欧洲旅行，去一个从未去过的地方，从一个村庄徒步到另一个村庄。有一个夏天，我们做了一件特别刺激的事：我们沿着科罗拉多河在大峡谷里漂流，坐着橡皮艇，和七八个人一起，还有我们的一个朋友。那次经历很紧张，但也真的很棒。

You know, we try every week at least to do something new and different, and we do some big adventures. Know, usually every summer we we take a trip to Europe and go to some place we've never been before and hike from village to village. One summer, we did something really exciting. We went down the down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon on a, you know, on a on a, you know, on a floating boat with about seven or eight other people and with a friend of ours. And it was it was intense, but it was really wonderful.

总的来说，你和伴侣一起做的越刺激、越有趣的事情，你就会把这些体验与伴侣联系在一起。当过程很艰难而你们一起克服了困难，那也是大大的加分。这就是成长。

I mean, in general, the more exciting and interesting the things you do with your partner, you then associate with your partner. And when you when it's difficult and you overcome the difficulties, that's a big plus too. That's expanding.

阿特告诉我，你不需要花大钱去度假才能找到新鲜感。他说，日常活动——比如散步的路线或晚餐吃什么——也能带来这种新奇。

Art told me that you don't need to go on expensive vacations in order to find novelty. He says daily activities, where you go for a walk or what you eat for dinner, can also provide such novelty.

是的。我们刻意每周至少做一件新鲜有趣的事。我们会去听音乐会、看芭蕾，但从不去重复的场次，我们很享受这种新鲜感和变化。

Yes. We make a point of doing something new and interesting every week at least. We go to concerts and ballets, but we never go to the same ones, you know, and we really enjoy the newness, the change.

我听说有一次你们看完戏回家，路过一家酒吧，发现已经很久没泡吧了。跟我讲讲那晚发生了什么。

I understand that one time you were coming back from a play and you walked by a bar and you noticed that you hadn't hung out in a bar for a long time. Tell me the story of what happened that night.

那时我们在纽约，看了很多戏。看完戏走路回家，路过一家酒吧，我们就想：要不要进去？我们以前从没这么做过，已经好多年没进酒吧了，年轻时倒是常去。于是我们进去，玩得很开心。

Well, we were in New York at the time, and we went to a lot of plays, and we were walking back from a play past a bar, and when we go into the bar? We've never done that before, haven't done that in years and years, we used to when we were younger. So we went in and had a good time.

还有一次，阿特和伊莲约在酒吧见面，假装彼此是陌生人，第一次见面。

Another time, Art and Elaine met up at a bar and pretended to be strangers meeting each other for the first time.

我们去了那个地方，各自坐着。一个先到，另一个稍后坐在附近。我不记得谁先进去的，但另一个人坐下后，我们就开始小聊，‘嗨，你好，我是……’我不记得用了什么名字，然后聊各自的工作——其实都不是我们真正的工作，但挺有趣的。

We went down to this place and we both sat there. One came in a little before the other, the other sat down near. I don't know who came in first, but the other one came in and sat near them. And you know, had some small discussion, oh hi, how are you? I'm, you know, I don't remember what name I used, and talked about what we did, which was not what we actually do, but it was kind of fun.

我们假装刚认识，那是个好玩的活动。聊了一会儿，然后就像住酒店一样回家，继续找乐子。

We pretended like we were just meeting, and that was a fun activity. We talked for a while and then basically went home as if it was a hotel and had some fun.

嗯哼。所以我想很多在一起很久的情侣都会说，我们会定期计划一起做彼此喜欢的活动，比如去餐厅、看电影，这些都是令人愉快的活动。

Uh-huh. So I think a lot of couples who've been together for a while say, you know, we regularly plan to do activities that we both enjoy. We might go out to a restaurant. We might go and watch a movie. These are pleasant activities.

但你说的是，仅仅愉快其实还不够。

But you're saying pleasant is actually not enough.

没错。我的意思是，愉快没坏处，但如果你能做得更多，比如，我们去一家餐厅吧。去一家我们从没去过的餐厅。去一种我们从没尝试过的餐厅类型。做点真正不同的事。

That's right. I mean, it doesn't hurt, but if you can do more than that, you know, let's go to a restaurant. Let's go to one we've never been to before. You know, let's go to a kind of restaurant we've never been to before. Let's do something really different.

这才是关键。

That's what matters.

你确实做过这类实验，让人们参与愉快或刺激的活动，从而区分这两者——新奇与愉快。

And you've run experiments along these lines where you actually ask people to do activities that are either pleasant or exciting. So you're actually trying to distinguish between those two things, between the novel and the pleasant.

是的。我们在实验室做过实验。但早期的一项工作是，我们给情侣一份很长的活动清单，让他们对每项活动打分，包括做这件事有多刺激。这是人们常做的标准活动列表。然后我们从中挑出他们认为刺激、但并不特别愉快、也不讨厌的项目。

Yeah. Well, we've done experiments in the lab. But one of the early things we did is we gave couples a long list of activities and they had to rate each on a number of things including how exciting it would be to do this. This is a standard list of activities people do. Then we took a subset of the things that they listed as exciting, but not particularly pleasant or not unpleasant, but you know.

随机把一半人分配到做这些刺激活动，另一半做剩下的项目。每周花半小时到一小时做其中一件事，或稍久一点。我们让他们持续十周，结果发现，参与刺激活动的那组，关系质量提升幅度远大于另一组。

And randomly assigned half of them to do something from that list and half to do something from the other items. And every week to do spend half hour to an hour doing one of these things or a little longer. And we've we had them do this for ten weeks, and we found that those who were in the exciting activity group were showed much bigger increase in the quality of their relationships than the other one.

换句话说，如果我和伴侣并不觉得攀岩或蹦极特别愉快，但会觉得非常刺激新奇，你的建议是，一起去做这些活动，反而能让我们感觉更亲密，而不是只做单纯愉快的活动。

So in other words, if I and my partner, for example, don't particularly think of rock climbing or bungee jumping as pleasant, but we will find it very exciting and novel. What you're suggesting is that doing these activities together in some ways can prompt us to feel closer to one another than if we engage in merely pleasant activities.

对。如果活动既愉快又新奇当然更好。但只要——再说一遍——只要不超过你们的承受范围。

Yeah. Well, it's nice if the activity is both pleasant and novel. But as long as it's, again, as long as it's not more than you can handle.

嗯。阿特，在你的一项研究中，你让情侣参加一项不寻常的活动：把他们的手腕和脚踝绑在一起。这听起来有点冒险，但我理解这是一项适合全家的实验？

Yeah. In one of your studies, Art, you had couples engage in an unusual activity where you tied their wrists and ankles together. Now this can seem a little risky, but I understand this was a family friendly experiment?

是的。在他们来实验室之前，我们告诉他们要做一些事。其中一种条件下，我们用魔术贴把他们的手腕和脚踝绑在一起，让他们在体操垫上穿越大约25英尺的距离，中间有一个大圆筒。他们得来回翻越，并在规定时间内完成才能获胜。

Yes. Yeah. They before they came into the lab and we said we're gonna, you know, have you do some things. And in one condition, we tied their wrist and ankles together with Velcro strips and had to go across, I don't know, was about 25 feet or something on gym mats and there was a big round rolled thing in the middle. And they had to go back and forth over it, and they had to beat a certain number of minutes to win.

然后我们有一个对照条件，其中一个人来回走动，另一个人观看，他们觉得这样很愉快。但我们发现那些一起进行更刺激、更有趣活动的人，对彼此的爱意有了显著提升。

And then we had a control condition where one of them would go back and forth and the other would watch, and they enjoyed that, It was pleasant. But we found that those doing the exciting one together, the more interesting one together, showed a big increase in their feeling of love.

阿特说关键并不在于活动过程中心率升高，而在于做一些不寻常的事情。

Art says the key is not getting your heart rate up during the activity. It's about doing something unusual.

仅仅和伴侣一起做一些刺激但并不新鲜有趣的事，比如一起去健身房，并不会增加你对伴侣的爱意。做一些新鲜有趣但未必刺激的事却可以。当然，如果两者兼具更好。在长期关系中，重要的是和伴侣一起做一些不那么有趣的事。不是你自己去做、让伴侣在旁边看着。

Just doing something arousing with your partner that's not new and interesting, like going to the gym together or something, does not increase your love for your partner. Doing something new and interesting that is not necessarily arousing does. Now it doesn't hurt if you have both. In a long term relationship, what matters is doing things that are not well interesting with your partner. It's not just doing them and having your partner nearby.

而是一起去做。于是你会觉得，是的，我有这种感受，而且我正在和伴侣分享。这就是我们作为一对情侣的一部分。

It's doing them together. So you feel, yes, I'm having this feeling, but I'm sharing it with my partner. So this is part of who we are as a couple.

你的一些研究指出，和伴侣一起参与包含幽默的活动很重要。为什么会这样，阿特？

Some of your research points toward the importance of engaging in activities with your partner that involve humor. Why would this be important, Art?

嗯，那是因为和伴侣一起感受幽默，同样是一种拓展。比如去看喜剧表演，它会以积极的方式让你兴奋，感觉新鲜有趣，而且你们在一起分享。这让你感觉与伴侣连接，感觉你们是一体的。

Well, that's because it's sort of expanding, again, to feel humor with your partner. You know, you go to a comedy show or something like that, you know, it's it riles you up in a good way. It feels new and interesting and you're sharing it. It makes you feel connected with them. It makes you feel you're one.

我们做了很多相关研究，表明你们如何与对方融为一体。虽然不是完全合一，但已经非常接近。

We've done a lot of research on that showing how you become one with the other. Not quite fully one, but close to one.

你还发现，与伴侣一起参与涉及与其他情侣交友的活动，是创造关系中某种不可预测性的方式之一。这为什么重要？

You also found that one way to create a certain amount of unpredictability in relationships is to engage in activities with your partner that involve friendships with other couples. Why does this matter?

哦，与其他情侣建立亲密友谊非常重要。有很多相关研究和调查都显示这一点。我们还用我们的36个问题做了一些实验，让两对情侣一起完成。我们发现其中一个因果链是，如果你和另一对情侣关系亲密，花时间在一起并深入交谈，你们会感到深度连接，这会让你更欣赏伴侣对你的回应。在这种情境下，伴侣往往也会更回应你，而回应感在关系中极其重要——感受到伴侣的回应。

Oh, close friendships with other couples really matters a lot. There's a lot of correlational research, a lot of survey research showing this, and we did some experiments using our 36 questions, where we had both couples do this together. And we showed that one of the causalities is, you know, if you're close to another couple, you spend time with them and you talk about deep things, you feel deeply connected, that creates a sense of you appreciate your partner's responsiveness to you even. In that context, your partner tends to be more responsive, which is a really important element in relationships. Feeling your partner is responsive.

对伴侣回应是好事，但感受到伴侣对你的回应——他们倾听你、理解你、关心你——这些才是关键。去年夏天，我们和一对最亲密的情侣朋友一起坐驳船旅行。所以我们既有刺激的活动，又有新奇有挑战的活动。我们以前从没在苏格兰的河上坐过驳船，而且还和好朋友一起，所以效果是双重的。

Being responsive to your partner is good, but feeling your partner is responsive to you. They hear you, they understand you, they care about you, those are crucial. Last summer, we went on a bar strip with one of our closest couple friends. So we had both an exciting activity and a novel challenging activity. Never been in a barge trip down a river in Scotland, you know, and we also had it with a close friend, so it had a double effect.

阿特说，当伊莱恩提出去观鲸时，他决定跟着研究结果走，而不是凭直觉。阿特会晕船，但他意识到这次旅行对妻子很重要，而且是一次新奇的活动。

Art says he decided to follow his research findings and not his gut when Elaine asked to go on a whale watching trip. Art gets seasick, but he recognized that the trip was important to his wife and would be a novel activity.

为了这次出行，我准备了据说有效的药片，买了可以贴在身上的贴片，还弄了个戴手腕上的东西。我把大家说的这些招都用上了，因为我知道自己很容易晕船。当然，后来我们也坐过很平稳的大船观鲸，海面也不颠簸，那次还行。

To prepare for the trip, I got some pills that are supposed to help you. I got a patch I could put on. I got a thing I put on my wrist. Did all these things that people talk about help you deal with, because I knew I get seasick easily. And of course, we've since then done a little whale watching on a very large flat boat, not in a difficult ocean and it went okay.

但这一次，我们要去旧金山外海，不是海湾，是外海，浪特别大，我实在扛不住，全程都在船边给鲸鱼‘喂食’。

But this time, we were going out into the San Francisco, not the bay, beyond the bay, and it's very rough water, and it was just too much. I fed the whales the whole time, leaning over the edge.

所以，给关系注入新鲜感的另一种方法是庆祝伴侣的成功。我们很多人以为关系就是在低谷时支持对方，你说关注高光时刻可能更重要？

So another way to introduce freshness in a relationship is to find ways to celebrate a partner's successes. Many of us think that relationships are about supporting a partner in bad times. You say it might be even more important to focus on good times?

是的。研究显示，庆祝伴侣的成功比低谷时支持更重要，尽管后者也重要。我妻子研究“高敏感人群”，我像她帮我做关系研究一样，也跟她合作。我第一次读到“庆祝伴侣成功很重要”那篇论文时，她刚把一篇论文投给一家顶级期刊，我是共同作者。

Yeah. There's research showing that celebrating your partner's successes matters even more than supporting when things go badly, although that also matters. My wife studies something called the highly sensitive person, and I collaborate with her on that just like she collaborates with me on our relationship research. Well, the very first time I read the paper talking about the role of it being important to celebrate your partner's successes, She had recently submitted a paper to a very top scientific journal. I was a co author.

那基本是她的论文，我们觉得录用机会不大，但还是试了。她回家前，我收到编辑邮件，说审稿人和编辑都很喜欢，决定发表。于是我做了张海报贴在大门上，让她一进门就能看到。

It was basically her paper. And we thought it had a poor chance of getting accepted, but we gave it a chance. Before she came home, I got an email from the editor saying the reviewers loved it, I loved it, this is a great paper, we're gonna publish it. And so I made a poster of that and put it on the front door for when she came home.

所以她一进门就看到那张大海报，宣布她的论文被期刊接受了？

And so the first thing she saw when she came home was this big poster saying that her paper had been accepted in the journal?

对。

Yes.

我想，除了论文被接收她肯定高兴，那一刻她更听到的是：你为她如此开心，甚至特意花心思庆祝。

And and I think even beyond the fact that she must have been very happy about the paper being accepted, what she's also hearing in that moment is that you are so happy for her that you've gone to some lengths to celebrate it.

没错。那晚我们过得特别开心，可想而知。

Yes. Yeah. That's true. We had a great night, as you can imagine.

亚瑟·阿隆是石溪大学的心理学家。阿特，感谢你今天来到《隐藏的大脑》。

Arthur Aron is a psychologist at Stony Brook University. Art, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

很荣幸，非常感谢你，尚卡尔。

My pleasure. Thank you so much, Shankar.

《隐藏的大脑》由Hidden Brain Media制作。我们的音频制作团队包括安妮·墨菲·保罗、克里斯汀·黄、劳拉·夸勒尔、瑞安·卡茨、奥顿·巴恩斯、安德鲁·查德威克和尼克·伍德伯里。塔拉·博伊尔是我们的执行制片人。我是《隐藏的大脑》的执行编辑。今天的对话是我们“关系2.0”系列的最后一集。

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Quarrell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brains executive editor. Today's conversation was the final episode in our relationships two point o series.

如果你错过了本系列的其他任何一集，可以在《隐藏的大脑》播客或hiddenbrain.org上找到。我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔姆。回头见。

If you missed any of the other episodes in the series, you can find them on the Hidden Brain podcast or at hiddenbrain.org. I'm Shankar Vedantham. See you soon.

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Ah, DSW, birthplace of the humblebrag. Here, the shoes are so good, no one would ever know how little you paid if you didn't go telling everyone that is. And with never ending options for every style, mood, and occasion, all at really great prices, we'll definitely give you something to brag about. So go ahead. Stock up on fresh sneakers from your favorite brands, or try those boots you always secretly knew you could pull off.

在DSW门店或dsw.com找到适合你的鞋子，价格也让你的预算满意。让我们给你惊喜。

Find the shoes that get you at prices that get your budget at DSW Stores or at dsw.com. Let us surprise you.