你生命中最美好的年华

这里是《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。在奥斯卡·王尔德小说《道林·格雷的画像》的某个电影版本中，演员赫德·哈特菲尔德长久凝视着自己的一幅肖像画。画中是一位洋溢着健康与活力的年轻人。当道林·格雷思忖着自己将如何随岁月老去而画像永葆青春时，一个奇怪的愿望掠过他的脑海。

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. In one of the movie versions of the Oscar Wilde novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the actor, Hurd Hatfield, stares longingly at a painting of himself. The picture shows a young man bursting with health and vitality. As Dorian Gray reflects on how he is going to change with age while his picture will stay the same, a strange wish passes through his head.

要是只有画像会变老，而我能永远保持现在的模样该多好。为此我愿意付出一切。世间万物我都在所不惜。我愿为此献出灵魂。在这个故事里，道林·格雷与魔鬼达成了契约。

Only the picture could change and I could be always what I am now. For that I would give everything. There is nothing in the whole world I would not give. I would give my soul for that. In the story, Dorian Gray makes a pact with the devil.

画像开始代替他承受岁月的痕迹。画作的腐朽不仅源于时间流逝，更映射出角色诸多恶行带来的道德败坏。与此同时，道林·格雷本人却永远保持着青春容颜。奥斯卡·王尔德在十九世纪末创作了这个故事。

The painting starts to age in his place. The physical degradation of the picture isn't only about the passing years. The picture takes on the corruption of the character's many misdeeds. Meanwhile, Dorian Gray himself stays eternally youthful. Oscar Wilde wrote the story in the late nineteenth century.

电影上映于二十世纪中叶。而二十一世纪对青春痴迷的程度与过去并无二致。电影、电视节目和时尚产业依然在青春圣坛前顶礼膜拜。全球人们每年花费数百亿美元购买药水、注射针剂和接受手术，只为延缓衰老迹象。各大网站的点击诱饵广告不断展示昔日明星如今的容貌。

The movie came out in the middle of the twentieth century. The twenty first century is not that different in its preoccupations from its predecessors. Movies, TV shows, and the fashion industry still worship at the altar of youth. People around the world spend billions of dollars on potions and injections and surgical interventions to keep the signs of age at bay. Clickbait ads on many websites show you what the youthful stars of yesteryears look like today.

传递的信息再清楚不过：衰老是可怕的。变老是一场恐怖秀。本周《隐藏的大脑》将带来可能改变所有人生命认知的惊人新研究。如果你个子矮，你永远不懂高个子的感受；

The message couldn't be clearer. Aging is a terrible thing. Growing old is a horror show. This week on Hidden Brain Astonishing new research about aging that could change the way everyone thinks about life. If you're short, you don't know what it feels like to be tall.

如果你是白人，你无法体会黑人的经历。许多身份特征都是如此——它们与生俱来。但有一种身份注定随时间改变：今天的年轻人终将成为明日的长者。

If you're white, you won't know what it's like to be black. Lots of aspects of identity are like this. They are fixed. But there is one form of identity that is certain to change with time. Young people today will become old people tomorrow.

尽管衰老不可避免，但随之而来的心理与文化包袱让我们多数人避而不谈。在流行文化中，变老意味着被淘汰。许多长者发现衰老使他们成为透明人。斯坦福大学心理学家劳拉·卡斯滕森专注研究衰老课题，她发现了某些令人震惊的现象。

But while growing old is inevitable, it comes with so much psychological and cultural baggage that lots of us avoid thinking about it. In popular culture, getting old means getting kicked out. Lots of elderly people discover that aging makes them invisible to others. At Stanford University, psychologist Laura Karstensen has focused her attention on the topic of aging. She has discovered some astonishing things.

劳拉·卡斯滕森，欢迎来到《隐藏的大脑》。

Laura Karstensen, welcome to Hidden Brain.

谢谢，很荣幸参与节目。

Thank you. Pleasure to be with you.

劳拉，让我们回到1974年你21岁的时候。像许多刚成年的年轻人一样，你当时很少思考衰老问题。你如何描述那个阶段的人生重心？

Laura, I want to take you back to 1974 when you were 21 years old. Like many young people on the cusp of adulthood, you didn't give much thought to aging. What would you say your priorities were at this time of your life?

我当时的生活重心是约会、探索、思考未来的工作和可能性，以及我会住在哪里、第二天、下周、明年要做什么。我对未来想了很多，却从未考虑过衰老的问题。

My priorities were dating, exploring, and thinking about future jobs and possibilities and where I would live and what I was going to do the next day, the next week, the next year. I thought a lot about my future. I didn't think at all about aging.

那年某个夜晚，你的生活发生了剧变。我了解到你和一些朋友当时正要去听音乐会。劳拉，告诉我发生了什么。

Your life changed very dramatically one night that year. I understand that you and some friends were going to a concert. Tell me what happened, Laura.

是的。我在餐厅当服务员，打烊后我们一群人决定去听音乐会。地点在城外约一小时车程的地方，我们分乘几辆车出发。音乐会结束后，有人说‘我们回去打台球吧’，于是我们又分乘不同的车开始返程。

Yeah. I worked as a waitress in a restaurant and a bunch of us after closing decided we would go to a concert. It was about an hour outside of town and we divided up into cars, drove out, and we went to this concert. At the end of the evening, we said, Well, let's go back and play some pool. So we divided up again into different cars and started, to head back to town.

我碰巧坐进了一个几乎不认识的男人的车，他当时醉得很厉害。我很快意识到这点并要求他停车。记得在他不断加速时，我把手撑在仪表盘上——那是我在路边沟渠里醒来前最后的记忆。他开车冲出道路，翻滚下堤岸，车子翻转了两三圈。

I happened to get in the car with a man I hardly knew who was, very drunk. And, I caught on to that pretty quickly and asked him to stop. I remember putting my hand out on the dashboard as he was going ever faster, and that was the last thing I remembered before waking up in a ditch on the side of the road. He drove off the road and rolled down an embankment. The car turned two or three times over.

我断了二十多根骨头，左腿伤势最严重。股骨断成两截，膝盖和脚踝多处骨折，肋骨也有裂痕。脑震荡，面部多处撕裂伤，全身都是伤。

And I broke about twenty plus bones, but my left leg was injured most badly. My femur cracked in half and I had many other fractures through the knee and the ankle. And I cracked ribs. I had a concussion, lots of facial lacerations, lots and lots of injuries.

我猜接下来肯定经历了一系列手术，还有相当长时间的住院治疗吧。

I'm assuming there were a bunch of surgeries that must have followed this, and sort of very intense hospitalization here.

没错。最初两周他们无法手术，因为我伤势太重不能麻醉。那是最难熬的两周。后来开始手术时，他们主要是把我的腿悬吊在空中——就像卡通片里那种病床画面，腿被高高吊起以保持笔直。

Yes. For the first couple weeks, they couldn't do, surgery because I had been injured so badly, they couldn't give me anesthesia. So those were the toughest two weeks. And then, they began surgery, but mostly they just kept my leg hanging in the air. It's that cartoonish image you have of someone laying in a hospital bed and the leg is being held upwards, and that would keep it somewhat straight.

劳拉，这段时间里是否有人担心你挺不过来？听起来这次车祸极其严重，伤势也确实非常危险。

Was there a period in this window, Laura, where people were afraid that you might not make it? I mean, it sounds like this was a very, very serious crash and the injuries were really serious.

是的。当时确实有人认为我可能撑不过去。我记得自己某个瞬间甚至希望就此解脱。现在回想起来，那时觉得有些事比死亡更可怕。但我在昏迷与清醒间反复挣扎，最终开始康复。

Yes. Certainly, there was the expectation that I may not make it. I remember at a point during that time I wished I wouldn't make it. In hindsight, I remember thinking there are things worse than dying. But I kept becoming unconscious but then coming out of it again in those early days and eventually started to heal.

我很好奇这段时间你的生活重心是否改变了。你提到21岁时和所有同龄人一样，关注下周、周末的安排，考虑感情生活，规划职业发展。

I'm wondering if your priorities changed around this time. You know, you talked about how your priorities at, age 21 were the priorities of anyone who was age 21. You're thinking about what's happening next week, next weekend. You're maybe thinking about your dating life. You're thinking about your career.

嗯哼。那次车祸后，你的世界观是如何改变的？

Mhmm. How did that worldview change as a result of the crash?

和许多经历过濒死体验的人一样，我彻底改变了对生命的看法。突然间，我不再把生命视为理所当然。生活不再只是为了享乐、娱乐和探索。我第一次真正意识到时间的宝贵。

I, like many people who have these near death experiences, completely changed how I thought about life. And suddenly life was something I didn't take for granted anymore. And life wasn't to be lived for fun and entertainment and exploration. I, for the first time, really saw how valuable time was.

劳拉的社交圈也发生了变化。广泛的熟人关系被聚焦在一小群家人和密友身上的聚光灯所取代。

Laura's social world changed too. A large circle of acquaintances was replaced by a bright spotlight on a small group of family and close friends.

对此我充满感激，因为身边都是真正关心我的人。我的父母来看望我，兄弟姐妹也来了，父亲每天都来。如果没有这些与外界的联系，没有意识到自己被一群关心我的人包围着，我真不知道该怎么办。

And for that I felt incredible gratitude to be surrounded by people who really cared about me. And my parents came to visit, my siblings came to visit, my dad came every day. And I don't know what I would have done without that connection to the outside world and without the knowledge that I was embedded in a group of people who cared.

跟我讲讲你的康复过程。我知道你因这些伤势在医院住了好几个月。

Tell me about your recovery. I understand that you were in the hospital for several months as you were recovering from these injuries.

我记得大约有一个半月的时间，除了自己的伤势和受伤有多严重外，我几乎没想过其他事情。但后来我开始有点‘清醒’过来，可以说，我开始感到无聊。当你平躺着，一条腿吊在空中时，每天能做的事情实在太有限了。我真的非常无聊。

The way I remember this, it was about a month and a half before I thought about much of anything other than my injuries and badly I had been hurt. But then I started to kind of wake up, if you will, and I started to get bored. When you lay flat on your back with your leg up in the air, strung up in the air, that there's just so much you can do day to day. And I got really bored.

劳拉的父亲是位教授，他为她提供了一种摆脱无聊的方法。

Laura's father, who was a professor, offered her a way out of her boredom.

他一直希望我上大学。在那之前我还没上过大学。出车祸时我21岁。当我抱怨无聊时，他建议我不妨选一门课。我当时有点抗拒这个想法。

He had always wanted me to go to college. I had not gone to college up to that point. I was 21 in this accident. And he suggested when I complained about being bored that maybe I should take a course. And I was kind of resistant to it.

他说：‘真的，随便选一门课。’他会去录下讲座带给我。于是，作为一名平躺着、腿吊在空中的住院病人，我选修了心理学导论。

And he said, Really, just name a course. And he would go tape the lectures and bring them to me. So I took introductory psychology as a hospital patient laying flat on my back with my leg tied in the air.

等等。所以你父亲真的去心理学课堂上录音，然后把磁带带回来给你听？

Wait. So your dad actually sat in the psychology classes and recorded them and brought you back the cassettes to listen to?

我父亲是个圣人。真的。顺便说一句，我父亲是位生物物理学家。当他第一次问我想要学什么时，我说，哦，不学物理。他说，没关系，学什么都行。

My dad was a saint. Yes. My dad was a biophysicist, by the way. And when he first asked me what I wanted to take, was like saying, Oh, not physics. And he said, No, anything.

什么都行。所以他真的带着录音机去听了每一堂心理学导论课，把课程录下来带到医院给我。

Anything. And so yes, he went to every lecture of introductory psychology with a tape recorder and tape recorded the lectures and brought them to me in the hospital.

哇。是的。所以你在住院期间，护士给你安排了个任务，某种程度上也算是个心理学实践——让你和同病房的一些老年患者交谈。劳拉，她们为什么让你做这个？

Wow. Yeah. So while you were in the hospital, the nurses assigned you a task, which was also in some ways perhaps a psychology workshop of talking with some of the elderly patients who were in the same ward as you. Why did they ask you to do that, Laura?

嗯，我和护士们熟络起来了。你知道的，日复一日面对同样的人。我们开始有些交流，我向她们抱怨觉得无聊。她们就说，我们有个任务给你。骨科病房有很多老年女性患者，我们打算把她们安排和你同屋。

Well, I had gotten to know the nurses. You know, again, you're with the same people day after day. And so we had begun to talk a little bit, and I complained to them about being bored. And they said, We've got an assignment for you. There are a lot of older women who come into the orthopedic ward, and we're going to put them in this room with you.

我住的是四人间病房。你的任务就是和她们聊天，让她们保持清醒以免出现意识混乱等问题。所以这个工作就交给你了。于是两件事同时发生了：一是我在学心理学导论，二是我被指派去和老年女性交谈。

I was on a four bed ward. Your job is to talk to them and keep them alert so they don't get confused and so on. So, we're giving you that job. So, two things happened. One, I'm taking introductory psychology, and the second one is I've now been assigned to talk to older women.

现在很难说这到底是为了帮助你的心理干预，还是为了帮助那些交谈对象的心理干预，或许两者兼而有之。

Now, can't tell whether this was a psychological intervention to help you or a psychological intervention to help the people you were talking with, but perhaps it was both at the same time.

其实这主要是为了帮我。她们是想送给我一份工作当礼物。

Well, really, this was about helping me. They were trying to give me a gift of a job.

从你和这些老年患者的相处中，你收获了什么吗？

Is there anything you glean from the time you spent with these elderly patients in the ward?

太多了。这段经历让我对衰老有了深刻认知。首先，她们的生活经历、性格特征和人生观差异巨大，彻底打破了我对老年人固有的刻板印象。有位同屋的老太太是家族女族长，总有些年轻人坐在她床边聊天。也有些女性非常忧郁，处境艰难。

So many things. I learned so much from this experience about aging. For one, their lives were so different from one another and their personalities and their outlooks on life were so different from one another that to the extent that I had stereotypes about what older people were like, they went quite far in challenging those stereotypes. One woman that I shared a room with was a matriarch of her family, and these young kids would come in and sit on the bed and talk to her. There were other women who were really sad, really in a tough situation.

我记得病房里有位女士不得不卖掉房子来支付医疗费才能出院，最后只能去养老院而不是回家——纯粹因为经济原因。还有位女士整天躺在床上盯着天花板。医生们进来时总是围在我床边，千方百计帮我康复，为我的未来着想，而出门时只会对她挥挥手说'嗨，莎蒂'就离开，几乎不怎么关注她。

I remember one woman in the hospital room who had to sell her home in order to pay the hospital bill before they would discharge her, and so she had to be transferred to a nursing home instead of back to her own home. And it was all for financial reasons. There was another woman who just kind of laid in her bed and stared at the ceiling all day. The physicians would come in, they'd surround my bed, they'd be trying to do all sorts of things to help rehabilitate me, get me better, thinking about my future, and then they would just wave to her on the way out the door and say, Hey, Sadie, and just keep going. They didn't pay much attention to her at all.

在与这些同样终日卧床、由他人照料的老妇人共度漫长时光后，我获得了另一个洞见——那就是我们之间竟有如此多的共同点。我当时21岁，而这些女性已七八十岁甚至可能九十多岁。但我们都完全依赖他人满足所有需求，从进食、保持清洁到任何社交互动。我的意思是，我们都处于绝对依赖状态。

There was another insight I had from spending so much time with these older women who were also spending all their days in bed being cared for by other people. And that insight was just how much we had in common. So, I was 21 and these women were in their 70s and 80s and probably 90s. But we were all dependent on other people for everything, from being fed to staying clean to having any social interaction. I mean, we were dependent on.

突然间我也具备了这些曾被我视为老年人或病患特质的特征。而现在这成了我的现实。这种认知转变让我开始思考世界如何塑造我们的身份。关于衰老，我最初的领悟是：虽然衰老是生物过程，但它被社会世界所驱动和塑造。

So suddenly I shared these characteristics that I would have thought of as characteristics of old people or sick people. But now it was me too. And so that also changed. And it made me think about the world and how the world comes to shape who we are. The one insight I had about aging or at least was at the beginnings of my thinking about aging was that aging is a biological process, but it's driven, shaped by the social world.

正是这个洞见促使我对衰老科学产生了浓厚兴趣。

And that was the insight that led me to be interested in the science of aging.

劳拉在医院度过了四个月。出院后她先坐了一段时间轮椅，之后又拄拐杖数年。虽然身体逐渐康复，那段住院经历却深刻影响了她。她完成大学学业，进入研究生院，最终决定成为研究衰老科学的学者。她即将发现一个不仅影响老年人，更关乎每个人生命各阶段的现象。

Laura spent four months in the hospital. After she was discharged, she was in a wheelchair for a while and then walked with a cane for several years after that. While she gradually recovered from her injuries, the hospital experience stayed with her. She finished college, went to graduate school and decided to become a researcher who studies the science of aging. She was soon to discover a phenomenon that affects not just the elderly but everyone at every stage of life.

广告后继续。您正在收听《隐藏大脑》。我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。这里是《隐藏大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。

That's when we come back. You are listening to Hidden Brain. I am Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

劳拉·卡斯滕森是斯坦福大学心理学家，斯坦福长寿中心创始主任。年轻时她曾在车祸中受重伤，住院康复期间，周围都是饱受病痛折磨的老年患者。这段经历促使她专攻衰老科学。

Laura Karstensen is a psychologist at Stanford University. She's the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. When she was a young woman, she sustained some serious injuries in a car crash. As she recovered in the hospital, she found herself surrounded by elderly patients with many infirmities. The experience helped her decide to specialize in the science of aging.

劳拉，当你1980年代初作为心理学家开始职业生涯时，科学界对衰老已有共识。是否可以说那个共识相当悲观？

Laura, when you started your career as a psychologist in the early 1980s, there was a scientific consensus about what it meant to grow old. Was it fair to say that that consensus was a grim one?

确实非常悲观。衰老当时被视为对几乎所有人心理健康的严重威胁。我读研时有本临床心理学教材——这是本关于精神病理学的教科书——里面章节安排是：焦虑症一章，抑郁症一章，药物滥用一章，最后单独列了'老年期'一章。

Oh, it was grim indeed. Aging was considered to be a serious threat to virtually everyone's mental health. There was a clinical psychology textbook that I had when I was in graduate school. So this was a textbook on psychopathology. They had a chapter on anxiety, a chapter on depression, a chapter on drug abuse, and then at the end, a chapter on old age.

也就是说老年本身就被视为病态。

So old age itself was considered pathological.

我猜科学家们谈论老年病理时，指的是认知功能衰退、记忆损伤、抑郁焦虑等一系列问题吧？

And I'm assuming that when scientists were talking about the pathologies of old age, they were referring to things like declines in cognitive function, impairments in memory, depression, anxiety a whole range of problems.

整个范围。要知道，当时人们还认为阿尔茨海默病是衰老的必然结果。因此，认知障碍会开始并最终发展为痴呆。所以这就是那些寿命很长的人的命运。

The whole range. And you know, at the time, people also believed that Alzheimer's disease was the inevitable consequence of aging. So, that cognitive impairment would begin and would eventually progress to dementia. So that that was the fate of people who lived very long lives.

那么，在你开始学术工作后不久，国家心理健康研究所资助了一项评估精神疾病患病率的研究。它发现了什么？劳拉，这对你产生了什么影响？

So, soon after you started working as an academic, the National Institute of Mental Health funded a study to assess the prevalence of psychiatric disorders. What did it find? And what was its impact on you, Laura?

是的。这是20世纪80年代初进行的一项关于心理健康的流行病学调查区域研究。它根本不是一项关于老年的研究。这项研究的设计目的是让研究人员能够更好地估计社区中不同形式的心理病理学。因此，他们所做的就是让训练有素的临床医生进入社区，采访全国多个不同地理区域的代表性人群样本。

Yes. This was an epidemiological catchment area study of mental health conducted in the early 1980s. And it was not a study designed about old age at all. It was a study that was designed so that the researchers could get a better estimate of different forms of psychopathology in the community. And so, what they did was to have trained clinicians go out into the communities and interview a representative sample of people in a number of different geographical areas around the country.

所以这是当时这个国家可能也是全世界进行的最好的心理健康流行病学研究。其结果为他们提供了关于焦虑、抑郁、恐惧症等患病率的相当好的估计。在这些关于患病率的研究结果中，有一个发现是，除了痴呆症外，所有形式的心理病理学在老年人中的患病率都低于中年或年轻人。这彻底颠覆了心理病理学、心理健康问题、抑郁、焦虑是衰老过程中不可避免的一部分的观念。

So it was the best epidemiological study of mental health that had been done in this country, probably anywhere at the time. The results of it were to give them pretty good estimates of the prevalence of anxiety, depression, phobias, etc, etc. And one of the findings that was embedded in this set of findings about prevalence was that the prevalence of every form of psychopathology, with the exception of the dementias, was observed at lower rates in older people than middle aged or younger people. And this really turned on its head the idea that psychopathology, mental health problems, depression, anxiety were part and parcel of growing old.

国家心理健康研究所的研究正在研究与精神疾病相关的情绪。劳拉希望拓宽视野。年轻人、中年人和老年人的日常情绪是怎样的？为了找出答案，她进行了一项研究，测量了18岁至94岁人群的日常情绪。

The National Institute of Mental Health Study was studying emotions associated with psychiatric disorders. Laura wanted to broaden the picture. What were the everyday emotions experienced by people who were young, middle aged, and elderly? To find out, she ran a study that measured the daily emotions of people ranging in age from 18 to 94.

我们研究了各种积极情绪和消极情绪。我们想了解日常生活中的情绪体验是什么样的。所以，我们从这项关于心理健康问题的大规模研究中知道，老年人的患病率较低，但我们不太了解老年时期的日常情绪生活是什么样的。因此，当时我们设计了一项研究，使用了当时可能是现在仍然是研究日常生活中情绪体验的黄金标准。我们给人们配备了寻呼机，电子寻呼机，他们携带了一周。

We studied a whole range of positive emotions and negative emotions. We wanted to understand what emotional experience in day to day life was like. So, we knew from this large study of mental health problems that they had lower rates of that, but we didn't know a lot about what day to day emotional life was like in old age. And so, at the time, we designed a study using what was then the gold standard probably still is, of studying emotional experience in day to day life. And we gave people pagers, electronic pagers, and they carried them for a week.

在七天的每一天的随机时间，我们呼叫他们，并要求他们告诉我们他们在19种不同情绪中的每一种情绪的感受程度。有些是积极情绪，如快乐、幸福、平静。有些是消极情绪，如愤怒、悲伤、恐惧。因此，我们现在有了关于个人情绪生活的详细记录。

And at random times during each of seven days, we paged them and asked them to tell us the extent to which they were feeling each of 19 different emotions. Some were positive emotions like joy, happiness, calm. Some were negative emotions like anger, sadness, fear. And so, we had this detailed record now for individuals about their emotional lives.

所以国家心理健康研究所的研究发现，事实上，老年人并没有遭受更高水平的心理病理学困扰。你研究的是，可以说是更普通的情绪，日常情绪。在年轻人、中年人和老年人的日常情绪方面，你发现了什么？

So the NIMH study was finding that older people, in fact, were not suffering from higher levels of psychopathology. You were studying, if you will, more ordinary emotions, everyday emotions. What did you find in terms of the everyday emotions of the young, the middle aged, and the elderly?

我们发现，随着年龄的增长，人们的消极情绪越来越少。报告的愤怒、恐惧、厌恶更少，而快乐、喜悦、平静的情绪同样多。这与关于心理病理学的这些发现也是一致的。现在我们有了来自社区的正常的健康人群，我们观察到了类似的情况。

We found that increasingly older people had fewer negative emotions. Less anger reported, less fear, less disgust, and just as much happiness, joy, calm. And so this was consistent with these findings about psychopathology as well. Now we had a normal healthy population from the community, and we were observing something similar.

现在，考虑到我们听到的所有关于衰老是一场恐怖秀的说法，这一定让人有点摸不着头脑。你有没有担心过你的数据有什么问题？

Now, it must have felt a bit like a head scratcher given all that we had heard about how aging is a horror show. Did you ever worry that you had something wrong in the data?

不仅是我们对此感到担忧，整个领域都难以置信。因此，公众某种程度上并不买账。更重要的是，科学界非常渴望仔细审查这些发现，找出问题所在。而在科学领域，没有比这更好的事情了。

It wasn't just us who worried about it. It was the whole field that was in disbelief. So, the general public kind of didn't buy it. More importantly, the scientific community was very eager to scrutinize these findings and figure out what was wrong. And in science, nothing better can happen than that.

当一项发现让许多其他实验室、许多其他研究者表示‘我不太相信，我要从这个角度看看。也许是X因素导致的，也许是Y因素导致的。’当时有一种解释是，人们报告自己感到快乐是因为他们缺乏足够的认知能力去反复思考并产生大量负面情绪。

Having a finding that lots of other laboratories, lots of other investigators say, I don't quite believe it. I'm going to look at it this way. Maybe X explains it. Maybe Y explains it. So, there was one alternative that people were reporting that they were happy because they didn't have the cognitive ability to really ruminate and generate lots of negative emotions.

如果你记不起昨天有多沮丧、别人如何对待你，你就不会因此感到难受。所以一种观点认为认知损伤实际上导致了更多快乐。许多研究探讨了从执行功能、教育到智力与这种积极生活态度之间的关系。结果恰恰相反——执行功能、认知能力和教育水平最高的人群，这种效应在他们身上表现得最为明显。

If you can't remember how upset you were yesterday and how people treated you, then you're not going to feel bad about it. So one was that cognitive impairment was actually leading to more happiness. Lots of studies have looked at the relationship between everything from executive functioning and education to intelligence and this positive outlook on life. And it's the reverse. So people with the highest levels of executive function and cognitive abilities and education, those are the ones showing this effect the strongest.

于是我们排除了这种解释。随后精神病学领域提出了‘隐匿性抑郁’假说，认为老年人其实极度抑郁，只是通过掩饰来避免他人察觉，更重要的是自我欺骗。我们和其他研究者通过脑部扫描实验，观察人们体验不同情绪时大脑各区域的激活情况，结果再次证明无法用激活不足来解释这种现象。

So, we ruled that one out. Then there was a hypothesis generated by many in the field of psychiatry that was called masked depression. That is really older people were terribly depressed but they were covering that up because it was a way of keeping it from others but more importantly fooling themselves. So, we did studies and others did studies where we would have people experience different kinds of emotions while they were in brain scanners and be able to look at activation of different regions of the brain. And again, you couldn't explain it through a lack of activation.

大量研究试图用认知损伤或脑损伤来解释或调和这个现象，但最终都指向其他原因。随着每项研究的推进，这个发现变得愈发确凿：总体而言，老年人在日常生活中比年轻人更快乐。

And a lot of research was done to try to explain or reconcile that this was really just cognitive impairment or brain impairment. It was really about something else. But with every study, it became clear that this was a highly reliable finding. Older people were happier in their day to day lives on balance than younger people were.

最终这些证据的重量说服了怀疑者，老年人比年轻人更快乐的现象被称为‘衰老悖论’。劳拉，这个悖论指的是什么？

So eventually the weight of all this evidence convinced even the skeptics and the finding that older people were in fact happier than younger people was dubbed the paradox of aging. What was the paradox, Laura?

这个悖论在于：衰老伴随着许多糟糕的变化。认知上，人们常感到记忆力衰退、注意力难以集中，更不用说身体机能的退化。多数人会经历更多病痛，所有这些都在恶化。

Well, paradox really was that aging entails a lot of bad things. You know, cognitively, people often do change, feel that memory isn't as good, attention is tougher to keep in focus. Not to mention the physical changes with age. Most of us experience more aches and pains. So all these things are changing.

在社会层面，人们不再像过去那样重视我们。老年人常提到‘隐形感’——人们几乎视而不见地从身边走过。既然衰老带来这么多负面变化，老年人怎么可能在情绪状态上反而更好呢？

And then we're in the societal context. People aren't taking us as seriously as they used to. You know, there's an invisibility people talk about when they get old that people walk almost right through them and they're just not noticed. And so if all of that's happening with aging and there it is, how could it be that older people are emotionally doing well?

这确实像个谜团。毕竟社会地位、身体健康、社交网络都可能萎缩，社交参与度会下降。按常理推测，如果这些优势都在减少——社会地位降低、健康恶化、社交圈缩小、社交活动减少——人们的心理健康应该更差才对，然而心理幸福感似乎反而提升了。

And it does seem like a mystery because of course, you know, social status, physical health, know, friendship networks can become more limited, social engagement can decline. And you would think that if all those things happened, you know, if if you had less social status, less physical health Mhmm. A smaller network, less levels, you know, lower levels of social engagement, you would predict that the people would then have worse psychological health. And yet psychological well-being seemed to be improving.

是的。这挑战了我们关于幸福来源的所有基本假设，对吧？幸福本该来自众多朋友、光明未来。而这里，我们越接近生命终点，却...

Yeah. It challenged all of our basic assumptions about what gives us happiness, right? It's having a lot of friends. It's having a bright future. And here, you know, the older we get, the closer we are to death.

你知道吗，人们怎么可能变得更快乐呢？

You know, how could it possibly be that people get happier?

当你试图解开这个谜团时，某种程度上，收集到的数据与许多人对老龄化的直觉和文化信仰大相径庭。劳拉，有一天你在采访一对年长的兄妹时，偶然找到了这个谜题的答案。

So as you were trying to tease apart this mystery, in some ways there's the the fact that the data coming in was so at odds with the intuitions and cultural beliefs that many people had about aging. You stumbled on an answer to that mystery one day as you were interviewing a pair of elderly siblings, Laura.

是的。有一天我采访了住在旧金山一套公寓里的两姐妹。那栋公寓里住了很多老年人。她们告诉我，随着年龄增长，失去了许多好朋友和亲人，她们有多难过。我问她们，那新朋友呢？

Yes. One day I interviewed two sisters who lived together in an apartment in San Francisco. It was an apartment that housed a lot of older people. And they were talking to me about how sad they were that they had lost many good friends and relatives as they had gotten older. And I said to them, What about new friends?

这栋楼里住了很多人。你们会主动接触他们吗？想交新朋友吗？我记得她们用一种茫然的眼神看着我，好像在说你不懂。她们说，劳拉，我们没时间应付那些人。

There are a lot of people who live here in this building. Do you reach out to them? Do you want to make new friends? And I remember them giving me this kind of blank stare like you just don't get it. And they said, Laura, we don't have time for those people.

我看着她们，第一反应是，你们没时间？得了吧，你们不是有大把时间吗？后来我离开时，她们很亲切地送我出门。但回家后，我记得坐在餐桌前，望着旧金山的天际线。就在那一刻，我突然顿悟了——问题的核心是时间。

And I looked at them and first thought, You don't have time? Come on, you've got a lot of time on your hands, don't you? And then I went away, and they were kind enough to send me off and be sweet to me. But I went home, and I remember sitting at my dining room table, staring out at the San Francisco skyline. And it was this moment where I feel like I had kind of an epiphany where I said, it's about time.

我意识到这不是指日常时间，而是生命中剩余的时间。如果我们的时间视野在变化，随着年龄增长而缩短，那么我们的目标可能会系统性改变。那个晚上之后，我的生活和研究彻底改变了。

And I realized that it wasn't about time in the day, it was about time left in life. And if our time horizons are changing, if they're getting shorter as we grow older, then our goals may systematically change. And everything in my life and my research changed after that evening.

劳拉的顿悟很快带来了第二个洞察时刻。她意识到自己的生活就是那对兄妹所展示现象的典型案例。她回想起21岁时濒临死亡的经历，记得当时自己的优先级和社交圈如何发生了巨大变化。

Laura's epiphany was quickly followed by a second moment of insight. She realized her own life contained a case study of the very phenomenon the elderly siblings had demonstrated to her. She thought back to the time she had come close to dying at the age of 21. She remembered how her priorities, her social world, had changed dramatically.

我不知道自己能否熬过那几个月的康复期。那时我对探索充满无限可能的大千世界毫无兴趣。但我确实在乎某些事——这不是情感淡漠，而是对重要与否的极度聚焦。

I didn't know that I was going to make it through those months of recuperating. And the idea of exploring this very large world full of possibilities was of no interest to me either during that time. But I did care about things. It wasn't a flattening of emotions. It was a very sharp focus of what matters and what doesn't.

这完全与时间相关。剩余的时间。

And it's very much tied to time. Time left.

稍后回来，我们将探讨从青年到老年始终塑造我们的强大力量。您正在收听《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·维丹塔。这里是《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·维丹塔。

When we come back, the powerful force that shapes us throughout our lives from youth to old age. You are listening to Hidden Brain. I am Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I am Shankar Vedanta.

劳拉·卡斯滕森是斯坦福大学的心理学家，著有《漫长而光明的未来：在寿命延长的时代中的幸福、健康与财务安全》一书。在研究老年人惊人的情绪韧性时，劳拉发现了一种强大的潜在力量，这种力量塑造了她所研究个体的世界观。这种力量与不同年龄、不同人生阶段的人如何感知自己剩余的生命时间有关。

Laura Karstensen is a psychologist at Stanford University. She is the author of A Long, Bright Future Happiness, Health, and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity. While conducting research on the surprising emotional resilience of elderly people, Laura identified a powerful sub terranean force that was shaping the outlook of the individual she studied. This force had to do with how people of different ages and people at different life stages perceive the amount of time they have left in their lives.

据我们所知，人类是唯一在生命大部分时间里都能意识到自身死亡的物种。其他如大象、狮子等动物或许能感知死亡临近，但我们会在一生中持续预估剩余时间。多数时候这是潜意识行为，偶尔会有事件触发死亡意识——比如朋友离世、恐怖袭击或战争。

Humans, to the best of our knowledge, are the only species that appreciates our mortality throughout most of our lives. So there are other species like elephants, lions. They probably know when they are dying. But we anticipate how much time we have left throughout the course of our lives. And we do this subconsciously most of the time and then every once in a while events occur that prime mortality could be the death of a friend or a terrorist attack, you know, a war.

某些事件会提醒我们：生命有限，永生无望，时光并非无穷无尽。随着年龄增长，这类提醒愈发频繁，促使我们以不同方式计量和珍视时间。

Something happens that reminds us that we're mortal. We're not going to live forever. We don't have all the time in the world. And as we get older, we increasingly experience those kinds of reminders. And so we come to take account of time and value time differently.

随着时间视野的变化，人生目标也会系统性改变。

Goals change systematically as our time horizons change.

让我们更深入探讨这点。以你在斯坦福教授的大学生为例，年轻人拥有漫长人生在前方。他们的时间视野如何影响思维方式，劳拉？

So let's delve into that with a little more detail. When we are younger, take for example the undergraduates that you're teaching at Stanford. Obviously, are young people. They have their entire lives in front of them. What are their time horizons, and how does it affect how they're thinking, Laura?

这很有趣。我们最初认为年轻人常思考未来，且将未来视为极其漫长。但研究发现更准确的解释是：年轻人根本不认为时间存在限制。他们不是以剩余时间来衡量未来，而是感觉未来浩瀚无垠。

It's an interesting question because when we began this, we thought younger people think about their futures a lot, and they think of they envision their futures as very, very long. It turns out the more we've studied this that a clearer answer, a more accurate answer, that younger people don't think there are any constraints on time. So, don't think about the future so much in terms of how much left there is. It's that it's just vast. It's abundant.

年轻人无需考虑时间问题。真正转变发生在年长后，我们开始更多思考剩余时间。但对年轻人而言，他们本质上拥有全世界的时间。

They don't need to think about time. And it's really the shift as we grow older where we come to think about time more, how much time we have left. But for young people, they have all the time in the world essentially.

那么这种随时间变化的视野如何影响生活选择？之前提到过对社交关系的影响。劳拉，时间视野收缩如何改变我们的社交关系？

So as we get older, this shifting time horizon has a number of different kinds of effects on our lives and our choices. We talked briefly about this before, but one of the effects is on our social relationships. What is the effect of our shrinking time horizons on our social relationships, Laura?

社交网络会随年龄增长缩小。这曾是解释老龄化悖论的部分理论：既然社交带来最大幸福，老年人网络更小理应更不快乐。但事实是，虽然网络规模缩小，却更加精炼。

Social networks get smaller as people get older. And I should note that this was part of the thinking about the paradox of aging. Because social relationships are what bring us our greatest happiness, there was thinking that if networks in older people were smaller than they were in younger people, then older people must not be as happy. That was basically the thinking. Instead, it appears that what happens is that over time social networks get smaller, but they're very well honed.

留在网络中的人都是最重要、最可靠、最有价值的。我们让那些泛泛之交自然淡出，这意味着年长者的社交网络情感密度更高——全是真正在乎的人，这种网络结构其实大有裨益。

And so the people who are retained in the networks are those that are most important, the people who are most predictable, most valuable in our lives. And those are the relationships that stay and we let these other more distant acquaintance like relationships fade away. But what it means then is that our social networks as we get older are more emotionally dense. They're people who we really care about. And so there's a real benefit to that kind of a social network.

你知道，关于老年人缺乏好奇心的笑话比比皆是。他们固守成规，老狗学不会新把戏。但某种程度上，我听到你是在说老狗的旧把戏其实相当不错。确实如此。

You know, there are so many jokes about how the elderly are incurious. They're stuck in their ways. You know, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But partly what I'm hearing you say is that the old dog's old tricks are actually pretty good. Yeah.

老狗对这些把戏相当满意。

Old dog is pretty happy with those tricks.

完全正确。我尝试向难以理解这点的本科生解释：想象你在一座探索已久的城市只剩最后一周，你是想尝试新餐厅，还是再去最爱的餐厅最后一次？我认为这某种程度上反映了年龄增长后的心态变化。

Exactly. I try to explain this to undergraduates who are having a hard time grasping that. Like I say, imagine that you only had one week left in a city that you'd been exploring. Do you want to try another new restaurant or do you want to go to your favorite restaurant that last time out? And I think that's some of what's happening with age.

当时间跨度漫长时，探索行为极具适应性。我们需要学习、探索和积累，因为这些都可能在未来派上用场。

Exploration is extremely adaptive when time horizons are long. We need to learn. We need to explore. We need to collect. Because those kinds of things could be useful.

特别是当你的时间跨度极其广阔时，对吧？任何事都可能发生。比如在派对上遇到的人，哪怕并不特别喜欢，五年后你求职时可能成为重要人脉。所以人们会广泛积累人脉。但随着时间跨度缩短，我们开始聚焦。

And especially if your time horizon is so vast, right? Anything could happen. So meeting somebody at a party, even somebody you may not particularly like, could end up being an important contact five years from now when you're looking for a job. So people are collecting and they're very open to that. But as time horizons are shorter, we focus.

我们聚焦当下，品味生活，更清晰地分辨轻重缓急。

We focus. We savor. We see better what's important and what's not.

伴随老年期的另一个变化——同样似乎由时间跨度缩短驱动——是老年人关注的信息类型转变。劳拉，请详细说说这个发现。

Another change that accompanies old age, and one that also appears to be driven by shortened time horizons, is a shift in the kinds of information to which older people attend. Tell us more about this, Laura.

我认为这是最有趣的发现之一。大脑并非均匀接收信息，而是由目标导向——目标支配我们的注意力、记忆和认知资源。于是我与同事玛拉·马瑟、苏珊·查尔斯开始思考：我们在社交偏好和社交网络中广泛记录到的目标变化，是否会体现在认知加工的基础层面？我们随后开展了一项后来被广泛复现的研究：向青年、中年和老年组展示积极、消极及中性刺激物。受试者坐在电脑屏幕前浏览图像。

I think this is one of the most interesting findings. Brains do not take in information evenly, but rather goals direct our attention, goals direct our memories, goals direct cognitive resources. And so with colleagues of mine, Mara Mather and Susan Charles, we began to think one day about whether these changes in goals that we had documented widely in social preferences and social networks would be represented in fundamental aspects of cognitive processing. And we began to run a study which since has become widely replicated But it was a study where we presented positive, negative and neutral stimuli to younger, middle aged and older adults. And we had them sit in front of a computer screen and they would go through the images.

观看结束后，我们要求他们回忆所有图像。结果发现：年轻人对正负图像的记忆数量几乎持平；中年组对积极图像显现记忆偏好；而老年组的偏好程度极为显著——他们几乎只记得积极图像，既不回忆消极图像，也遗忘中性图像。

And then after they've done this viewing, tell us all the images you remember. And what we find is that younger people remember almost the same numbers of positive and negative images. By middle age, we see a preference and memory for the positive images. And in old age, that preference is whopping. That is, older people are remembering almost exclusively the positive images and they're not recalling the negative nor the neutral ones.

这是我们首次观测到该现象。当时颇感意外，因为我们不清楚为何人们会选择性关注积极面而忽略消极面——毕竟消极信息也可能具有情感意义。这个发现极其有趣。随后我们进行了自传体记忆研究，同样通过神经影像技术观察杏仁核对消极、中性及积极刺激的激活反应。

And so that was the first time we'd seen this. It was a little surprising to us because we weren't exactly clear why people would selectively attend to positive and not negative too because negative could be emotionally meaningful. And we thought this was super interesting. We then ran a study of autobiographical memory. Again, finding using neuroimaging where you look at amygdala activation in response to the negative, the neutral, the positive.

再次强调，我们观察到老年人在观看积极图像时比消极图像时杏仁核激活更显著。让我们回顾一下多年前对衰老的负面认知。在我们进行的研究之前——这项研究发表于2000年代初——仅有一项关于杏仁核对情绪刺激反应的研究，但研究者仅使用了负面刺激，而老年人对这些刺激的记忆并不深刻。

And again, what we see is more amygdala activation in response to positive viewing than the viewing of negative images in older people. And again, let me loop this back to some of the thinking about how negative aging was years ago. Prior to the study we did, and this was a study published in the early 2000s. But prior to that, there'd only been one study where they looked at amygdala activation in response to emotional stimuli. But the researchers had only used negative stimuli and older people didn't remember them as well.

因此当时结论认为杏仁核功能受损，存在某种神经缺陷。但我们证明杏仁核对积极刺激的反应完全正常。顺便说，许多人认为杏仁核更像是显著性指示器而非纯粹的情绪中枢——它负责捕捉注意力焦点。

And so the conclusion was that the amygdala is broken. There's some neural impairment. But what we showed is the amygdala is activated just fine in response to positive stimuli. Many people, by the way, think of the amygdala as more of a salience indicator than emotion per se. So it's what is capturing attention?

什么值得关注？正如我所说，此后已有数百项研究证实了这种积极性偏向效应。

What's valuable in attention? Since then, as I say, there are now hundreds of studies showing the positivity effect.

这确实令人惊讶，因为社会科学领域普遍存在'坏消息比好消息更具冲击力'的文献，即所谓的坏消息偏见。但你的研究表明，这种现象可能与年龄存在有趣的交叉影响。

This is actually striking because, of course, there's also a wide literature across the social sciences generally arguing that bad news is perceived more strongly than good news. Right? It's sometimes called the bad news bias. But what you're saying is that really that might actually have an interesting intersection with age.

正是如此。长期以来人们认为负面刺激具有强大的、适应性的进化价值，因此自然会比积极刺激更受关注。但事实上这些研究的对象几乎都是年轻大学生——我们曾将年轻人的观察结果过度推广到全人类。

Exactly. So people have long believed that negative stimuli have powerful, adaptive, evolutionarily based value. And so of course people will pay more attention to negative stimuli than positive. However, people as it turns out were young college students in virtually all of these studies. So we were generalizing from what younger people were observed to do to humans writ large.

如今当我们审视自首次发现认知加工中的积极性效应后涌现的研究时，发现其中存在渐进性的年龄效应：年轻人确实更关注负面刺激，但随着年龄增长，不仅这种倾向减弱，对积极刺激的关注度还会逐渐提升。

And actually what we see now if we look at the body of research that has emerged since we first identified the positivity effect in cognitive processing is that there's a gradual age effect in it. And yes, younger people pay more attention to negative stimuli than positive. And then gradually that not only diminishes but heightened attention to positive emerges.

你和团队研究的另一个关于时间视野收缩的效应，涉及人们对当下、过去和未来的关注差异。劳拉，请阐述这个观点。

Another effect that you and other researchers have examined that looks at the effect of shrinking time horizons is how focused people are on the present versus the past or the future. Talk about this idea, Laura.

存在一种刻板印象认为老年人沉湎于过去。临床心理学也有文献显示回忆过去易引发抑郁，这种模式曾被用来解释老年人明显的抑郁倾向。但事实是：老年人并不抑郁，且研究发现他们回忆过去的频率并不比年轻人高。

There is stereotype of older people that they live in the past and think largely about the past. There's also literature in clinical psychology showing that when people think about the past, they're more likely to be depressed. So, that kind of pattern was long believed to capture the obvious depression we would see in older people. But of course, they're not depressed. And here's the finding: they also don't think about the past any more than younger people do.

不过他们确实比年轻人更少思考未来。年轻人很少聚焦当下，几乎总在规划未来；而老年人能够真正活在当下——这对心理健康非常有益。现今许多佛教冥想练习正是为了帮助人们获得这种当下专注力，因为临在状态往往使人更关注世界的积极面。

But they don't think about the future as much as younger people do. So younger people are rarely in a present focused mode. They're almost always thinking about the future. Older people can actually be in the present, and that tends to be very good for mental health. There are lots of meditations now, Buddhist meditations, that are intended to help people get to that present focus because living in the moment tends to take people's attention to positive aspects of the world.

这让我意识到，你们对时间视野效应的研究本质上不是关于生理年龄，而是关于时间感知的心理机制。这是否意味着，如果通过实验让年轻人产生时间有限的感知，就会改变他们的感受和行为模式？

So in many ways, it strikes me that your focus on the effects of time horizons means that this is not really about aging in a chronological sense. It's more about the psychology of how we perceive time. Does this mean that if you experimentally induce younger people to feel like their time horizons are short, that this would then change how they feel and behave?

这不是很令人兴奋吗？确实如此。心理学家莎拉·巴伯与玛拉·马瑟合作，大约五年前进行了一项研究，他们通过引导想象让年轻人感知生命终结——‘你正接近生命尽头’，然后向他们展示积极、消极和中性的刺激素材。

Isn't that exciting? Yes, it does. Sarah Barber, a psychologist who works also with Mara Mather, ran a study about five years ago where they induced endings, mortality. You're approaching the end of your life. They did this kind of imagery induction with younger people and then presented them with stimuli positive, negative, and neutral.

年轻人同样表现出这种转变，在注意力和记忆方面更偏好积极信息。这项研究最激动人心之处在于，我们大多时候能将年龄因素从方程中剔除，发现真正起作用的是时间感知——是我们的信念、认知以及对未来的感受，这些塑造了我们日常生活中追求的目标。

And younger people also showed this shift in favoring a preference for positive information in attention and memory. What's most exciting actually about this whole line of work is we've been able in most cases to just lift age out of the equation and say it's time. It's our beliefs, it's our perceptions, it's our sense of a future that affect the goals that we pursue in every day life.

我在想大学校园里是否能观察到新生与大四学生之间的有趣差异。某种程度上这就像一场自然实验：有些人觉得未来漫长，有些人则感到时日无多——至少在校园阶段如此。

I'm wondering on a college campus whether you can see interesting differences between, you know, people who are freshmen and people who are seniors. Because in some ways you almost have a natural experiment that's unfolding of people who have a sense of a long time horizon and people who have a sense of a short time horizon, at least on campus.

是的。你可以比较返校的二年级学生与即将毕业的大四学生在社交偏好上的差异。正如你所料，二年级学生渴望结识新朋友，而毕业班学生对此毫无兴趣，他们更愿意与挚友共度时光。

Yes. You can compare returning sophomores to graduating seniors and their social preferences for spending time with others. And as you've anticipated, the returning sophomores are interested in meeting new people, and the graduating seniors are not interested in meeting new people. They're interested in spending time with their very good friends.

这种效应是否也能反向作用？如果让老年人想象自己还有更多寿命，会发生什么？

Does the effect run-in reverse as well? What happens when older people are asked to imagine that they have more time left to live?

我们专门设计实验验证这个问题。当时我们想：既然能让年轻人像老年人般思考，能否让老年人重返年轻心态？在某项研究中，我们让老年人在选择社交对象前先想象：刚接到医生电话，告知一项医学突破能确保他们比预期多活二十年且健康状况良好。此时他们会作何选择？

We ran an experiment where we asked exactly that question. We thought, Wow, we can make young people old. Can we make old people young? And so, in one study, before we asked people to choose from among an array of social partners, we said, Now imagine that you just received a phone call from your physician who told you about a new medical advance that virtually ensures you'll live about twenty years longer than you expected in relatively good health. Who do you choose?

结果这些老年人不再表现出对老友至亲的强烈偏好，他们也开始追求探索新鲜事物。

And now older people were no longer expressing preferences for these very well known friends and loved ones. They were interested in exploration and novelty too.

这发现太棒了，因为你实际上揭示了超越年龄的深层心理机制。虽然老年人因有限的时间视野表现出特定行为模式，但我们可以引导他们改变。我在想，理解这个机制后会产生哪些影响？揭开这层认知面纱，看清剩余寿命感知如何影响我们，是否具有积极意义？

So I love this because in some ways what you're really identifying is sort of the underlying psychological mechanism here regardless of whether people are old or young. It it does happen to be the fact that older people, because they have a more limited time horizon, are behaving in a certain way, but you can induce them to behave differently. I'm wondering, once you understand this underlying psychological mechanism, what the implications of this are, Are there benefits to pulling back the curtain and looking at how our sense of time left in life might be affecting us?

我认为确实有益。有时我给年轻听众讲解这些发现后，总有人跑来问：‘怎样才能像老年人那样思考？我很向往那种状态。’这时我会说：这并非良策。探索与学习需要承担风险（包括情感风险），但对筹备长远未来至关重要。

I believe that there are. So occasionally I'll give a talk to a largely young audience about these findings and somebody inevitably comes up to me after the talk and says, How do I get to be more like an old person? I'd really like to be that. And then what I say is, It's not a good idea. That it's adaptive to explore, to learn, and it entails taking risks, including emotional risks.

当你无需为长远打算时，就能专注于真正重要之事。某种意义上，衰老解除了我们对未来的负担，让我们得以活在当下——这种适应性很有价值。当然，如果能找到方法让年轻人偶尔跳出未来导向模式，真切体验当下，那将非常美好。

But it's good to do that when you're preparing for a long future. And when you don't have to prepare for a long future, then you can focus on what really matters. So in some ways, aging relieves us of the burden of the future. We can be in the moment and it's adaptive to do that. Now, that said, it will be great if we can find ways to have younger people step out of that future oriented mode occasionally and really experience the present.

关注世界上的积极面。我相信这对他们大有裨益。同样，在某些情境下，老年人思考未来、长远未来而不仅仅是当下也非常有益。以气候变化为例，可能对现今高龄者影响不大，但值得关注。

See what's positive in the world. This would be really good for them, I believe. And just the same, there are context occasions where it's really good for older people to think about the future, the long term future, and not just the present. Think of climate change, for example. Probably not going to affect somebody too much who's very old today, but good to pay attention to it.

因此，是的，我们应当能够时间旅行，既能迈向未来，也能驻足当下。

And so, yes, we should be able to time travel so we can step into the future or step into the present.

劳拉，我好奇你是否在生活中实践这点？完成这项研究后，你是否尝试应用它？可曾在自己日常的某些时刻意识到'我的时间视野正在塑造我的想法，或许我该更审慎地做出选择'？

I'm wondering whether you do this in your own life, Laura. Having done this research now, do you try and apply this? Do you actually catch yourself at various points in your day saying, Here's how my time horizons are shaping how I think and maybe I want to make that choice more mindfully?

我努力将这些研究发现铭记于心。具体会做两件事：一是当遇到那些人人都会经历的烦心事——比如反复纠结'当时我该对某人说些什么'时，我会用宏观视角来看待。

I try to take the findings to heart. And there are a couple of things I do. One is something will happen to me during the day as these things happen to all of us, right, that's just really irritating. Or something where I just keep going over it and over it in my head again, I wish I said this to so and so, you know, and what. And it really helps to put it in perspective.

自问：'如果这是你生命的最后一个月，你会在意吗？'答案永远是否定的。这种思考确实有帮助。另一些时刻，我会沉浸于凝望家庭办公室窗外的树木、金翅雀、丛山雀和蓝松鸦，纯粹享受这种体验——然后迅速回归待办事项、论文截稿和邮件回复。

If this were the last month of your life, would you care? And the answer is always no. So being able to do that, I do think, helps. And then there are moments where I can get lost in staring out the window of my office at home where there are a number of trees and goldfinches and bush tits and blue jays and they're always out there and I can just stop and really just love them. You know, just love that experience and then quickly go back and begin to think about what I have to do next and what paper is due and what email I need to return, I can go back to that.

但确实，偶尔抽离未来压力很有益处。

But yeah, it's good to be able to step out of the future demands occasionally.

稍后回来时，劳拉·卡斯滕森将回答听众关于衰老与幸福感动态关系的提问。您正在收听《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。这里是《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。

When we come back, Laura Karstensen answers listener questions about the dynamic relationship between aging and happiness. You are listening to Hidden Brain. I am Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

保罗·麦卡特尼创作《当我64岁》旋律时不过十几岁。这首披头士经典歌曲以年轻人向爱人提问的形式呈现：'你还需要我吗？还会喂养我吗？当我64岁时。'对多数青少年而言，想象自己六十几岁都困难，更不用说七八十岁了。

Paul McCartney was only a teenager when he wrote the melody to the song When I'm 64. The famous Beatles tune is framed as a question from a young man who asks his lover, Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I'm 64. The idea of being in your mid sixties, much less in your 70s, 80s, or 90s, is difficult for most teenagers to imagine.

年轻时，我们很难想象自己会老去，更难以预见那可能是人生最充实的阶段。但斯坦福大学研究老龄化的心理学家劳拉·卡斯滕森指出，这种情况比我们以为的更常见。自2023年首次播出与劳拉的对话后，听众提交了从悲伤、离婚到社会对衰老期待如何影响心态的后续问题。今天，在我们重温'你问我答'特别板块时，将带来她对诸多问题的解答。

When we're young, many of us have a hard time contemplating that we'll ever be old, much less that it might be one of the most fulfilling phases of our lives. But that's the case more often than we realize, according to Laura Karstensen. Laura is a psychologist who studies aging at Stanford University. After we first aired our conversation with Laura back in 2023, listeners submitted follow-up questions on topics ranging from grief to divorce to societal expectations about aging and how they shape our mindsets. Today, we bring you her answers to many of those questions as we revisit a favorite edition of our segment, Your Questions Answered.

劳拉·卡斯滕森，欢迎回到《隐藏的大脑》。

Laura Karstensen, welcome back to Hidden Brain.

谢谢。很高兴能回来。

Thank you. Pleased to be back.

劳拉，我说过你研究衰老，但你更准确地说是一位研究人类生命周期的学者。你的许多工作深入探讨了我们关于谁算老年人、什么是合适的退休年龄以及人们何时应寻求教育机会的观念。能否从宏观角度解释为什么我们对这些问题的许多观念可能需要更新？

Laura, I said you studied aging, but you're really better described as someone who studies the human life cycle. Much of your work has closely examined our notions of who is old, what is the appropriate retirement age, and when people should seek out educational opportunities. Can you give me the big picture view of why many of our notions about these questions might need updating?

要知道，我对‘衰老为何让这么多人感到困扰’的分析是：从历史角度看，这完全是新现象。在人类进化的大部分时期，我们的寿命非常短暂，比如在非洲平原演化的漫长岁月里，普遍只有18到20岁。而就在二十世纪这短短一百年间，人类预期寿命的增长幅度超过了之前所有千年累积的总和。

You know, my analysis of why this aging thing seems so difficult for so many of us is that in historical sense, it's brand new. Through most of human evolution, our lives were short, really short, like 18 to 20 through most of the years we were evolving on the African Plains. And then in a single century, the twentieth century, we added more years to life expectancy than had been added across all prior millennia of human evolution combined.

哇。

Wow.

这种变化来得太突然了。人类是文化生物，我们依赖物质基础设施、社会规范和各种预期来引导生活。而当今世界的所有这些基础设施和规范，都是围绕只有我们现今一半寿命的预期形成的。所以我认为这就是许多事情让人感到别扭、紧张的原因。

So it's just this sudden, sudden change. And humans are creatures of culture. We have physical infrastructures, social norms, expectations that help guide us through life. And the world today with all of those infrastructures and norms was one that evolved around lives half as long as the ones we're living today. And so I think that's what makes a lot of this feel awkward, tense.

我们对老年有固有认知，但如今活到65岁的人，很有机会活到90岁。寿命长度已发生巨变，但我们的观念还停留在过去。

We have notions about old age, but today, if you reach 65, you've got a good chance of making it to 90. Things have shifted very quickly in terms of length of life, But our expectations are old.

甚至连‘谁是年轻人’、‘谁是中年人’、‘谁是老年人’这些概念也在发生剧烈变化。

And even sort of notions of who is young, who is middle aged, who is old, even those are changing dramatically.

完全正确。在我看来，如今65岁根本不算老。事实上，我们对话后我收到大量邮件，人们都在强调‘我不老’。

Absolutely. I mean today 65 year olds in my book are not old. And in fact, a lot of the emails I got after our conversation comprised messages of people telling me, I'm not old.

‘我很快乐，但我不老。’

I'm happy, but I'm not old.

正是如此。

Exactly. Right.

好的，现在让我们进入听众提问环节。第一位听众里克·摩根有个关于幸福与长寿关系的问题要请教你。

Alright. So let's get to the listener questions. Our first comes from listener Rick Morgan, who has a question for you about the relationship between happiness and longevity.

我在收听这期节目时，不断回想起读过的那些研究表明快乐的人往往更长寿。但听完这期播客后，我开始思考或许是因为长寿的人更容易感到快乐。所以我想知道，在研究幸福对衰老影响的学者和像卡斯滕森博士这样研究衰老对幸福影响的学者之间，是否存在学术对话？如果有的话，这些讨论是怎样的？目前学界有哪些科学观点？

As I was listening to the episode, I kept thinking back to all the studies I've read about how happy people tend to live longer. And now after listening to this podcast, I'm starting to think that it might just be people who live longer tend to be happier. So I was curious if there's any kind of dialogue in the research community between the folks who study the effects of happiness on aging and researchers like Doctor. Carstensen who study the effects of aging on happiness. And if so, what are those conversations like, and what are some of the scientific thoughts out there?

非常感谢这期精彩的节目。

Thank you so much for a great episode.

那么劳拉，是年长者更快乐，还是快乐的人更长寿呢？

So Laura, are older people happier, or do happier people live longer?

这是个很好的问题。当这些发现首次出现时，人们就提出了这个疑问：这是否是选择效应？这些人是否一直都很幸福？这也正是我和同事们开展纵向研究的动机之一，我们通过长期追踪发现，人们在年轻时更消极，随着年龄增长会逐渐变得更积极——这种变化是发生在个体内部的。

That's a great question. So when these findings first appeared, people asked this question exactly: Is it a selection effect? Are these people who have always been happy? Which is part of the motivation for a longitudinal study that my colleagues and I ran where we followed people over time. And we found that there was this change in people from being more negative when they were young within individual change to more positive when they were older.

因此我们认为选择效应并不能完全解释这个发现。不过确实存在幸福有助于延长寿命的情况，只是这种影响相对有限。所以两种说法都成立，但选择效应不能解释全部现象。

So we don't think that a selection effect accounts for the full finding. However, it is the case that happiness contributes to life expectancy. That's a fairly modest contribution. So both are true, but selection doesn't account for everything.

另一位听众查鲁·辛格的提问也是关于你发现年长者通常比年轻群体更幸福这个结论的后续探讨。

Another question from listener Charu Singh was also a follow-up about your finding that older people are often happier than people in younger demographics. Here she is.

关于随着年龄增长而增强的积极性，我的疑问是：是否因为负面体验带来的痛苦感降低了？也就是说，随着阅历增加，你比年轻时更能承受或忽略痛苦，毕竟年轻时尚未经历过太多痛苦或困境。

One of the questions I have about increased positivity as you age is whether the negative experiences start to feel less painful which is to say as you age you're able to weather pain or ignore pain more than when you are young and you have yet to experience much pain or hardship.

所以这个问题本质是：我们看到的是人们随着年龄增长变得更幸福，还是更少悲伤？

So I think this question is, are we seeing more happiness or less sadness as people age?

数据显示这更多是由悲伤减少驱动的，而非幸福感提升。这种我称之为情绪平衡的改善——即正负面情绪比值的优化——其主要驱动力是负面情绪的减少。正面情绪虽然没有增加，但由于没有衰减，总体上我们在日常生活中体验到的正面情绪仍多于负面情绪。

Well, data suggests it's driven more by less sadness than an increase in happiness. The main drivers of this improvement in what I would call emotional balance, so you know, the ratio of positive to negative, the main driver is a reduction in negative emotions. Not so much an increase in positive, but because there's no decline in positive, on balance we experience more positive than negative in everyday life.

对于听众提出的‘部分现象仅是曝光效应’的假设，你怎么看？我们已习惯目睹诸多挫折。随着年龄增长，挫折显得不再那么异常。我们意识到挫折来去无常，应对起来也更为从容。

And what do you make of the listener's hypothesis that some of this is just an exposure effect? We're used to seeing a lot of setbacks. The older we get, the setbacks seem less unusual. We realize that setbacks come, setbacks go. We're able to roll with the punches a little bit better.

你认为这个理论有可取之处吗？

Do you think there's any merit to that theory?

我确实认同‘经历越丰富，痛苦相对强度就越弱’的理论。但当我们最初开展这项研究，发现老年人在情绪上更稳定、悲伤感更少时，有人质疑这是否基于某种生理机能缺陷——即我们是否丧失了强烈感受的能力？这种缺陷反而让我们感觉更好。为此，我们与保罗·艾克曼、鲍勃·莱文森和沃利·弗里森合作，在实验室里通过诱发强烈正负情绪，测量了年轻人和老年人的面部表情、生理反应及对记忆的主观反馈。

I do think there's merit to the theory that the comparative strength of pain weakens the more experiences we've had. However, when we first began this line of research and found that older people were doing better emotionally and experiencing less sadness, there was some question about a physiological basis grounded in a kind of a deficit in the ability to feel. So can we not experience intense anything? And that makes us feel better. And so, with Paul Ekman and Bob Levinson and Wally Friesen, we ran a study where we induced strong negative emotions and strong positive emotions in younger and older people in the laboratory measuring facial expression, physiological responding, and so on, as well as subjective response to memories.

结果显示老年人与年轻人的反应非常相似。因此情绪系统并未‘损坏’，我们并非无法深刻或强烈地感受，只是老年人往往选择不这样做。我认为更可能是我们更善于调节这些强烈情绪，比年轻人更懂得抽离。

And older people looked very much like younger people there. So, it didn't look like the emotion system was broken in that sense, right? It wasn't that we're unable to feel things deeply or strongly, But older people tend not to. So I think what I would guess is that we're navigating those intense emotions better, being able to pull ourselves away from them better than younger people do.

劳拉，你是否发现老年人与年轻人的对比，可能是一种更普遍现象的特例？即随着年龄增长，我们往往能以更成熟的视角回望过去。比如二十岁时回望童年，会为五岁时因没得到糖果而心碎的经历莞尔，因为意识到那并非真正毁灭性的打击。这种‘回溯性成熟’是否可能是更大现象的一部分？

Is it possible, Laura, that that what you're finding in the contrast between older people and younger people might be a a special case of actually a more general phenomenon where in general as we age, we tend to have more perspective on our younger self. So when we're in our twenties, for example, we can look back on our childhoods and say, you know, the fact that I was brokenhearted that I didn't get a piece of candy when I was five years old, I can look back at that now and smile because I realize that in fact it wasn't as devastating as I thought. And the same I think is true as we go through life. Is it possible that this is just part of a larger phenomenon of of sort of looking back with more maturity?

即便不依赖成熟视角，我们也倾向于美化过去。多年前我们曾对天主教修女会进行追踪研究（初始数据收集距今约四十年），请她们记录日常生活感受，之后又让她们以当年视角重新填写问卷。结果发现她们记忆中的过去比实际记录的更美好。

Even looking back without more maturity, maturity, we tend to remember the past more positively than it was actually experienced. We ran a study years ago with an order of Catholic nuns, And this was actuallythe initial data collection was now probably forty years ago, close to it. But we asked them a series of questions about their day to day lives and how they felt about many aspects of their life. And then we were able to go back to these sisters who very graciously completed the same questionnaire from the perspective of how they would have completed it then. And it turns out that they remembered the past more positively than they had actually reported it to us.

这类研究很难开展，因为我们通常缺乏可比对的原始数据。

It's very hard to get those kinds of studies done because we usually don't have that kind of data to do it.

令人着迷。下个问题来自正面临人生困境的南希·韦斯曼，她邮件写道：‘81岁的我边慢跑边收听节目。想了解你们是否研究过丧偶老人及其心态变化？我虽身体健康，但确实不如丈夫在世时快乐。’

Fascinating. So the next question comes from someone who is grappling with a more difficult life situation. Nancy Weissman sends an email where she says, I'm 81 and listen to your broadcast while jogging. I'd like to know if you studied older people who lost their spouse and if this had any effect on their outlook. Obviously, I'm in good physical shape, but I wouldn't say I'm as happy as I was before I lost my husband.

哀伤在你们研究中是相关变量吗？谢谢。

Is grief a relevant variable in your studies? Thanks.

她提出了深刻观察。总体而言，老年人日常生活中的积极情绪更多，消极情绪更少。但伴随亲友离世的丧失感始终存在。研究表明，人们无法从重要关系的终结中完全恢复，那种思念与空缺感会持续存在。

She makes a profound observation. Older people overall, on balance, are reporting more positive emotions, fewer negative emotions, right, in day to day life. But there is a feeling of loss that comes with the deaths of loved ones over the years, the deaths of friends and relatives. And the research suggests that people don't fully recover from those really important relationships when they end. They continue to feel a longing, an absence in their lives.

显然，再次从宏观视角来看，人们在经历那些负面情绪后，仍会继续与朋友共进晚餐，找到方式让自己感到愉悦、平静与安宁。这让我联想到我们另一项关于混合情绪的研究。情绪不仅在整体上变得不那么消极、更积极，而且更加混合交织，更为复杂。因此，当我们通过瞬时体验抽样询问年轻人感受时，他们更倾向于给出单一维度的回答。

Apparently, again, if we look at the larger picture there, people then go on and enjoy a dinner with friends, find a way to feel good and calm and serene in addition to having those kinds of negative emotions. It reminds me of another line of research we've done on mixed emotions. And emotions not only become on balance less negative, more positive, but they're more mixed. They're more complex. So younger people, when we ask how they're doing in a momentary experience sampling, are more likely to give us kind of unidimensional reports.

他们会说自己快乐、兴奋或欣喜。而询问年长者时，他们更可能给出正负交织的情绪组合——可能同时表示‘我很快乐、充满感激，但也感到悲伤和渴望’。这种复杂的心理状态我认为极其重要。有时当我探讨情绪与衰老时，总担心自己过度简化，把老年人描述得像无忧无虑的乐天派。

They say they're happy, they're excited, they're joyful. When you ask older people, they're more likely to give you a mix of positive and negative emotions. So they might say, I'm happy, I'm appreciative, I'm sad, I'm longing. So they'll give you this complex state, which I think is really, really important. Sometimes when I talk about emotion and aging, I feel like I am really oversimplifying it and making it sound like older people are happy in a happy go lucky sense.

但实际状态远非如此。它要丰富得多，也更有趣。

And that isn't the state. It's much richer than that. It's more interesting.

我们收到听众卡米尔·约翰逊的相关提问，她想听听您对晚年离婚话题的看法。以下是她的问题。

We got a somewhat related question from a listener, Camille Johnson, who wanted to hear your thoughts on the topic of divorce in the later years of life. Here's her question.

您的嘉宾最后提到，即使是不尽如人意的婚姻似乎也会在晚年达成某种舒适的和解，源于共同经历的熟悉感。但作为美国‘银发离婚潮’的亲历者——恕我直言——我想知道这种现象如何与今天讨论的心理学理论关联。目前美国50岁以上夫妇离婚率正在攀升，我特别想了解她对这个现象的看法，毕竟这与我个人经历相关。

Your guest ended by saying that even marriages that had been less than satisfactory seemed to come to some sort of a comfortable resolution in later years, the familiarity of the things that they had experienced together. But I'm interested in knowing how the phenomenon of the gray divorce in The United States, of which I am a participant, I will be honest. I wonder how that plays into this psychology discussed today. And it's the fact that couples 50 and over are divorcing at a higher rate in The United States right now. So I'm interested in knowing her thoughts on that phenomenon, especially since it's personal to me.

非常感谢。

Thank you so much.

那么劳拉，老年人离婚模式是否反映了他们幸福感的变迁？

So do patterns of divorce among older people tell us anything about the changing patterns of happiness among the elderly, Laura?

我认为离婚模式的变化反映了时间观念的转变。二十年前尽管寿命在延长，但人们对此认知不足。60多岁的人觉得人生已近尾声，就不太可能开启新生活。如今人们意识到寿命的延长，50、60岁的人看着餐桌对面不再钟爱的伴侣时会想：我还有漫长未来，真要这样度过吗？

I think the changing patterns of divorce are telling us something about time horizons. If we went back twenty years, even though life expectancy was going up, there wasn't as much of an awareness of it. So you go back twenty years and when people were in their 60s and life they felt was kind of winding down, they were less likely to strike out on their own, to do something different. I think today, as people are realizing just how long lives are getting, somebody in their 50s, somebody in their 60s looks across the breakfast table at somebody they're not particularly enamored with and say, I got a long future ahead of me. Is this really how I want to spend it?

因此离婚率上升，部分源于人们的时间视野变得更长远。当人们认为自己尚有很多篇章时，就更可能书写新章节——这正是我们正在见证的。

And so we're seeing more divorces, I think in part because people are seeing their time horizons as much longer. I think you're less likely to see somebody start a brand new chapter if they think they're in the last chapter already. But as people look forward more positively and longer, I think we'll see more of that.

是否有证据表明50岁以上人群离婚率上升正在或将会影响老年人的幸福水平？

Is there any evidence that suggests that the growing rates of divorce among people 50 and older is shaping or will shape the happiness levels of older people?

哦，这是个很好的问题，但我不知道答案。如果涉及到幸福水平的变化，一般来说，当人们离婚后，我们会看到他们在一两年后逐渐恢复到原本的幸福基准线。所以这可能是个挣扎的过程，但大多数人会回归那种平衡状态。至于老年人离婚后，这在长期或短期内如何影响他们，我认为我们目前还没有答案。

Oh, that's a great question, and I do not know the answer to that. If it will come to change levels of happiness. In general, when people divorce, we see them come back to their sort of baseline levels of happiness after a period of a year or two. So it may be a struggle, but most people will come back to that kind of equilibrium. How this affects older people when they divorce in the long term or the short term is a question I think we don't know the answer to.

是啊。这就是研究的奇妙之处。每个答案都会引发新的问题，这正是它如此美妙的原因。

Yeah. Well, this is the wonderful thing about research. Each each answer produces new questions, which is what makes it so wonderful.

没错。

That's right.

这里是《你的问题得到解答》环节，我们邀请研究人员回来回答听众提问。稍后休息后，劳拉·卡斯滕森将解答关于媒体如何影响我们对年龄的认知、健康如何影响幸福感，以及教育在生活质量中扮演的角色等问题。您正在收听的是《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。这里是《隐藏的大脑》。

This is Your Questions Answered, our segment in which we bring researchers back to answer listener questions. After the break, Laura Karstensen will answer questions on how the media impacts our perception of age, how health impacts happiness, and the role that education can play in our quality of life. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain.

我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。劳拉·卡斯滕森是斯坦福大学的心理学家。今天她将与我们一同回答听众关于老龄化的提问。劳拉，有位叫特蕾莎的听众发来了关于媒体如何呈现老年人形象的问题。

I'm Shankar Vedanta. Laura Karstensen is a psychologist at Stanford. University. Today, she joins us to answer listener questions on aging. Laura, Laura a listener named Teresa sent in a question about the representation of older people in the media.

在我60岁生日前的那一年，我收到了大量邮寄广告，告诉我需要购买医疗保险。这些广告配图显示的我的同龄人或我自己，都是一群白发苍苍、退休且普遍不活跃的人。广告暗示我们很快将需要助行器、轮椅和拐杖等设备。这类形象充斥着媒体。如果我们相信这些画面，似乎65岁以上的我们已无所贡献，脆弱且需要大量照顾。

In the year preceding my 60 birthday, I was deluged by mailing advertisements informing me that I need to buy medical care. And the images accompanying these advertisements showed my peers or myself in a group of people who are white haired and retired and generally inactive. And we would soon need devices like walkers and wheelchairs and canes. So these images saturate the media. And if we believe such images, it seems that those of us who are 65 or older have nothing left to give and are fragile and require a lot of care.

我坚信这类形象对我的健康和长寿有害。您怎么看？谢谢。

I strongly believe that such images are detrimental to my well-being and longevity. What do you think? Thanks.

雅拉，你怎么看？这是个引人深思的问题。

What do you think, Yara? Fascinating question.

确实是个引人深思的问题。我同意她的观点。耶鲁大学的研究员贝卡·利维已证明，当人们被灌输这些关于老龄化的负面形象时，其行为会受到影响——他们离开实验室时的走路速度，比接触积极形象时要慢。所以我们生活和衰老的宏观环境会暗示我们应该是快乐的、脆弱的或...这确实会产生影响。

It is a fascinating question. I agree with her. And a researcher at Yale, Becca Levy, has shown that when you prime these negative images of aging, people respond behaviorally. You actually walk more slowly as they're leaving the laboratory than if they were primed with positive images. And so, the broader environment, the milieu, you know, in which we live and age signals us that we should be happy or we should be fragile or we shouldand it does have an effect.

我们需要改变这种状况。

We need to change it.

劳拉，这个观点让我欣赏的地方在于，我认为我们有时倾向于想象这些事情在某种程度上超出我们的控制。而你引用的研究表明，无论是个人层面还是社会层面，我们确实可以采取行动来改变随着年龄增长而变化的幸福轨迹。

What I like about that insight, Laura, is that I think there's tendency that we sometimes have to imagine that these things in some ways are outside our control. And I think the research that you're just citing suggests that in some ways there are things that we can do both at an individual level as well as a societal level to change the trajectory of our happiness as we age.

我同意。部分原因只是了解研究结果。如果预期非常消极，然后你听到一项研究说‘不，实际上人们更幸福了’，这有时会让人更加关注。我在做完关于情绪与衰老的演讲后，有人会带着惊讶告诉我他们确实更幸福了。按理说他们应该知道这一点，但事实并非总是如此。

I agree. And some of it is just knowing what the research says. If the expectations are really negative, and then you hear about a study saying, No, actually people are happier, sometimes that makes people pay attention more. I've had people come to me after talks that I've given on emotion and aging who will say interestingly with a surprise that they are happier. You know, like you'd think they would know that, but that's not always the case.

因此我认为我们需要展现老年生活的更完整图景。人生的每个阶段都有积极和消极的方面，我们需要关注全貌。

And so I think we do need to present a better mosaic of what old age is like. Every stage in life has positive aspects to it and negative aspects to it, and we need to focus on the full picture.

下一个问题来自听众纳亚娜，涉及许多人在变老时担忧的话题——金钱。以下是她的提问。

Our next question comes from a listener named Nayana and has to do with a topic that many people worry about as they get older, which is money. Here she is.

嗨，劳拉。我37岁，对衰老最大的担忧之一是财务问题。虽然年轻人同样为钱发愁，但随着千禧一代年龄增长，收入减少与医疗生活开支增加的叠加效应必然造成沉重压力。你认为那些主要基于经济更稳定的老一辈群体的老年研究结论，是否会在我们这类经济更拮据、人际关系更脆弱（比如当今孤独症流行所反映的）的新世代进入老年时发生变化？

Hi, Laura. I'm 37, and one of my biggest worries about aging is financial. While young people must equally worry about money, the possible combination of less money and more health and living expenses must weigh heavily as millennials age. Do you think there is a chance the findings about old age based on studies mainly conducted on a more financially secure older generation might change when it comes to newer generations such as ours, who are going into the old age less financially secure and with less stronger relationships if we had to go by the loneliness epidemic concerns today, for example.

这是个发人深省的观点，劳拉。如果更多人寿命延长，却没有经济能力保障晚年生活，我们真的会随着年龄增长而更幸福吗？

It's a provocative idea, Laura. If more of are living longer, but we don't have the financial means to ensure security in old age, are we really going to be happier as we age?

确实。经济安全显然影响主观幸福感。不过在美国，老年人群体持有的财富超过其他任何年龄组。老年群体内部存在巨大差异，如今也有很多老年人正面临经济困境。

Yeah. Financial security influences a subjective sense of well-being, clearly. However, older people, as a group in The United States, they hold more wealth than any other age group. There is great diversity within the older group. And many people today who are older are struggling financially.

我们的研究涵盖了从低收入到高收入人群，但并未发现幸福轨迹的差异。相对于年轻人，老年人群体仍在变得更好。但我并非要轻视这个问题——它确实至关重要，年轻人有理由对未来和财务安全感到担忧。

Our work has included people at the relatively low levels of income to relatively high levels of income, and we don't see differences in the trajectory. So we're still seeing people getting better relative to younger, right? Older. But I don't mean to be dismissive of this. This is a really important issue, and younger people are right to be concerned about their futures and their financial security.

如果我们寿命延长，维持更长时间的经济安全确实至关重要。撇开心理影响不谈——事实上我们可能心理韧性更强——但政策制定者在考虑寿命延长时，当然必须同步考虑人们老年时的经济保障。

I mean, if we are going to live longer, it is actually going to be vital for us to preserve and protect our financial security for a longer period of time. You know, regardless of the psychological consequences, maybe, in fact, we are going to be more psychologically resilient. But separate from that, of course, of course, it makes sense as as policymakers think about increased longevity to think about increased financial security as people age.

我完全赞同。由于寿命延长，人们将工作更长时间。我的同事约翰·肖文（斯坦福经济学家）常说：'很少有美国人能在工作40年后，支撑30年不工作的生活，这根本不可能。'我们已看到这种趋势正在形成。

I couldn't agree more. I believe that people are going to work longer because we're living longer. And most people my colleague John Chauvin says every chance he gets he's an economist at Stanford And he says, Very few Americans can earn enough in forty years to not work for thirty years. It's just an impossibility. And so I do believe, and we are seeing trends in this direction, that people will work longer.

当你询问现今65岁以上仍在工作的人原因时，约半数表示热爱工作，另一半则坦言需要金钱。我认为我们需要更激进的财务安全新模式。现行模式要求人们为晚年不断积累更多财富，但许多人日常生活已捉襟见肘，让他们为养老储蓄数百万美元的想法遥不可及，最终彻底放弃。若能改变工作模式——在人生某些阶段增加每周工作时长，其他阶段减少——我们就能延长高质量的工作生涯。

When you ask people today over 65 who are working why, about half of them say it's because they love their work and the other half say they need the money. I think we need new models of financial security, however, much more radical ones. The ones we have today are about saving an increasingly larger pot of gold for the end. And I think so many people struggle in their day to day lives that the idea that they're supposed to save millions of dollars so that they can support themselves when they're old is so out of reach that they give up altogether. Instead, I think if we changed our models of work where we worked more hours at certain times during our lives, more days in the week, and then fewer at other times in life, we could have higher quality working lives for much longer.

当我谈及财务安全与难以负担的退休时，常提议延长工作年限，听众总会哀叹。但当我问是否愿意用60岁退休换取每周四天、每天六小时的工作制，几乎所有人都愿意交换。事实上，我们完全可以实现这种调整。

Often when people hear me talk about financial security and retirement and how we can't afford it, I say something like we need to work longer and the audience moans. You know, it's like, oh, please. And then I say, would you be willing to trade retirement in your 60s for four day work weeks and six hour days? And almost everybody's ready to make that trade. Well, we could make that trade.

最新研究表明，这种调整几乎不会影响生产力水平。只要创新思考工作时长与时段，延长工作年限完全可行。比如八十岁时仍有收入流，即便工时大幅减少，财务压力也会小得多。我们需要彻底重新思考如何支撑百岁人生。

And the studies that are going on now look like we could make that trade with very little change in productivity level. So we can think about working longer if we also think creatively about how much and when we would work longer. Because if we had an income stream, even into our 80s, we're working many fewer hours, let's say, but you have some money coming in, it's a much more manageable situation financially. So we need to really rethink how we support century long lives.

这回归到我们最初讨论的——用生命周期而非人生阶段来思考。毕竟若以周期视角，初为父母者可能希望减少工时，而子女上大学后反而乐意多工作。现行二三十岁拼命工作、年老逐渐退出的模式亟待修正。

And this goes back to what we said at the top, is really thinking in terms of life cycles instead of thinking only in life stages. Right. Because of course, if you think in life cycles, then, you know, perhaps someone becomes a new parent and they want to scale back the number of hours they're working. And in fact, they'd be happier to work, you know, once their children leave for college. And so our our model that we work super hard in that twenties, thirties, forties, and then sort of taper off as we get older, that model might need revision.

感谢这个观点。我始终强调：全美最不快乐的劳动者正是幼儿父母。他们每日都在做好父母与好员工间艰难抉择。在人均寿命延长三十年的今天，我们不该继续承受这种两难。

Thank you for saying that. And and I try to argue that every chance I get. You know, the least happy workers in the labor force in this country are parents of young children. And because every day they're making a choice between being a good parent or being a good worker, and they want to be both, and they need to be both, but we ask them to make that choice. And with an additional thirty years added to life expectancy, we shouldn't have to keep making those hard choices.

若建立弹性工作模式，人们可在子女幼时减少工时，待孩子离家上大学、开始独立生活时再增加——那或许才是职业巅峰期。年迈后再缩减工时，实现全职与兼职的灵活切换。

If we were to have new models of work where people worked more and less at different phases, very often you would work fewer hours when you had very young children in the home. And then you could increase the hours as they're being launched out of the home and going off on their own and to college and starting their own lives. Maybe that's when we reach the peak. And then as we get much older, we might reduce the hours again. But we could come in and out of full and part time work.

这对个人福祉和财务安全都大有裨益。

It would be good for individuals and certainly good for their financial security.

听众劳拉·克劳利提问：成年子女该如何与年迈父母进行艰难对话？以下是具体问题。

We got a question from a listener, Laura Crowley, and she called in with a question about how adult children can approach difficult conversations with their parents as they age. Here's the question.

我47岁，既要养育青少年子女，又要照顾原本健康但开始出现问题的年迈父母。想请教研究是否指出各人生阶段的最佳实践？如何与父母对话才能同时支持他们和我自己？谢谢。

So I am 47. I'm raising teenagers, and I'm also beginning to care for my aging parents who, have been generally healthy, but started experiencing some health issues. And I'm just wondering if the research has anything to say about best practices for helping people at each of those different phases and ways that I have conversations with my parents that can help support them and myself as well. So that is my question. Thank you.

劳拉，这问题可能有些宽泛。或许可以更聚焦：你们关于老龄化的研究发现，是否应该改变年轻人与年长父母的相处及对话方式？

This might be a bit of a broad question, Laura, but perhaps a narrower framing might be. Should your research findings into aging change the way younger people think about and speak to their older parents?

多年来，我与老年群体进行了相当多的临床工作。成年子女与年迈父母之间常因居住地和所获护理类型产生矛盾——老人总说‘别管我’，而子女则希望他们做出改变。子女更关注安全，父母则更看重有意义的晚年生活。这正是冲突所在。我个人认为，我们应当理解：当人们临近生命终点时，能以令自己满足、快乐且有意义的方式生活，或许更为重要。

Over the years, I've done a fair amount of clinical work with an older population. And there were often tensions between adult children and their older parents about where they lived and the kind of care that they got, where the older person was saying just leave me alone and the younger person was wanting them to do something different. Adult children tend to be more focused on safety and their parents tend to be more focused on living a meaningful life. And so that's where I think we often see the conflict. And my personal view on this is we should appreciate that as people come close to the end of their lives that being able to live their life in ways that give them satisfaction and joy and meaning is probably more important.

我谨慎地提出这个观点，因为确实艰难——但安全之外，在毕生居住的家中终老是许多人晚年重要的心愿。绝大多数老人表示希望在家中离世，不愿搬迁。因此我认为，社会应当帮助人们更好地实现这个愿望。

I'm saying this tentatively because it's tough, but then there's safety. Living in a home you've lived in forever is a really important goal for many people in later life. The vast majority of older people say they want to die living in their own homes. They don't want to move. And so I think what we need to do as a society is to help people do that better.

但试图说服父母做出截然不同的人生选择以缓解自己的不安——这是年轻人在担忧父母处境时需要三思的问题。

But trying to talk somebody into making a very different life choice because you'll feel better is something that I think younger people should consider when they're feeling uneasy about their parents' situation.

劳拉，我最后一个问题与你作为大学教授的教育工作相关。几年前我曾休假，在一所优秀大学旁听课程、参加讲座、结识教授、思考观点、阅读书籍，这段经历彻底拓展了我的思维。离开时我焕然一新，对许多事物产生了前所未有的思考。这让我想起萧伯纳那句老话：‘青春浪费在年轻人身上’。

I had one last question for you, Laura, and that's related to the fact that you're a university professor and in the business of education. A few years ago, I had an opportunity to take some time off, and I got to spend time at a wonderful university and took whichever classes I wanted, attended lectures, got to meet professors, think about ideas, read books, and I found it to be an utterly mind expanding opportunity. I came away so refreshed and thinking about so many interesting things in ways that I hadn't thought about them before. And it really got me thinking about that old joke. You know, I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said, you know, youth is wasted on the young.

某种程度上，教育或许也被‘浪费’在年轻人身上——当然这是戏言。年轻人固然需要教育，但我们完全有理由将这份礼物延伸至中老年人。能否谈谈教育在人生周期中的角色？我们是否该改变现有认知？

And it might also be the case that education, to some extent, is wasted on the young. And of course, I'm I'm being facetious here. Obviously, young people need to be educated. But of course, there's no reason why we can't extend and expand the gifts of education to people who are middle aged or older. Can you talk a little bit about the role of education in the course of the life cycle and whether we should think about it differently than we do today?

教育是预测晚年生活质量与身体机能的最佳指标之一。值得注意的是，几乎所有研究中的教育数据都来自人们童年至二十岁出头的经历。在美国，多数人的教育就此终结——然而早年教育水平仍能预测其晚年状态。

Education is one of the best predictors of quality of life and physical functioning in later life. And I think it's remarkable that in almost all studies we're taking that education from decades earlier from when people were children into maybe their early 20s. But that's stretching it, right? And then education ends for most people in The United States. And still, their levels of education early in life are predicting how well they're doing in later life.

试想若教育能贯穿终生——这正是我们亟需创建的世界。现行人生模式将早期阶段定为学习期（上学/学手艺），中期为工作与家庭期（赚钱育儿），晚期才是休闲期（在50岁预期寿命时代几乎不存在）。借助长寿这份礼物，我们完全可以将教育、工作与休闲融合于整个人生——这将解决诸多挑战。

Imagine if education was integrated all the way through. This is the kind of world I believe we really need to create. The model we have today that guides us through life suggests that the first part of life is about education and learning. You go to school, you learn a trade. The second part of life is about work and family.

这种模式能解决中年休闲时间匮乏问题，缓解为数十年退休生活储蓄的经济压力，更让我们终身学习。在我看来，这才是我们应追求的模式——不仅能提升老年人生活质量，更能惠及所有年龄段的人群。

That's when you're earning money and raising those kids. And then the third part of life is finally about leisure. And you didn't get much of it back when life expectancy was 50, but you might get a little bit of leisure those last couple years. What we can do now, because of this gift of time, is to integrate education, work, and leisure throughout all of our lives. And it would solve so many of the challenges.

（此段为前文延续，无需重复翻译）

It would solve the challenge of finding time for leisure in the middle of life. It would solve the financial problem of trying to save enough money in forty years to support yourself for decades longer. And it would allow us to continue learning throughout our lives. To me, this is the model we need to strive for. And it would be a model that would improve quality of life, not just for older people, but for all of us all the way through.

劳拉·卡斯滕森是斯坦福大学心理学家，著有《漫长而光明的未来：长寿时代的幸福、健康与财务保障》。感谢您今天做客《隐藏大脑》。

Laura Karstensen is a psychologist at Stanford University. She is the author of A Long, Bright Future Happiness, Health and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity. Laura, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

很荣幸能与您交谈。谢谢。

It is my pleasure to speak with you. Thank you.

同样感谢我们的听众提出如此广泛且发人深省的问题。显然你们不仅是在收听这些节目，而是在深度聆听。能为如此投入的听众制作节目，给我们带来了极大的喜悦。《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·夸雷尔、瑞安·卡茨、奥顿·巴恩斯、安德鲁·查德威克和尼克·伍德伯里。

Thanks also to our listeners for sharing such a broad range of provocative questions. It's clear you are not just listening to these episodes, but listening deeply. It gives us so much joy to build episodes for an audience that is so engaged. 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.

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。如果您喜欢《隐藏的大脑》，请考虑加入我们的播客订阅服务Hidden Brain Plus。在这里，您将收听到其他任何地方都找不到的独家节目。同时，您也在为每期节目的研究、撰稿和音频制作成本贡献一份力量。

Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you love Hidden Brain, please consider joining our podcast subscription, Hidden Brain Plus. It's where you'll find episodes you won't hear anywhere else. Plus, you'll be doing your part to help cover the costs of the research, writing, and audio production that go into every episode of the show.

您可以通过访问support.hiddenbrain.org免费试用Hidden Brain Plus七天。如果您使用的是苹果设备，请前往apple.co/hiddenbrain。再次提醒，网址是support.hiddenbrain.org或apple.co/hiddenbrain。我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔姆，我们很快再见。

You can try Hidden Brain Plus with a free seven day trial by going to support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, go to apple.co/hiddenbrain. Again, that's support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.co/hiddenbrain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.