如何与人交谈："大家过去都更友善"及其他常见误解

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所以，朱莉，你知道，虽然别人说'过去人们更友善'这种话会让我恼火，但我觉得自己可能也有同感。比如，如果我回忆童年，想象自己从游乐场走回家的路上，邻居们都会打招呼说'嗨，小汉娜'。邮递员经过时会向我点头致意，还有遛狗的老爷爷。虽然不确定这段记忆是否准确，但我确实有种人们过去更友善的感觉。你是在——

So, Julie, you know, even though I get annoyed when other people say people used to be nicer, I kind of think I might feel that way too. Like, if I if I have a vision of my childhood and I'm walking down the street from the playground, I imagine all my neighbors saying like, hi, little Hannah. And the mailman coming by, you know, and tipping his hat at me, and the old man walking his dog. And, you know, I have no idea if this memory is accurate, but I definitely have that feeling that people were nicer. Did you grow

罗杰斯先生的邻里长大的吗？

up in mister Roger's neighborhood?

还是什么地方？不。我其实在纽约皇后区长大的，那种场景绝对不真实。

Or what was it? No. I actually grew up in Queens, New York. It's definitely certainly not true.

在《如何与人交谈》——'如何做'播客系列第四季中，我们探讨了现代生活中社区建设的障碍。比如为什么现在认识邻居的人似乎比过去少了很多？在这期与《大西洋月刊》播客《Radio Atlantic》的特别混编节目中，我们将研究另一个可能阻碍连接的因素。这源于心理学家亚当·马斯特拉尼的一项研究，他花了十年时间研究这种普遍现象：人们总说现在的一切都比过去更糟。这种认为人们随时间变得更刻薄、更不可信的感觉——或者至少我们这么认为。

In How to Talk to People, season four of the How To podcast series, we explored the barriers to community building in modern life. Things like why does it feel like a lot fewer people know their neighbors today than they used to? In this special mashup episode with the Atlantic podcast Radio Atlantic, we're looking into another potential barrier to connection. It comes from a study done by a psychologist named Adam Mastriani, who spent a decade looking into this widespread phenomenon in which people talk about how everything is worse these days than it was in the past. This feeling that people have gotten meaner and less trustworthy over time, or so we think.

我一生中经常听人说'过去晚上可以不锁门'或者'现在不能再轻信别人的承诺了'。这类说法总是让我感到不适。一方面是想证明他们是错的，但另一方面也想：如果他们是对的，那这就是个大问题。这就是我们研究的起点。

So my whole life, I've heard people say things like, you used to be able to keep your doors unlocked at night or you can't trust someone's word anymore. And I always chafed at those kind of statements. So part of it was wanting to prove everybody wrong, but part of it too was like, well, if they're right, this is a big problem. And that's kind of where we got started.

我邀请了《Radio Atlantic》主持人汉娜·罗森对话，她与亚当讨论了他的研究，剖析这种现象对政治领域和个人生活意味着什么。

I sat down with Hannah Rosen, the host of Radio Atlantic, who spoke with Adam about his study to dissect what this means for the political sphere and our personal lives.

我想是在我研究生第一年，特朗普当选的时候。那时，‘让美国再次伟大’显然成了当天的氛围。看到声称过去很好、现在很糟，让我来掌权，我能把美好的过去带回来这样的论调。也让我看到，这远不止是叔叔、姐夫和网上的人在说这些话，而是这些主张引起了人们的共鸣，并帮助人们入主白宫。

I think my first year of graduate school when Trump got elected. And so obviously, was a moment of Make America Great Again being sort of the vibe of the day. Seeing how claims that the past was good, the present is bad, put me in charge, and I can bring the good past back. Also, just maybe see how, like, this is much more than, you know, uncles and brothers in law and people on the Internet saying these things, that these claims resonate with people, and they help put people in the Oval Office.

是的。我得说，这就是我对你的研究感兴趣的原因，因为我一直有一种超然的好奇心，想知道为什么这句话会引起如此强烈的共鸣。就像，为什么不仅仅是美国领导人，而是世界各地的领导人

Yeah. I mean, I have to say that's my motivation for being interested in your research because I have always had a kind of detached curiosity about why this line resonates so strongly. Like, why is it that and it's not just American leaders. It's leaders all over the world

是的。

Yeah.

可以说，哦，过去的事情更好。然后立刻就引起了人们的共鸣。就像，他们甚至不需要解释。你只需要说，你知道，让美国再次伟大。就四个字，所有的假设立刻就出现在人们脑海中。

Can just say, oh, things were better back then. And it immediately clicks for people. Like, they don't even have to explain it. You can just say, you know, make America great again. It's like four words, and all the assumptions are immediately there for people.

是的。当我在学术场合谈论这篇论文时，我一开始就提到特朗普就职演讲的结尾，他说，你知道，我们将让美国再次富裕、再次自豪、再次安全、再次伟大。我指出，这些句子中最重要的词，你知道，不是美国、安全、自豪、强大或伟大。而是‘再次’。是的。

Yeah. When I give talks in an academic context about this paper, that's what I start with is the end of Trump's inaugural speech where he says, know, we'll make America wealthy again and proud again and safe again and great again. And I point out that the most important word in those sentences, you know, isn't America or safe or proud or strong or great. It's again. Yes.

就这一个词做了大量的工作，意思是，嗯，如果过去很伟大但现在不是，那就意味着有些事情改变了。它暗示我们可以把它改回来。它唤起了一种失落感，但也唤起了恢复这种损失的可能性。

Just that word does a ton of work, which is that like, well, if things used to be great but aren't now, it means something changed. It implies that we can change it back. It evokes a sense of loss, but also a sense of possibility of restoring the loss.

是的。是的。就是‘再次’这个词。就像那个小小的词在情感上为人们解决了什么。很难确切理解它是如何起作用的，但你说出‘再次’这个词，每个人都觉得，你刚刚填补了我的一个空洞。

Yeah. Yeah. And it is the word again. It's like that one little word sort of resolves something emotionally for people. It's hard to understand exactly how it works, but you say the word again and everyone's like, you just filled a hole for me.

你知道吗？

You know?

是的。

Yeah.

你说道德沦丧到底是什么意思？如果这是个错觉，为什么感觉如此真实？

What exactly do you mean when you say moral decline? And why if it's an illusion, does it feel so real?

关于人们谈论道德沦丧时可能想到什么，有几个完全合理的假设。可能每个人的意思是，我听说20世纪50年代是个非常好的时期。所以我真正告诉你的是，从那以后情况就恶化了。不是说过去十年变糟了，而是说二十年前或五十年前就变糟了。我们现在只是生活在糟糕的时代。

There are a few totally reasonable hypotheses about what people might think of when they talk about moral decline. It might be that everyone means like, I heard that the 1950s were a really good time. And so what I'm really telling you is things have declined since then. Not that they got worse in the past ten years, that they like they got worse, you know, twenty years ago or fifty years ago. And we're just living in the bad times now.

在后来的研究中，我们让人们回顾更早的时期。那之前的二十年怎么样？四十年之前呢？他们告诉我们的是，在我出生之前，什么都没发生。一切都很好。

In a later study, we asked people, go back even farther than that. What about twenty years before that? What about forty years before that? And what they told us there is before I arrived, nothing was happening. Things were good.

一切都很好。一切都很好。然后我出生了，之后事情就开始走下坡路了。特别有趣的是，你什么时候出生并不重要。所以30岁的人告诉我们这是三十年前发生的。

Things were good. Things were good. Then I got born, and then things started to go downhill. And what's especially interesting is it doesn't matter when you were born. So the people who are 30 told us it happened thirty years ago.

60岁的人告诉我们这是六十年前发生的。

The people who are 60 told us it happened sixty years ago.

等等，真的吗？所以人们真的认为衰落是从他们来到地球那一刻开始的？

Wait. Really? So literally people think the decline began when they came on this earth?

是的。我们并没有问比如前一天和后一天的情况，但我们问的问题是：评价当今人们的善良、诚实、友善和优秀程度如何？那么你20岁那年呢？人们告诉我们那时比现在更好。那你出生那年呢？

Yeah. So, I mean, we we don't ask, like, you know, the day before and the day after, but the question that we asked was rate how kind, honest, nice, good people are today. What about the year in which you were 20? And people told us it was better than. What about the year in which you were born?

人们告诉我们那时甚至比现在更好。然后我们又问，那再往前二十年、四十年呢？人们的回答没有差异。那条线是平的。只有当我们问及出生后二十年时，这条线才开始下降。

And people told us it was it was even better than. And then we asked, what about twenty years before that and forty years before that? And there's no difference in people's answers. That line is flat. It's only when we asked about twenty years after your birth that the line goes down.

这太有趣了。我觉得我还没完全理解。所以人们是在将自己个人的生活困难或挣扎——也许我在过度推断了——投射到全人类身上。就像把他们自己的生命历程投射到一个更广阔的历史、文化、政治生命历程中。

That is so interesting. I don't think I fully grasp that. So people are projecting whatever personal difficulties or struggles of life, now maybe I'm extrapolating, onto the whole of humanity. Like, they're projecting their own lifespan onto a historical, broader cultural, political lifespan.

没错。我认为这是人们记忆的偏差，因为你没有出生前的记忆。但你确实拥有出生后大部分时间的记忆。所以如果这是一种记忆偏差，那么它在接近你出生时启动是合理的。显然不是精确的那个时刻，但这解释了为什么我们看不到人们对出生前和出生后时期的看法存在这种差异。

Yeah. And I mean, this is a bias of people's memory because you don't have memories from before you were born. You do have memories from most of the time after you were born. So it would make sense if this is a memory bias that it turns on sometime near the moment of your birth. Obviously, not exactly then, but this would explain why we don't see this for what people think about before they were born and after.

这与年龄大小真的无关吗？我的意思是，刻板印象显然是像辛普森爷爷那样。是的，年长的人总说过去更好，但年轻人不一定这么认为。

Does it really not matter how young you are? Like, I mean, the stereotype is obviously, you know, grandpa Simpson. It's like Yeah. Older people are always talking about how things were better back then, but not necessarily younger people.

是的。我们原本也完全预期会发现这一点，但实际上并没有。当你询问人们在其一生中感知到的衰落程度时，年轻人和年长者感知到的衰落程度并没有差异。

Yeah. We totally expected to find that as well, and we didn't really. So when you ask people about the decline that they have perceived over their lifetimes, and there, there's no difference in the amount of decline that younger and older people perceive.

朱莉，我很惊讶地听说老年人和年轻人在感知这种道德衰退方面没有差异。我的意思是，你并不老，你还年轻。那你记得曾经有过这种感觉吗？

Julie, I was surprised to hear that there wasn't a difference between older people and younger people in terms of how they perceive this moral decline. I mean, you're not an old person. You're young. So do you remember ever having this feeling?

我清楚地记得直到2013年搬到华盛顿特区后才有了智能手机。在那之前的几年，当我住在芝加哥时，我记得与街上陌生人的互动要多得多。而现在这样的互动肯定没有以前那么频繁了。我想这只是因为我们都在看手机，对吧？

I distinctly remember I did not get a smartphone until I moved to DC in 2013. So in the years before that, when I lived in Chicago, I just have a memory of like having so many more interactions with strangers on the street. And I definitely do not have those nearly as frequently anymore. And I think it's just because we're all looking at our phones. Right?

所以某种程度上，我有点浪漫化前智能手机时代的那种偶遇之类的。

So part of me kinda romanticizes like the, you know, chance encounters of the pre smartphone era and and all of that.

是啊。听你这么说，我觉得，哦，朱莉有这种感觉没问题，我有这种感觉也没问题。但如果我把这种感觉放大几百万倍，就会变成一场政治运动——让我们回到过去更好的时代，这个我就不太喜欢了。

Yeah. And when I hear you say that, I'm like, oh, it's fine for Julie to have that feeling, and it's fine for me to have that feeling. But if I like multiply it by a few million times, then I get this political movement of let's go back to the era when things were better, and that I don't really like so much.

是的。这也让我想到一项研究发现，美国的社交信任实际上几十年来一直在下降。所以人们越来越不愿意说大多数人总体上值得信任。你说得完全正确，认为过去更好、人们曾经更可信，这确实有很大的政治影响。对我来说，这有点像先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题。

Yeah. One thing that this makes me think of too is a line of research that has found that social trust has actually been declining in The US for decades. So people are essentially less and less likely to say that generally most other people can be trusted. And so you're totally right that there are really big political implications for thinking the past was better and people used to be more trustworthy. For me, it feels like kind of a chicken or an egg question.

比如，是因为我们相信人们道德变差了才更不信任他们？还是因为我们与社区更脱节才认为人们变差了？

Like, do we trust people less because we believe they've gotten morally worse? Or do we believe people are worse because we're more disconnected from our communities?

我们这里关注的是一个相当具体的问题：人们日常生活中彼此相处的方式是否随时间发生了变化？以及人们是否认为发生了变化？这种模式是当情况糟糕时，很容易让人觉得变得更糟了。所以我认为这不是唯一可能产生这种错觉的领域，因为人们对生活的许多不同方面都这么说，比如艺术不如从前了。

We focused here on a pretty narrow question, which is, you know, has the way that people treat one another in their everyday lives changed over time? And do people think that it has? This is a model of when things are bad, it's easy for them to seem like they have gotten worse. And and so I don't think this is the only domain where we might find this illusion because people say this about a lot of different parts of life. You know, that art is worse than it used to be.

文化状况不如从前了。你知道的，教育体系也比过去更差了。但在我看来很明显的是，我们倾向于相信这种说法，即使它并不真实。

The culture is worse than it used to be. That, you know, the education system is worse than it used to be. But it seems pretty clear to me that we are predisposed to believe that it's true even when it's not.

你这项研究的假设是人们认为某种道德水准已经下降，但在你看来其实并未下降。所以对你来说，这就像是一种错觉。我是说，你称之为错觉。对吧？是的。

Your assumptions in this research are people have this idea that a certain kind of morality has declined, but in your mind, it has not declined. So to you, this is like an illusion. I mean, you call it an illusion. Right? Yes.

好的。那么基于这个假设，你的解释是什么？比如，为什么我们大多数人会陷入这种错觉/幻觉？就像你说的，这显然不是真的。

Okay. So working within that assumption, what's your explanation? Like, why would a majority of us be operating under a delusion slash illusion? Like, something that you're saying is clearly not true.

我们认为有两种认知偏差共同作用产生了这种错觉。这个解释分为两部分。第一部分是我们所说的偏见性接触，即人们倾向于关注 predominantly 负面信息，尤其是关于他们不认识的人。这既包括他们接收到的关于陌生人的信息（主要是负面的），也包括他们主动关注的信息。这就是为什么当你观察个人世界之外时，会觉得到处都是做坏事的人。

We think that there are two cognitive biases that can combine to produce this illusion. So this explanation is two parts. The first is what we call biased exposure, which is that people tend to attend to predominantly negative information, especially about people that they don't know. So this is both a combination of the information that they receive about people that they don't know, which is primarily negative, and the information that they pay attention to. So this is why when you look out at the world beyond your personal world, it looks like it's full of people who are doing bad things.

他们在撒谎、欺骗、偷窃和杀人。解释的第二部分是我们所说的偏见性记忆。记忆研究者发现，糟糕记忆的负面感受往往比美好记忆的正面感受消退得更快。你知道，如果你在高中舞会上被拒绝了，当时感觉很难受。二十年后，这可能就成了一个有趣的故事。

They're lying and cheating and and stealing and killing. The second part of the explanation is what we call biased memory. Memory researchers have noticed that the badness of bad memories tends to fade faster than the goodness of good memories. So, you know, if you got turned down for your high school prom, feels pretty bad at the time. Twenty years later, it's maybe a funny story.

如果你有一个很棒的高中舞会经历，当时感觉很好，二十年后，这仍然是一段美好的回忆。虽然不如亲身经历时那么美好，但感觉仍然相当不错。平均而言，人们的记忆就是这样变化的——糟糕的记忆比美好的记忆更快地向中性靠拢。糟糕的记忆更可能被遗忘，也更可能在回顾时变得美好。

If you have a great high school prom, it feels pretty good at the time, and twenty years later, it's still a pretty nice memory. It doesn't feel as nice as it did to experience it, but it still feels pretty nice. And that turns out to be on average what happens to people's memories, that the bad ones inch toward neutral faster than the good ones do. And the bad ones are more likely to both be forgotten and to become good in retrospect.

所以当我读这篇论文时，Hana，我在想是否某种程度上人们确实感知到了世界的真实变化。社会信任度下降，同时普遍存在的孤独感与疏离感，社区生活的侵蚀表现为认识邻居的人变少、社区组织成员减少。所有这些无疑对人们的个人生活产生了影响，但我认为它表现为一种模糊的感觉，比如‘哦，现在交朋友更难了’或‘更难感觉自己属于社区’。所以我在想，我们是否感受到了这种模糊而令人不安的疏离感，并错误地将其归因于‘过去更好而现在人们更糟糕’

So when I read the paper, Hana, I wondered whether what might be going on is that people are to some degree picking up on a real change in the world. There's the decline of social trust, but also widespread loneliness and disconnection and the erosion of community life in the sense of fewer people knowing their neighbors declining membership in community organizations. And all of those things definitely have an impact on people's personal lives, but I think it manifests as a vague feeling that, like, oh, it's just harder to make friends or harder to feel like I'm a part of my community. So I wonder if we're feeling this sort of vague and troubling sense of disconnection and assigning it a false explanation that things used to be better before and people just suck more than

他们曾经是这样的。哦，这真的很有趣。所以你的意思是，这种感觉是真实的。就像，感觉某些事情发生了变化是真实的，因为确实有些事情变了。比如，有更多的疏离感和孤独感。

they used to. Oh, that's really interesting. So what you're saying is the feeling is real. Like, the feeling that something has changed is real because something has changed. Like, there is more disconnection and loneliness.

因此，我们反而编造了一个非常整洁的故事。就像，我小时候，事情更好，人们更友善，邮递员会脱帽致意，然后我们就停在那里了。

So instead, we make up this very tidy story. Like, when I was a kid, things were better and people were nicer and the mailman tipped his hat, and we just kind of stopped there.

是的。确实有一些真实的事情正在发生，会让人们感到与周围的陌生人疏离。我在想，是的，我们在心理上很难理解为什么会这样。

Yeah. There definitely are real things that are really happening that would make people feel disconnected from strangers around them. And I wonder if, yeah, we just have a hard time psychologically knowing why that's the case.

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所以，亚当，我想跟你探讨几个理论。一个是，可能确实有些事情发生了变化，而我们只是用错了名字来称呼它。就像，某些东西衰退了，这来自另一派关于社会信任的心理学研究。比如，我们的孤立感、连接感、面对面接触发生了变化。就像，有一些社会变化是真实且结构性的，在我们身上留下了一个空洞，而我们错误地称之为道德问题。

So, Adam, I wanna run a couple of theories by you. One is the possibility that something has actually changed, and we're just calling it by the wrong name. That, like, something has declined, and this is from a different body of psychological research about social trust. Like, that there is a change in our isolation, our sense of connectedness, our face to face contact. Like, there are some societal changes, which are real and structural, and have kind of left a hole in us that we are misnaming morality.

当我们在这里读到它时，我们认为有些事情正在变化，确实让我们感到有些绝望，也许我们只是用错了名字来称呼它们。就像，我们有一种感觉，这种极其强烈的感觉是某些事情不对劲，而那就是连接感或社区感之类的东西。

When we read it here, we thought there are some things that are changing and that do leave us a little despairing, and maybe we're just calling them by the wrong name. Like, it's a feeling we have, this incredibly powerful feeling that that something is wrong, and that's that something is connectedness or community or something like that.

是的。所以很容易从‘人们不如以前友善’滑向‘事情不如以前好’。确实，随着时间的推移，对机构的信任度下降了。很多人也说人际信任随着时间的推移下降了。而实际上我认为这种情况被夸大的程度远超过对机构信任的下降。

Yeah. So it's very easy to slip from, you know, people are less kind than they used to be to things are worse than they used to be. And so it is true that trust in institutions has declined over time. A lot of people also say that interpersonal trust has declined over time. And I actually think that case is much more overstated than the decline in institutional trust.

有一位名叫理查德·艾巴赫的学者研究了人们为何认为世界变得更危险。他发现人们普遍这样认为，尤其是为人父母者。当你问这些父母世界何时变得危险时，他们会给出一个与第一个孩子出生日期惊人接近的时间点。这显然意味着世界本身并未改变。

There's some work by a guy named Richard Eibach on how people think the world has gotten more dangerous. And, you know, he finds that people believe this and the people who believe this especially are parents. And when you ask those parents, when did the world become more dangerous? You get a date that is curiously close to the date of the birth of their first child. The obvious implication being that nothing about the world changed.

改变的是你的世界观，现在你需要保护这个脆弱的生命，因此对世界的危险更加敏感。这就是为什么你觉得危险变多了。

It was your worldview that changed, and now you have to, you know, protect this fragile life and so are much more attuned to the dangers of the world. That's why you think there's more of them.

朱莉，我经常和我哥哥讨论这个话题，他总是说他的孩子们不安全。他住在纽约，总说孩子们不安全，不能出门，不能去街角。

You know, Julie, I have this conversation with my brother all the time, and he's always telling me his kids aren't safe. Like, he lives in New York. He's like, my kids aren't safe. They can't go outside. They can't go down the block.

他真的非常焦虑。你知道吗？他觉得现在比我们小时候危险多了。我就说，老兄，我们可是在七十年代的纽约长大的。

Like, he really freaks out. You know? And it's way less safe than it was when we were kids. And I'm like, dude, we grew up in New York in the seventies. Right.

那时候才真的不安全。从统计数据来看，确实如此。我给他看过新闻文章，甚至专门下载过一份FBI报告，显示我们小时候纽约的犯罪统计数据。

It was really not safe. It's Like, so statistically. Statistically. And I've shown him news articles, and I once pulled out an FBI report. I, like, specially downloaded an FBI report that showed, you know, crime statistics in New York from when we were kids.

但他对此坚信不疑。我无法动摇他，无论出示多少数据或统计都无法让他觉得现在没那么糟。亚当·马斯特里亚尼对此有个术语，这么说对我哥可能有点刻薄，他称之为‘无根据的坚信’。

And his conviction is so strong about this. Like, I can't budge him. I can't show him enough numbers or statistics to make him think, oh, things things aren't worse now. I mean, Adam Mastriani actually has a term for this. This is a little mean to my brother, but his term is unearned conviction.

我认为他的意思正是如此：即便没有任何依据支撑你讲述的故事，你的信念却异常坚定。

And I think what he means by that is exactly this. It's like your conviction is incredibly strong even though you have really no basis to back up the story that you're attaching to that very strong conviction.

是的。我的意思是，看起来不管FBI的报告如何，你哥哥对自己讲述的这个故事在情感上引起了强烈共鸣。没错。我们对自己生活讲述的故事确实在某种程度上塑造了我们是谁。这很有趣，因为当我们向自己讲述这些关于个人生活的故事时，很多时候这些故事会落入两种类型之一。

Yeah. I mean, it seems like regardless of, you know, the FBI report, the story your brother is telling himself is like super emotionally resonant. Yes. And the stories that we tell ourselves about our own lives, like, really do sort of shape who we are. It's really interesting because when we tell these stories to ourselves about, you know, our personal lives, a lot of times those stories fall into one of two categories.

一种是救赎型，另一种是污染型。所以救赎型故事就像是，我经历了这些磨难，并因此变得更强大，情况正在好转。而污染型故事则是这些磨难征服了我，我现在就像是被打垮了，从根本上变成了一个更糟糕的人。你可能不会惊讶地听到，污染型叙事对人们的心理健康不太好。这项研究是针对我们讲述个人生活的故事进行的。

One being redemptive and the other being contamination. And so a redemptive story is like, I have, you know, suffered through these trials and come out stronger for it and things are looking up. Whereas a contamination story is like these trials have conquered me and I am now like broken and fundamentally a worse person. And it probably won't surprise you to hear that contamination sequences are not great for people's mental health. That research was done, you know, with stories that we're telling about our personal lives.

但感觉我们好像在讲述一个关于全人类的污染型故事。我想让人沮丧的是

But it feels like we're kind of telling a contamination story about all of humanity. I guess what's depressing to

为什么这些故事会深入人心？我的意思是，在美国社会流行的救赎故事。我觉得历史上很多时刻，现在也是其中之一，这些污染型故事，比如美国曾经伟大或俄罗斯曾经伟大，具有一种特殊的情感力量，真的能动员人们。

me is why are those the ones that stick? I mean, are redemption stories that are popular in American society. I feel like a lot of moments in history, and now is one of them, these contamination stories, like America was great once or Russia was great once, have a particular kind of emotional juice and can really rally people.

是的。我的意思是，也许这有点像你哥哥在纽约的恐惧，对吧，那种情感是如此发自肺腑。就像是关乎你孩子的安全。所以，当然，这会产生更强烈的影响。

Yeah. I mean, maybe it's kind of like your brother's fear in New York, right, where it's just like, that is so viscerally emotional. It's like the safety of your kid. And so, of course, that's gonna have, like, a way stronger impact.

那么，亚当，你有没有发现不同人口统计群体之间存在显著差异？如果不是老年人和年轻人之间，那性别差异呢？或者不同政治意识形态的人之间呢？

Now, Adam, did you find any appreciable differences between demographics? So if not between old and young people, what about gender differences or people with different political ideologies?

我们没有发现任何性别差异。我们没有发现任何种族群体间的差异。也没有发现教育程度带来的差异。我们发现的唯一另一个人口统计差异是意识形态上的，政治上的。自认为更保守的人比自认为更自由派的人感知到更多随时间推移的衰落。

We didn't find any gender differences. We didn't find any differences by racial groups. We didn't find any education differences. The only other demographic difference that we found was an ideological one, a political one. The people who self identified as more conservative perceived more decline over time than the people who self identified as liberal.

但即便是最自由派的人，他们也认为如今的人们不如十年前、二十年前或过去任何时候那么友善。所以这是保守派说得更响亮，但自由派也同样认同的观点。

But even for the people who are the most liberal, they still said that people are less kind today than they were ten years ago, twenty years ago, whatever point in the past. So this is something that conservatives said louder, but liberals said as well.

所以一个自认为自由派的人可能相信种族主义和性别歧视减少了

So someone who identifies as a liberal could believe that there's less racism and sexism

是的。

Yes.

但仍然认为其他普遍的道德标志已经衰退了？

But still believe that those other general universal markers of morality have declined?

是的。事实上，他们似乎确实这么认为。嗯。在我们的研究中，那些认为现在的人比过去更好的少数群体，当我们问他们为什么这么想时，他们会提到的一点是：现在更有包容性，种族主义、性别歧视、能力歧视等所有‘主义’都减少了。所以当人们说现在的人不如过去友善时，似乎并不是自发地想到这些方面。

Yes. And in fact, it seems like they do. Mhmm. In our studies, the the much smaller group of people who say that people are better now than they used to be, when we ask them why, what were you thinking of, one thing that does come up for them is there's more tolerance, there's less racism, sexism, ableism, all the isms. So it seems like that's not what people are spontaneously thinking of when they say that people are less kind than they used to be.

因为如果你直接问他们，比如，你认为人们现在对非裔美国人是更尊重礼貌还是不如过去？大多数人会说现在比过去更好。但如果你问他们，现在的人是更友善还是更不友善？他们会说更不友善。所以他们在回答这个问题时并没有想到这些方面。

Because if you ask them directly, do you think that, for instance, people treat African Americans with more respect and courtesy or less than in the past? A majority of people will say more today than in the past. But if you ask them, are people more or less kind today? They'll go less kind. So they're this is not what they're thinking of when they answer the question.

是的。所以这是一种非常非常具体的感觉。比如，我确实认为人们彼此更尊重了，很大程度上是因为我们扩大了被尊重者的范围。而且，你知道，那种父权制对人们身体的控制观念，以及谁有权做决定的观念——我的意思是，我们在许多方面都为公平和公正打开了大门。

Yeah. So it's a really, really specific feeling. Like, I definitely think that people treat each other with more respect largely because we have broadened the window of who is allowed to be respected. And, you know, sort of patriarchal notions of control over people's bodies and sort of who gets to make decisions. I mean, there's so many ways in which we have opened the door to fairness and equity.

比如说，比起五十年前，我肯定更愿意活在今天，

Like, I'd much rather be alive today than fifty years ago,

确实如此。

for sure.

是的，我同意。所以我觉得特别令人惊讶的是，我相信还有很多人也这么认为，但即便是那些同意的人中，有些人似乎觉得，是啊，但这其实并非发自人们的真心。他们实际上现在对彼此比以前更糟糕了。是的。

Yeah. I agree. And so I I think it was especially surprising that I'm sure there are many other people who agree, but even some of the people who do agree, they seem to think like, yeah, but that actually doesn't come from people's heart of hearts. That, like, they're actually still worse to one another now than they used to be. Yeah.

他们会说所有正确的话，或者持有正确的观点，但你知道，他们不会为你开门，或者一有机会就会欺骗你。现在人们知道该说什么好话，但他们反而做了更多坏事。

They'll say all the right things or they'll have the right opinions, but, know, they won't hold the door open for you or they'll cheat you when they can. Now people know the right things to say, but they still do more of the bad things.

我们对认识的人也有同样的感觉吗？比如，这在我们个人生活中是否表现不同？

Do we feel the same way with people we know? Like, does it play out differently in our personal lives?

这实际上也可能产生一种改善的错觉。你主要听到和体验到的都是关于你认识的人的好事。所以我们原以为，在你的个人世界里，这种衰退的错觉可能会减弱、消失甚至逆转。人们告诉我们，总体上，现在的人比十五年前更差。而我认识十五年的人，现在比十五年前更好。

You it can actually also produce an illusion of improvement. You actually primarily hear good things and experience good things about people that you know. And so we thought that in your personal world, this illusion of decline might be turned down or turned off or even reversed. And people told us, people in general, worse today than they were fifteen years ago. People that I have known for the past fifteen years, better today than they were fifteen years ago.

所以，

So,

朱莉，亚当发现了一件我觉得非常有趣的事情：我们认识的人，比如我们自己人，我们亲近的人等等，似乎随着时间的推移变得越来越好。然而，公众整体却在变糟。我不太明白这两者是如何并存的。

Julie, one thing that Adam found that I thought was so interesting was that people we know, like our own people, people we're close to or whatever, that they somehow are getting better over time. And yet, the general public are getting worse. I don't quite understand how those fit together.

所以我想我们只是认为道德滑坡发生在陌生人身上，发生在所有其他人身上。没错。而且看起来，许多人正在经历的与社区的脱节，可能意味着我们把更多人归入了道德败坏、不可信任的类别。

So I guess we just think the moral decline is happening with strangers, with all those other people. Right. And it seems like potentially the disconnection from community that many people are experiencing could just mean that we're slotting more people into the morally compromised, untrustworthy category.

对。就像，如果我们认识更多人，有更多泛泛之交，参加保龄球联赛之类的活动，那么我们可能会把更多人纳入我们认识的圈子，而那些人是好人。所以这可能会形成一种向上的螺旋，而不是现在这种向下的趋势。

Right. Like, if we met more people and we had more casual acquaintances and we went to our bowling leagues or whatever, then we might include more people in that circle of people we know, and those people are good people. So so that could sort of spiral upwards rather than what's happening, which is a momentum downwards.

亚当的研究似乎在说，如果你去了解别人，就不会再认为他们处于道德堕落的下降轨道上了。

Adam's study kinda seems to say that if you get to know people, then you won't think they're on a downward slope of moral depravity anymore.

首先，亚当，在我看来问题在于人们过于确信。就像，他们不去质疑过去是否更糟糕？这是一种缺乏谦逊的表现，因为如果你试图理解哪些方面确实变糟了，就能提出更具体、更有用的政策解决方案。我猜你进行这项研究的一个原因是指出这个错误——我们都生活在这种错觉之下。

For one thing, Adam, it sounds to me like the problem is that people are absolutely certain. Like, they're not questioning, was the past a worse place? It's a sort of lack of humility because if you try to understand, well, maybe what did get worse, then you would come up with more specific and useful policy solutions. I mean, I assume one reason you did this research is to point out a mistake. Like, we're all living under this delusion.

既然你听起来是个相当乐观的人，在你看来，一旦我指出这一点，人们就会明白——知识就是力量——然后他们就会停止这种错觉。你的目标或愿望是什么？

And in your head, since you sound like a fairly optimistic person, is it, you know, once I point that out, people will know, like, knowledge is power and people will know and then they will stop. What's the aim or what's your what's your wish here?

是的。作为心理学家，我对于改变人们的想法有些绝望，因为我知道这有多难。这并不像我们想象的那样——'哦，你的世界观错了，让我给你正确的事实，现在你就有正确的世界观了'——事情根本不是这样运作的。

Yeah. I mean, as a psychologist, I a little bit despair of changing people's minds because I know how difficult it is. Like, it doesn't work the way that we think that it works that like, oh, you have the wrong model of the world. How about I give you the correct facts? And now you'll have the correct model of the world.

就像，这种事什么时候发生过？这种事什么时候发生在我身上过？从来没有。而我真心希望这能带来一个效果：每当政客或有志从政者声称，哦，过去更好，让我掌权，我会让一切重回美好。这种陈词滥调我们听过无数次，它能引起共鸣或许是因为我们天生就容易相信这种说法，即使它并不真实。

Like, when does that ever happen? Like, when does that ever happen to me? Like, never. And one effect that I certainly hope that this has is whenever politicians or aspiring politicians make the claim that, you know, oh, things used to be better and put me in charge and I'll make them better again. That's a very old thing that we've heard many times, and it resonates with us perhaps because we are primed to believe it even when it's not true.

那么，哈娜，既然我们知道这是一种错觉。对吧？这很有趣。但这真的会改变你的感受吗？

So, Hana, now that we know this is an illusion. Right? That's very interesting. But will it actually change how you feel?

我不太确定。作为一名记者，这让我有点沮丧，因为我花了很多时间研究和整理事实，就像我做的那样，但想到情绪最终会压倒所有这些，我不知道该如何应对。是的。但在我个人生活中，这种意识是有帮助的。我认为更好地理解自己的情感杠杆绝不会有什么坏处。

I don't really know. I mean, I feel like as a journalist, it depresses me a little bit because I spend a lot of time researching and marshaling facts like I And did with my to think that emotions ultimately squash all of that, I don't really know what to do with that. Yeah. But in my own personal life, awareness is helpful. I don't think any bad can come from understanding your own emotional levers better.

这并不是说它会立即带来改变，但我认为理解‘哦，我有这种情感依恋或强烈信念，它正引导我以这种方式行事’绝不会是坏事。这本身就是一个日常的小奇迹。所以这就足够了。

It's not that it immediately leads, like, to a change, but I don't think it can ever be bad to understand, Oh, I'm having this emotional attachment or strong belief, that's and leading me to to behave in this way. That in and of itself is a is a small daily miracle. So that's good enough.

如果你喜欢我和汉娜·罗森的对话，请在任意播客平台收听《大西洋电台》。本集由贝卡·拉希德制作，乔斯林·弗兰克编辑，伊莎贝尔·克里斯托事实核查，罗布·斯米尔切克负责工程。

If you liked my conversation with Hannah Rosen, listen to Radio Atlantic, where ever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Becca Rashid. Editing by Jocelyn Frank. Fact check by Isabel Cristo. Engineering by Rob Smierciek.

音频执行制作人是克劳丁·阿巴德，音频总编辑是安德烈亚·瓦尔德斯。

The executive producer of audio is Claudine Abade. The managing editor of audio is Andrea Valdez.

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Ready to trade screen time for trail time? Scout Motors combines heritage and innovative technology to build vehicles that connect you to what matters most, your passengers and the world around you. Our CEO, Scott Keogh, puts it like this.

我们做了些简单基础的事情，比如把实体开关重新装回车里，这感觉就像是，没错。我想要与某种东西建立联系。而这正是我们的设计师和工程师在这款车上实现的。

We did something as simple and basic as put real switches back into the car, and it's like, absolutely. I want to connect with something. And that's what our designers and engineers have brought to life in this car.

冒险在召唤。加入我们的社区，请访问 scoutmotors.com。

Adventure awaits. Join our community at scoutmotors.com.