逃离完美主义

这里是《隐藏的大脑》。我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。它们出现在我们的电视、手机和高速公路广告牌上——那些经过完美修饰的美丽人们过着完美生活的画面。他们容光焕发，财富来得毫不费力，孩子们永远笑容满面。

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. They're on our TVs, on our phones, and on highway billboards. Flawless airbrushed images of beautiful people living beautiful lives. Their complexions glow, their wealth seems effortless, and their children are always smiling.

我们所有人都被这些完美图景包围着。这些画面与我们自己复杂混乱的生活形成鲜明对比。社交媒体平台加剧了这种现象——朋友们晒出田园诗般的度假照片，同事们宣布升职消息。

All of us are surrounded by these pictures of perfection. Pictures that contrast all too starkly with our own complicated messy lives. Social media platforms exacerbate this. Friends post pictures of their idyllic vacations. Colleagues announce promotions.

很多人会使用#感恩#这样的标签。而离婚、降职、绝望或是维持生计的挣扎，这些几乎从不出现。我们所见的世界与自己真实生活的世界之间这种强烈反差会产生什么影响？我们或许会提醒自己看到的都是经过修饰和过滤的内容，但这种对比依然会潜入我们的潜意识。有研究者认为，这种反差会让我们产生挥之不去的自卑感、羞耻与怨恨。

A lot of people use the hashtag blessed. Meanwhile, divorces, demotions, and despair, or the challenges of making ends meet, these show up rarely or not at all. What is the effect of the sharp contrast between the worlds we are shown and the worlds we ourselves inhabit? We may remind ourselves that what we are seeing has been airbrushed and filtered, but the contrast still burrows into our unconscious minds. Some researchers have argued that this contrast produces in us nagging feelings of inferiority, shame and resentment.

它让我们总觉得拥有得不够，不断追逐下一个目标、下一项成就、下一个里程碑。本周《隐藏的大脑》将探讨追求完美的代价。F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德的杰作《了不起的盖茨比》描述了一个拼命想爬上社会阶梯的男人。小说结尾的句子堪称文学史上最著名的段落之一。

It causes us to feel we never have enough and to reach endlessly for the next ring, the next achievement, the next milestone. The costs of chasing perfection, this week on Hidden Brain. F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, describes the story of a man who desperately tried to climb the social ladder. The final lines of the novel are amongst the most famous in literature.

文中写道：盖茨比信奉那盏绿灯，那个一年年在我们眼前渐渐远去的极乐未来。它曾经从我们身边溜走，不过没关系——明天我们会跑得更快，手臂伸得更远...总有一个晴朗的早晨。于是我们奋力向前划，逆流而上的小舟，不停地倒退，进入过去。伦敦经济学院的心理学家托马斯·柯伦正在研究我们当中有多少人是现代版的杰伊·盖茨比。

They read, Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter. Tomorrow, we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther, and one fine morning. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. At the London School of Economics, psychologist Thomas Curran studies how many of us are modern versions of Jay Gatsby.

他探索了这个痴迷于外表与成就的文化所带来的心理后果。托马斯·柯伦，欢迎来到《隐藏的大脑》。

He explores the psychological consequences of living in a culture that is obsessed with appearance and achievement. Thomas Curran, welcome to Hidden Brain.

谢谢邀请。

Thank you for having me.

托马斯，你在英格兰小镇的一个工人阶级家庭长大。青少年时期，你深刻意识到两位朋友凯文和伊安的社会地位，以及他们家庭条件与你家的悬殊差距。能描述一下当时的感受吗？

Thomas, you grew up in a working class family in a small town in England. And as a teenager, you were acutely aware of the social status of two friends, Kevin and Ian, and the contrast with your own families means. Can you paint me a picture of what that was like?

是的。我的成长环境充满爱与支持，但物质匮乏。我们家并不宽裕。最早让我意识到这点的，是背着不合潮流的书包、用着不入流的笔盒或运动鞋去上学。我没有Game Boy或PlayStation这类电子产品。

Yeah. So my upbringing was one of love and support, but also material lack. We didn't have a great deal of money. And one of my earliest memories of that is going to school with the wrong backpack or the wrong pencil case or the wrong brand of sneakers. I didn't have gadgets like a Game Boy or a PlayStation.

那时手机刚开始普及，我也没有。当我拿自己和凯文、伊安这两个拥有所有这些东西的角色比较时——他们能通过这些物质来展现个性与身份——你会觉得尽管这些都是愚蠢的身外之物，但对孩子来说真的很重要，尤其当你没有的时候。随着年龄增长，当汽车这类东西开始进入视野时，这种羞耻感就深深烙进了我的骨髓，影响巨大。汽车其实是这个过程中最重要的部分，因为它堪称终极身份象征。

Phones were just coming in then. I didn't have one of those either. And when I compared myself with these two characters, Kevin and Ian, who had all of those things and were able to express, I guess, their personalities and their identities with these material goods, you kinda feel like even though this is all stupid stuff, right, just stuff, but it really matters to a kid, and especially if you don't have it. So as I grew older and things like cars started to come into the picture, this kind of shame really started to get really into my bones, and that was huge actually. Cars was a a massive part of this because cars is kind of the ultimate status symbol.

对吧？你看看他们是怎么宣传的。我所有的朋友都买了那些超级炫酷的改装车之类的，这真的让我很崩溃。不能拥有一辆同样的车让我感到非常尴尬。我没有他们那种自由。

Right? You just look at how they're advertised. All my friends were bought these really super sleek cars with modifications and all the rest of it, and that was, like, really crushing for me. That was really embarrassing not to be able to have one too. I didn't have the freedom that they had.

我哪儿也去不了，只能在后座跟着凑热闹。我想这就是我第一次体会到羞耻的滋味，为自己的人生处境和拥有的东西感到羞愧难堪。我隐约明白在这个世界上，你得花钱才能摆脱这种羞耻感。而这大概成了我早期的动力来源。

I couldn't go anywhere. I just tagged along really in the back seat. And I suppose this is where I first learned about shame, what it meant to feel ashamed and embarrassed about where I am in life and what I have. And I sort of learned that you kinda gotta buy your way out of that shame in this world. And that became, I guess, of an early motivation.

我了解到凯文和伊恩曾问过你打算买什么车，托马斯。他们具体是怎么问的？你怎么回答的？

I understand that at one point, Kevin and Ian asked you what car you were going to be buying, Thomas. What did what did they ask you? What did you say?

当时英国流行所谓的小钢炮，就是那些速度飞快、令人兴奋的机器。镇上每个人都会问'你准备买什么车？你会选这款还是那款？要这种车牌还是那种轮毂？'我以前总爱翻汽车杂志，渴望拥有自己的车。我总是说'我要买这个，我要配那个'。

So they had these, what we call, hot hatchbacks in in The UK, you know, the really fast, exciting pieces of machinery, I suppose. And everybody around the town would be asking, you know, what car are gonna get? And you're gonna get this one, you're gonna get that one, you're gonna get these plates, and what about these trims and these wheels? And, you know, I used to love looking at car magazines and craving for for a car of my own. And I would always say, you know, well, I'm gonna have this and I'm gonna have that.

我会说等我有车了，一定要银色装饰条和镀铬轮毂，所有他们谈论的配置都要有。我总说'等我爸爸回来就会给我买车了，很快的'，心里其实暗暗期盼这能成真。但当然，我家不像他们有条件买这些。这不是我的错，我无力改变现状，但总觉得是自己不够好。

When I get my car, it's gonna have a silver trim and chrome wheels and all of these things that everybody else was talking about. I would say that one day, my dad's gonna come back, and he's gonna buy me a car, or it's not gonna be long now, you know, and I I kinda wished, hoped that that would happen. But of course, unlike them, my family didn't have the means to be able to buy me these things. And wasn't my fault. There was nothing that I could have done to change those circumstances, but you feel in some way that you're inadequate.

低人一等。

You're less than.

所以后来你立志要出人头地，成为家里第一个大学生，还养成了惊人的工作习惯。跟我们说说这段经历吧，托马斯。

So later on in life, you were determined to to get ahead, and you became the first in your family to go to college. You had a fearsome work ethic. Tell me about it, Thomas.

我赶上了英国教育改革的特殊时期。托尼·布莱尔执政时大力推动教育，90年代末到00年代初大学教育资助很多。我抓住机会，勉强进了当地师范学院读体育专业，一心想当体育老师。

So I came through the education system, actually, a really unique time. In The UK, Tony Blair was the prime minister, and he had a great education push at that time. This was this was the late nineties, early naughties. And there was a lot of financing to go to university. So I took that up, and I managed to scrape my way to a local teaching college to study sport with every intention of being a PE teacher, that was gonna be my ambition.

现在回想算是幸运，在师范学院遇到位准备跳槽去名校的教授。可能我给他留下了好印象，他带我一起去读博。从此事情开始变得疯狂——突然置身于高度竞争的学术环境，周围全是比我聪明、博学、得体的人，有人发论文有人拿经费。那种羞耻和自卑感又排山倒海般袭来。我的应对方式就是病态地拼命超越他人：确保第一个到办公室最后一个走，故意让人看见。

And I guess you could say I was lucky really because at my time at that teaching college, I happened to intersect with a professor who was on his way to a more prestigious university. I must have impressed him because he took me with him to do a PhD, and that was when things started to really get quite crazy because I remember instantly being inside this hyper competitive university environment, being surrounded by people who were just way smarter than me, more erudite, way more put together, people were pumping out publications, some of them were even getting grant money. And in that environment, those early feelings of shame and inferiority that are kind of brought with me started to come back again in mega doses. And I think my response really looking back was to develop what I can only really describe as an urgent need to lift myself above other people through an excessive form of striving. Like, made sure I was the first in the office and the last to leave and made sure people saw that.

我每周工作80小时还特意让全办公室知道。凌晨或深夜给导师发邮件刷存在感。记得有年圣诞节当天还写了1000字论文，当时引以为豪。这些行为其实很不健康，但我坚信不这样就不可能成功。

You know, I'd regularly do eighty hour weeks and and I'd let everybody know in the office that I was doing that. I sent these kind of weird conspicuous emails to my, academic supervisors in the early hours of the morning and sometimes last thing at night just to let them know that I'm working. And I can remember one Christmas doing a thousand words of my thesis on Christmas day and at that time I felt really proud of it. You know these are incredibly unhealthy things to do but nevertheless I believed if I didn't do these things then there's no way I was going to succeed.

所以最终你在自己的领域取得了显赫地位。你获得了顶尖大学的职位，新身份将你带入陌生的圈子，常让你感到格格不入。比如有一次，你受邀在一家豪华度假村发表高规格演讲，听众都是花重金参加活动的。托马斯，告诉我当时发生了什么。

So you eventually achieved prominence in your field. You you got a job at a top tier university, and your new status lifted you into unfamiliar realms where you often felt out of place. You were once invited, for example, to give a high profile speech at a fancy resort where people had paid a lot of money to attend this this event. Tell me what happened, Thomas.

是的。所有努力确实得到了回报，我可以说是一步步沿着学术阶梯，从二流机构攀升到了精英学府。2018年在美国那个度假村做的TED演讲，就是我人生的重要转折点。站在那个演讲台上时，我才真正意识到自己算是小有成就了。但即便如此，我在那个会议上仍然强烈地感到不适应。

Yeah. So all that work did end up paying off, and I was able to elevate myself through the academic up the academic ladder, I should say, into second tier and then elite institutions. And that's when I did a very important TED talk at a resort in The US back in 2018. And I think going to that TED talk was when I finally realized I'd sort of made something of myself here. But nevertheless, I really felt out of place at that conference.

台下坐着花了几千英镑参会的人，他们来自各大巨头企业或重要行业，这种阵仗让我有点无所适从。那些人举手投足间都带着与生俱来的自信，这再次触发了我内心的自卑感。最奇怪的是——我才是站在台上的人，他们专程来听我演讲的啊。

There's people that were paying thousands of pounds. They were from know, you talk to them, they're from this mega firm or that mega firm or that big industry, and it was kind of overwhelming a little bit. And they'd sort of just carried themselves with confidence, and and, again, this kind of really picked my thoughts of inferiority. And and now the weird thing was I was the one on the stage. Like, you know, Like, I was the one who they were there to see.

我有点完美主义倾向。这话你听过多少遍了？

I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Now, how many times have you heard that one?

演讲本身进行得如何？说说你做了哪些准备，现场发挥怎样，观众反应如何？

How did the talk itself go? Give me a sense of the preparation you put in and how the talk itself was delivered and how it was received.

那次演讲让我神经高度紧张。我并非天生的演说家，从没想过会从事需要优秀演讲能力的职业。为了克服焦虑，我总会过度思考、过度准备——在我看来，这是确保万无一失最保险的方式。在那个时刻，绝不能流露丝毫脆弱，否则局面可能瞬间崩溃。

So the talk itself was extremely nerve racking. I'm not a natural speaker. It's not something that I ever thought I would do, and I've kinda just been thrust into in a profession that kind of requires you to be pretty good at speaking. So one of the things I do to combat the anxiety that's associated with that is to overthink things, overprepare, because in my mind, that's the most fail safe way to make sure things don't go wrong. It's so important that you don't show an ounce of weakness or vulnerability because in that moment, things can cascade, they can spiral.

当众演讲时，你会觉得所有缺陷都暴露无遗。最终我完美无误地完成了15分钟的逐字演讲，这对我至关重要。但平心而论，那场演讲缺乏感染力，不够鼓舞人心。观众礼貌性地鼓掌，我确信他们听懂了内容，但显然这不是那种能引爆全场的演讲——有些演讲者就能做到，这种对比难免让人在意。

And and when it's so public, that's when you feel like your deficiencies or shortcomings are being exposed. And in the end, I was able to recite a fifteen minute talk word for word without any mistakes, which was incredibly important for me, but at the same time, it wasn't the most charismatic of talks, it wasn't the most inspirational, but I did it. And people were very polite and they applauded and I'm sure they appreciated it, but at the same time, you could tell that it wasn't quite the show stopping talk that perhaps other people at the conference had been able to deliver and that, you you do think about that.

事后回顾时，你记忆最深刻的是那些礼节性掌声吗？还是说你会反复琢磨其他细节？

So in the aftermath of the talk when you sort of look back on it, did you remember sort of the polite applause? What portion of it did you end up ruminating on?

我非常清楚自己的演讲不如其他人那样激情澎湃。于是不断怀疑：看起来是否生硬？内容是否单薄乏味？有没有成功传达观点并改变听众认知？这些本是我的演讲目标，但当时完全不确定是否达成了。

I was very aware that, you know, it wasn't aroused speech that others had delivered. And so I wondered, you know, okay, did it look stilted? Was it very one dimensional or monotonic? You know, was I able to convey the ideas in a way that changed people or in some way made them think differently about the topic. You know, these were the goals I had going in, but I wasn't sure in those moments where I'd actually achieved them.

托马斯，你对自己不足之处的焦虑，在某段恋情结束后达到了顶峰。聊聊你人生中那个阶段发生了什么吧。

So your anxieties about your shortcomings, reached something of a peak after a romantic relationship ended, Thomas. Tell me about that period in your life and what happened.

那是一次极其混乱的分手，以一种令人难堪的方式公开发生，让我感到无比羞辱——抱歉，是‘屈辱’。我担心别人会怎么看待这件事，不断苛责自己，反思这段关系破裂暴露了自身的哪些问题。这些念头逐渐演变成各种对自我的负面认知：为什么你就不能振作起来？为什么连这种坎都跨不过去？

It was a very messy breakup that happened in a really exposing way, and it was something that made me feel very humiliating, humiliate, excuse me. I worried about how it would look to other people, I chastised myself about that breakup and what it said about me. And that was turning itself into all sorts of negative beliefs about myself. Why can't you snap out of it? Why can't you just get through this?

于是我深陷自我厌恶、羞耻与悲痛的泥沼。在那段黑暗时期，我最需要做的是停下来处理情绪崩溃，但我的性格不允许。相反，我变本加厉地逼迫自己，试图弥补因分手导致的各种失控——这场变故已严重影响了我的心理健康。

So I felt a lot of self loathing, lot of shame, lot of grief. And I went into a really dark place in those moments and what I needed to do more than anything else was to just stop and deal with the emotional plunge that I was experiencing, but my personality wouldn't let me do that. And if anything, was trying to push myself even harder to overcompensate for the things that are now starting to go wrong as a function of the breakup and how it impacted on my emotional well-being.

几个月后，托马斯正在办公室工作时，眼前突然开始闪现光斑。他完全不明白发生了什么。

Some months later, Thomas was working in his office when he started to see flashes. He had no idea what was going on.

闪光越来越强烈，逐渐遮蔽视线。我无法集中精力阅读，呼吸变得困难，喉咙像被扼住。喝水也无济于事。我冲到空旷马路上试图深呼吸，但毫无效果。恐慌开始自我滋养——你会胡思乱想：这到底怎么回事？我要死了吗？就这样结束了吗？几分钟的彻底崩溃后，身体才逐渐恢复控制：呼吸平稳了，心率下降了，仿佛重新回到了现实世界。

And the flashes started to get brighter, they started to obscure what I could see, I couldn't concentrate on nothing, was reading. I had trouble breathing, my throat became really tight and so I tried to get some water but that was no use. I ran out into the open road and tried to kind of suck the fresh air but none of it was really working and it just started to take over and this panic was starting to feed the panic. Then you worry what on earth is going on, am dying, is this it? And then after a few minutes of complete meltdown I would say, my body just started to come back to me, was able to regulate my breathing, my heart rate came down and I was almost I suppose back in the world again.

当时我完全不明白发生了什么。相信很多听众都有共鸣——那其实是长期压抑的焦虑决堤引发的惊恐发作。这只是无数次发作的开端，但它警醒了我：我那种拼命证明自我价值的生活方式，正在以心理健康为代价。

And at the time, I didn't know what on earth that was. And I'm sure many of your listeners can resonate, but that was a panic attack that comes from the bursting of the dam of this kind of suppressed anxiety that we're just holding back. And that panic attack was really the first of many, but it was an eye opener for me and showed me that the way that I was approaching life, trying to achieve, trying to prove to everybody that I was good enough was actually coming at a great expense for mental health.

稍后节目里，托马斯将探寻自我怀疑与苛责的根源，并发现这种痛苦在现代社会何其普遍。您正在收听《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。（重复）这里是《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。

When we come back, Thomas explores the root of his self doubt and self castigation and discovers that his affliction is all too common in our modern world. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

几年前，某电子交易平台的广告既滑稽又心酸：飞机上，年轻男子后座的小孩不断踢他的椅背。瞥见头等舱的布帘后，他走向那个美好世界——宽敞沙发上，优雅的人们正用高脚杯喝着香槟。

A few years ago, an electronic trading platform ran an ad that was simultaneously funny, sad, and revealing. A young man sits on an airplane. The kid in the seat behind him kicks his tray table into the young man's backrest over and over again. Glimpsing a better world in the front of the aircraft, the young man makes his way to an open curtain. In the first class cabin, beautiful people lounge on spacious sofas.

就在他以为会被邀请进入那个特殊世界时，布帘猛地拉上了。

They drink champagne in long stemmed glasses. But just as the young man thinks he's going to be invited into the special world, the open curtain is slammed shut.

让我来播放这段...

And let me play.

广告语写道：‘头等舱的存在，就是为了提醒你不在头等舱’。心理学家托马斯·柯伦深谙这道布帘——他不仅在自己生活中见过，更在伦敦政经学院的学生身上目睹。托马斯，您的学生聪明勤奋，但许多人带着心理困扰求助。您提到一位化名约翰的学生，正是这种现象的典型。

The tagline reads, First class is there to remind you, you're not in first class. Psychologist Thomas Curran knows all about that curtain. He has seen it in his own life, but also in the lives of his students. Thomas, your students at the London School of Economics are smart and hardworking, but many of them come to you in a state of distress. You talk about one student whom you call John who exemplified this phenomenon.

约翰的故事是怎样的？

What was John's story?

我在走进门的年轻人和学生身上看到的，是一种被强烈求胜欲所束缚的紧绷感。我的所有学生在某种程度上都感受到这一点，但约翰无疑是个鲜明案例——他对完美、卓越、时刻保持优异有着近乎极端的渴望。他总在会面时向我抱怨成绩不够好（尽管分数其实很高），认为自己未能达到自我期许的成功标准。无论我如何试图调和这种认知，告诉他已做得非常出色，他始终将那些成功重新定义为彻头彻尾的失败，认定自己辜负了自己和他人。

What I see in young people and students that come through the door is is a lot of tension that's bound up in a intense need to excel. And all of my students at some level feel this, but there was definitely a vivid case in John who I think was a very extreme case of that intense desire and need to do things perfectly, excellently, to excel at all times. He would constantly come to me in meetings telling me that his grades weren't good enough, even though they were really high, that they weren't good enough, that he didn't feel like he was succeeding in the measure that he expected of himself. And no matter really how I tried to reconcile those things and tell him that what he's doing exceptional. He always recasted those successes that are abject failures and how he'd let himself and other people down.

这令人心碎，因为约翰确实难以用其他视角看待自己的成功。他的理由始终很简单：当自己付出远超他人的努力却只获得相同结果时，怎能算成功？但这就是LSE的现实——人人卓越。而无法从成功中获得持久满足感，恰恰是我的学生们解读大学生活的典型特征，他们难以应对挫折。

And this was so sad because John really found it difficult to see his successes in any other way. And his justification really at all times is very simple, how could he be a success when he was trying so much harder than other people just to get the same outcomes? Well, that's the thing with being at LSE, everyone's exceptional. And not being able to derive any lasting satisfaction from success is really a kind of signature of the way my students interpret, their experience at university. They find it difficult to deal with setbacks.

有时我们会误以为这是脆弱或年轻人缺乏韧性，但实际上这只是过度的自我施压与对失败的深度恐惧。

And I think sometimes we misunderstand this as being fragile or young people lacking resilience, but but really it's just excessive self imposed pressures and a deep and profound fear of failure.

托马斯，你最终意识到自己和约翰这样的学生都深受同种困扰。你领悟到了什么？

So Thomas, you eventually came to recognize that both you and students like John were suffering from the same affliction. What was your insight?

我逐渐明白，包括我自己、我的学生以及身边许多人，都在与所谓的完美主义斗争——那种源于匮乏感、自卑感、缺陷感的强迫性需求，认为'我不完美，必须做到完美才能获得认可，证明自己有价值、有意义'。

So it became evident to me that myself, my students and many, many people around me were struggling with something called perfectionism, a need and desire to do things perfectly and nothing but perfectly that comes from a sense of lack, a sense of inferiority, sense of deficiency, a sense that I'm not perfect and in order to gain approval and validation in this world that I'm worth something, that I matter, that I need to be perfect.

你曾开展过一项追踪完美主义水平演变的研究。有什么发现？

So you've conducted a study that has tracked levels of perfectionism over time. What do you find?

我们在2016-2017年的研究发现：年轻世代的完美主义正在加剧。通过分析约三十年的大学生完美主义指标数据，发现其数值不仅增长且增速惊人——自1989年以来上升约40%。这令人担忧，因为它与抑郁、焦虑、自残等负面心理健康结果高度相关，这些硬数据正在向我们传递重要信号。

So we found recently that perfectionism is increasing among more recent generations of young people. This was a study we did back now in 2016, 2017, essentially looking at college student data of perfectionism. So we have about thirty years worth of perfectionism data looking at various indicators of perfectionism. And we found when we ran the numbers that perfectionism was increasing and increasing really rapidly, it's up about forty percent since 1989. And that's concerning because it's associated most strongly with negative mental health outcomes like depression, anxiety, self harm and this hard data is telling us something significant and something that we need to be paying attention to.

完美主义的有趣之处在于，与多数缺点不同，许多人将其视为优点。你称之为'我们最爱的缺陷'，为何这么说？

So perfectionism is really fascinating because unlike many other flaws, many people celebrate this trait. You call perfectionism our favorite flaw. What do you mean by that?

在现代社会，完美主义被神化、被颂扬。虽然我们知道它伴随着自我牺牲的行为模式，让人痛苦，但同时也认为正是完美主义推动我们前进、走向成功。可以说是一种'必要的恶'——若想出人头地，或许就需要些许完美主义。

Perfectionism is something that I think in modern society is lionized, celebrated. We know it carries self sacrificial patterns of behavior, makes us feel a little bit miserable, but nevertheless, we also think that perfectionism is what carries us forward and makes us successful. Right? A necessary evil, so to speak. Something that, know, if we wanna get ahead, we might need a bit of perfectionism.

当然，托马斯，这也成了一个笑话。在许多求职面试中，当被要求说出一个缺点时，很多人会说：我是个完美主义者。

And of course, this has become something of a joke as well, Thomas. In in many job interviews when candidates are asked to to name a flaw, many of them will say, I'm a perfectionist.

没错。招聘人员一再告诉我们，这是面试中最被滥用的陈词滥调。我认为这反映了我们对社会认可弱点的认知——如果我们能传达出愿意自我牺牲、突破舒适区的信号，他们就会视之为积极品质，是团队或组织真正需要的特质。这恰恰说明了当下完美主义的普遍性。

Yeah. That's exactly right. And recruiters time after time, tell us that that's the most overused cliche in job interviews. And I think it says something about what we consider to be socially desirable weaknesses, that if somehow we can communicate that we're willing to, you know, sacrifice ourselves in some way and push ourselves beyond comfort, that that is something they'll see as positive, something that they really want on their team or in their organization. So that speaks really to the ubiquity of perfectionism at the moment.

我想花点时间讨论完美主义的本质与误区，因为虽然我们使用相同词汇，但理解可能不同。很多人认为完美主义就是设定高标准并努力达成，但这与你的定义截然不同。你说完美主义与其说是追求成功，不如说是逃避失败，其核心特征是你提出的'缺失导向'。这个术语具体指什么？

I wanna spend a moment talking about what perfectionism is and what it's not, because I think many of us might use the same word but mean different things by it. Many people might say perfectionism is about setting high standards and working hard to meet them, but that's very different, I think, from your definition. You say perfectionism is less about pursuing success and more about avoiding failure. One of its hallmarks is something you call a deficit orientation. What do you mean by this term?

确实很多人将完美主义与高标准联系起来。但完美主义远比表面现象深刻——关键在于其根源。那些表面上的过度努力、高标准和进取态度，在完美主义者心中其实源于匮乏感：'我不够好，不够完美，需要不断向他人证明自己的价值'。他们通过追求完美来获取外界认可，从而缓解'不够好'的羞耻恐惧。

So a lot of people associate perfectionism with really high standards, that's true. But actually perfectionism is far, far deeper than what we see on the surface Because what really matters is where it's coming from and where those excessive amounts of striving and high standards and go getting attitudes that you see on the surface are coming from in the perfectionistic people is a place of lack, a sense that I'm not good enough, that I'm not perfect enough. And I need to prove to other people all the time that I'm worth something, that I matter in this world. And the way that I do that is through being perfect because of course if I'm perfect, I'll get their validation and that will make me feel better. That will soothe those shame based fears of not being good enough.

所以两个同样勤奋、高标准、注重细节的人，可能一个是尽责者，另一个是完美主义者。你强调的区别在于内在驱动力——是在追逐成功，还是在逃离失败？不过完美主义也有外在表现。托马斯，你发现完美主义者面对挫折时往往产生羞耻与愧疚，能解释下吗？

So so two people could work very hard. They can both have high standards. They can both care about getting things right. You know, but one person might just be conscientious, while the other person is a perfectionist. And the distinction you're drawing is really what's driving them on the inside.

（追问）当完美主义者遭遇逆境时...

Are you chasing success or are you fleeing failure? But but there are also some external markers of perfectionism. And and when perfectionists encounter adversity, you found they often respond with shame and with guilt. Can you explain what that means, Thomas?

实验室数据印证了我分手时的经历。让完美主义者进行压力任务（比如公开演讲或竞技比赛）后告知失败，会发现他们产生强烈的自我意识情绪——尤其是公开失误时会感到深度羞耻与愧疚。这强化了他们'不够好'的恐惧。

So what we see in the lab is exactly what I experienced when I encountered that breakup in my own life. When you put perfectionistic people in stressful situations, perfectionism will aggravate the stress. So every time you go into the lab, you tell perfectionistic people to do stressful things, like maybe give a public talk or complete a competitive task against other people. And in the end you say you didn't do very well or you failed, what you'll see is perfectionistic people respond with intense amounts of self conscious emotion, lots of shame, lots of guilt about having slipped up in some way, particularly if that slip up is public. It validates in them a sense that that fear that they're not good enough.

而低完美主义倾向者虽然也会情绪波动，但影响更浅且恢复更快。

Whereas people who score lower on the perfectionism scales, well, yes, of course, these things do have an impact on their emotional state but it's a far less profound impact and they're able to bounce back quite quickly.

你提到演讲后反复纠结效果是否理想，数据也显示完美主义者会不断反刍式思考同一件事。

You you told me that after that talk that you gave, you engaged in a lot of brooding and rumination about how the talk went and you're worried that it had not landed properly or what could have gone better. But you're also seeing this in the data that perfectionists engage in a lot of brooding and rumination and revisiting things over and over again.

是的，完美主义程度高的人通常也表现出更多自我挫败思维模式：过度担忧、反刍思维、对自身表现的病态警觉。他们难以活在当下或欣赏成就，始终焦虑可能出现的差错或他人表现，因此很难真正成长。

Yeah, perfectionistic people, people who are higher in the perfectionism spectrum, what you tend to see is they also score higher on what we would call self sabotaging thought patterns, so things like you mentioned there, worry, rumination, they're really hyper vigilant about where they sit relative to others, how they're performing relative to others. They find it very difficult to exist in the moment or be mindful or appreciate the successes. And so perfectionistic people really find it difficult to thrive or flourish because they're constantly worried about what's gonna go wrong or how other people are doing.

完美主义者会让人精疲力竭并非常努力地工作，但你和他人发现的一个真正耐人寻味的洞见是，他们往往不注重聪明地工作。他们有时对所谓的生产力递减效应漠不关心。托马斯，这是什么意思？

Now perfectionists take people off and work very hard, but one of the really curious insights that you and others have had is that they often don't pay attention to working smartly. They are sometimes indifferent to what's called diminishing productivity returns. What does this mean, Thomas?

是的。这实际上是完美主义研究中一个非常有趣的发现。我们知道完美主义者工作非常努力，他们把自己推向了超出舒适区的境地，进入了一个每付出一点努力回报都在递减的区域。恶性循环的人失败非常普遍，因为他们为自己设定的目标太高了。即使他们真的成功了，完美主义也只会将这些成功变成死胡同，因为我们做得越好，就觉得自己被期望做得更好。

Yeah. So that's a really curious finding actually in the perfectionism literature. We know perfectionists work really hard and they push themselves well beyond comfort into a zone of declining and diminishing returns for every little bit of effort that they put in. Failure is very common among vicious people because the goals that they set themselves are way too high. And and even if they do succeed, perfectionism really just turns those successes into dead ends because the better we do, the better we feel like we're expected to do.

因此，我们只是不断地让自己保持紧张状态，渴望得到更多。我想这就像在一台永远不会减速的跑步机上跑步。所以，完美主义者的成功方程式真的很艰难，因为他们从不觉得自己真正成功过。

And so we just continually keep ourselves on tiptoes, clinging for more and more. I suppose it's like running on a treadmill that never slows down. So it's really tough, the success equation for perfectionists, because they really never feel like they've ever made it.

你和他人认为，完美主义者有时会进行所谓的完美主义自我保全。托马斯，这个概念是什么？

You and others have argued that perfectionists sometimes engage in what is called perfectionistic self preservation. What is this idea, Thomas?

所以，我认为这是为什么我们没有看到完美主义与表现之间有很强相关性的第二个原因。当事情开始出错时，完美主义者会做一些非常非常有趣的事情。他们会保留自己的努力，以保全面子，保护自己的形象和自我感。我们做了很多实验来研究这种现象。其中最启发性的实验之一是我的同事安德鲁·希尔将人们带进实验室，给他们一项骑行任务，并告诉他们必须在特定时间内完成一定距离。

So this is the second reason I think why we don't see very strong correlations between perfectionism and performance. When things start to go wrong, perfectionists do something really, really interesting. They withhold their effort in order to save face, to to kind of preserve their their image and their sense of self. And we've done a lot of experiments looking at this phenomenon. And one of the most illuminating of experiments is when a colleague of mine, Andrew Hill, took people into the lab, gave them a cycling task and said, you gotta complete a certain distance in a certain amount of time.

根据你的体能，你应该能够完成X距离。所以他让他们开始任务，每个人都非常努力地达到目标。最后，他告诉他们无论他们做得多么好，他们都失败了。现在真正有趣的是，在告诉人们他们失败后，他要求他们再做一次。这时发生了显著的事情，因为那些在第一轮失败后没有表现出很多完美主义的人在第二次尝试时并没有真正改变他们投入的努力，如果有的话，还稍微增加了一些。

And based on your fitness, you should be able to do X amount of distance. So he got them going with the task and everybody worked really hard to meet the goal. And at the end, he told them no matter how well they did that you failed. Now what's really interesting here is that after telling people they failed, he asked them to do it again. And that's where something remarkable happened because people who didn't have a great deal of perfectionism on that second attempt after the first failure, didn't really change the amount of effort they put in, if anything it went up slightly.

但那些在完美主义上得分高的人却做了完全相反的事情。他们在第二次尝试时保留了努力，因为他们心中的想法是：你不能在没有尝试的事情上失败。如果我第一次全力以赴仍然没有成功，那么我不会再这样做了，因为羞耻和尴尬的感觉如此强烈，以至于我不想再感受那些情绪。所以我想这就是完美主义的悖论。他们如此强烈地害怕失败，以至于当我们所做的任何事情看起来很可能失败时，他们就会把自己从那些情境中抽离出来。

But the people who scored high in perfectionism did the exact opposite. They withheld their effort on the second attempt because the thinking in their mind is you can't fail at something you didn't try. And if I put all of myself into this first effort and still didn't make it, well, I'm not gonna do that again because the feelings of shame and embarrassment were so intense that I just don't wanna feel those things again. And so this is this is the perfectionism paradox I suppose. This is that they really are so intensely fearful of that failure that when it looks like it's going to be very likely outcome of anything that we're doing, then they take themselves away from those situations.

这是极其自我破坏的行为。顺便说一句，它不仅仅表现为完全退缩，也可能以拖延的形式出现。因此，我们会把自己从当下非常困难的活动中抽离出来，因为焦虑感太强烈了。所有这些都完全不利于表现。

That's incredibly self sabotaging. It doesn't just look like complete withdrawal, by the way, it can also come in the form of procrastination. So we'll remove ourselves from doing activities that are really difficult in the moment because the anxiety is so intense. All of those things are not at all conducive to performance.

所以我想这就是为什么你会说你不希望有一个完美主义者来驾驶你的飞机或为你做手术。

So I guess this is why you would say you would not want to have a perfectionist who is the pilot of your plane or a surgeon carrying out an operation on you.

你绝不会想要像我这样的人驾驶你的飞机。因为如果发动机突然在35,000英尺的高空失灵，你需要一个能够非常清晰地思考程序的人。顺便说一句，没有完美的方法可以摆脱那种情况。会有很多足够好的方法来摆脱那种情况。而完美主义者会做什么呢？他们会寻找完美的结果。

There is no way you would want someone like me flying your plane. Because if an engine suddenly, craps out at, 35,000 feet, you're gonna need somebody who's able to think very clearly about the procedures. There's gonna be, by the way, no perfect way to get out of that situation. There's gonna be many, many good enough ways to get out of that situation. And what a perfectionist will do will search for the perfect outcome.

而一个更为尽责、细致或勤奋的人，他们会明白我们有许多不同的选择。最重要的是采取能让飞机安全降落的方案。这与外科医生、核电站工作人员等从事高风险活动的人一样，尽责和勤奋是极其重要的品质，但并非追求完美。

Whereas somebody who is more conscientious, meticulous or diligent, they'll be able to know that there are many different options that we can take. And the most important thing is to take the option that lands the plane safely. And that's the same with a surgeon, that's the same with working in a nuclear plant, any of these kind of very high risk activities, conscientiousness, diligence are really important qualities, but not perfection.

托马斯，研究发现完美主义不止一种，而是有三种。每种类型都伴随着特定的心理困境。第一种可以用几年前发生在网球选手米哈伊尔·尤日尼身上的事为例。他曾是俄罗斯排名第一、世界前十的选手。在2008年2月迈阿密公开赛的一场比赛中，他因失分而用球拍猛击自己的脸部。

So, Thomas, research has found that there's not just one kind of perfectionism, but really three. And each type comes with its own particular kind of psychological hardship. The first might be exemplified by something that happened a few years ago to a tennis player named Mikhail Yuzhny. At one point, he was the number one player in Russia and a top 10 player in the world. During a match at the Miami Open in 02/2008, he missed a point and slammed his own face with his racket.

第三次击打后，他血流满面需要医疗救助。这算不算你所说的自我导向型完美主义者？这类人会对自己施加极其严苛的批评。

After the third blow, with blood streaming down his face, he required medical attention. Would he be an example of what you would call a self oriented perfectionist, people who subject themselves to incredibly harsh criticism?

没错。我亲眼看过那个回合，印象很深——那是在一长串对攻后，他偏偏在最简单的击球上失误了。那种激烈情绪和爆发源于彻底的自我厌恶：明明完成了所有高难度击球，却败在最简单的一球上。这正是自我导向型完美主义者对自身持有的极端期望。

Yeah. Absolutely. I saw that point actually, I remember it well, and it was at the end of a very long rally in which really the shot that was missed was one of the easiest shots. And that intense emotion and outburst that came from a a place of just complete self loathing for the fact that having made all of these really tough shots, you couldn't make the easy one. And these are the intense expectations that self oriented perfectionistic people hold themselves to.

一旦他们未能达到标准，尤其在重要场合，那种'你怎么能这么蠢''你到底在想什么''怎么会犯这种错'的自我厌恶感会强烈到——就像这个案例——引发极具攻击性的自我惩罚。这正是自我导向型完美主义的标志：极度缺乏自我同情，充满强烈的自我憎恶。

And the moment they fall short of it, particularly in very important situations, the self loathing, the sense of how on earth could you have been so stupid, what on earth are you thinking, how could you have let yourself make that mistake, can be really so intense that in the extreme cases like this one, they can engage in some really quite aggressive self castigation. And that's that's a signature of the self oriented perfectionist. There is just a simply a lack of self compassion and a strong sense of self loathing.

托马斯，多年前耶鲁法学院教授蔡美儿在《虎妈战歌》中写道，她曾警告大女儿如果钢琴弹得不完美，就会烧掉她的毛绒玩具。现在请听一段她在PBS的访谈录音。

Some years ago, Thomas, Amy Chua, a Yale Law School professor, wrote a book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. And at one point in the book, she tells her older daughter that if her piano playing isn't perfect, she is going to take her stuffed animals and burn them. I want to play you a clip of a book interview with the author on PBS.

您书的背面列出了成为虎妈的准则。这里有一长串您禁止两个女儿做的事：不准参加睡衣派对、不准约玩伴玩耍、不准参演校园剧、不准抱怨不能参演、不准看电视或玩电子游戏、不准自选课外活动、不准任何科目拿A以下成绩（体育戏剧除外）、必须每科都拿第一、只能学钢琴或小提琴。当听到这些条款时，您是否觉得极端？

If you read the back of your book, it explains how to be a tiger mother. There's a long list of things you didn't allow your children to do, your two girls. Let me read a couple of them. They were never allowed to attend a sleepover, have a play date, be in a school play, complain about not being in a school play, watch TV or play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an a, not be the number one student in every subject except gym and drama, play any instrument other than the piano or violin, not play the piano or violin. When you hear that list read to you, does it sound extreme?

听起来有些戏谑，但不算太极端。很多移民或移民子女听后都觉得滑稽。他们明白这是在调侃，但也反映了某些真实情况。

Well, it sounds tongue in cheek to me, but doesn't sound so extreme. And, you know, I when I talk to a lot of immigrants or immigrants' kids, they find it hysterical. You know? They know that it's it's poking fun a little bit, but it really captures some truth. You know?

这段访谈令人震撼。当主持人列出蔡美儿对子女的种种限制时，我印象深刻。现在听来蔡美儿认为书中部分内容有些夸张。但托马斯，你认为这段访谈是否体现了你所说的他人导向型完美主义？

So that is a remarkable interview. I was really struck when the interviewer listed the number of things that Amy Chua kept her kids from doing. Now what I'm hearing is that Amy Chua feels that some of what she wrote was over the top. But I'm wondering, Thomas, do you feel that this clip captures what you call other oriented perfectionism?

是的。他人导向型完美主义是将完美标准强加于他人，要求对方必须完美无缺，并且会明确告知对方。这类人往往表现得相当咄咄逼人。

Yeah. Other oriented perfectionism is when we turn perfectionism outwards onto other people, and we expect them to be perfect and nothing but perfect. And we'll certainly let them know. You know perfectionist when meet one. They tend to be quite brash.

当事情未按计划进行时，他们会让你知道。我想这就是我们所说的，或者弗洛伊德称之为投射——那种我对完美的强烈渴望被外化投射到你们两人身上的感觉。

They will let you know when things haven't gone quite to plan. And it's what we call, I suppose, what Freud would call projection, the sense that my intense desire to be perfect is projected outwards onto you two.

你知道，史蒂夫·乔布斯就以这样的性格闻名。人们描述他会因他人未达到他的高标准而严厉指责。这里如何区分一个有着高要求、严格管理的老板，和一个他人导向的完美主义者？

You know, Steve Jobs had a reputation for being like this. People described him as, you know, berating other people for not living up to his high expectations. What's the line here between someone who has high expectations and is a demanding manager or a demanding boss and somebody who is an other oriented perfectionist?

关键在于无法在任何时候接受‘足够好’的状态。严格的管理者确实追求高标准，但他们也能认可和欣赏事情进展顺利时的成功，并给予赞扬。而完美主义者则做不到这点，这就是区别所在。

Well, the line is is really the inability to accept at any time that things are good enough. Whereas, you know, someone that's demanding yes, wants high standards yes, is also somebody who can accept and appreciate when things have gone well, when there's been a success and can give praise and appreciation for that. And I think that's the difference.

第三种完美主义被称为社会规定型完美主义。托马斯，请解释一下这个概念。

A third type of perfectionism is known as socially prescribed perfectionism. Explain this idea to me, Thomas.

社会规定型完美主义是最极端的形式，它源于外部——感觉周围所有人都期待我完美无缺，他们时刻监视着，准备在我显露弱点时扑上来。长期背负这种压力极其艰难：你必须时刻完美，必须精心经营生活以向他人展示毫无破绽。活在这种显微镜下，认为所有人无时无刻不在审视着你，这实在令人窒息。

Usually prescribed perfectionism is the most extreme form of perfectionism, and it's a perfectionism that comes from outside, a sense that everybody and all around me expects me to be perfect and they're watching and waiting to pounce if I show any form of weakness. And carrying that around of you all the time is really tough. You need to be perfect at all times. You need to make sure that your life is curated to show other people, you know, there are no weaknesses. And that is really tough to live under that microscope and to think that everybody in all times is watching.

你们发现社会规定型完美主义可能是当代社会中增长最快的类型。能否谈谈数据揭示了什么？以及为何会出现这种现象？

So you found that socially prescribed perfectionism might be rising fastest amongst all the kinds of perfectionism in our society. Can you talk a little bit about what the data show and why this might be happening?

数据显示，从1980年代末至今，社会规定型完美主义增长了约40%，这种持续攀升的势头非常惊人。最令人担忧的是，它与焦虑、抑郁、情绪低落、无助感等严重心理健康问题密切相关。我认为这反映了我所称的‘完美主义隐性流行病’——对年轻人而言，永无止境的完美期待正在全面占据他们的生活。

Essentially, what we're seeing today is a rise of about forty percent in socially prescribed perfectionism from the late 1980s to the present day. That's a really, really big rise which continues to increase. And it's most concerning because it's most strongly correlated with really quite negative mental health outcomes like anxiety, depression, low mood, a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, so things that are really quite significant when it comes to our mental health. And I think it's indicative perhaps of what I've called a hidden epidemic of unrelenting expectations for perfection which are kind of taking over among young people.

你认为这种现象的成因是什么？

And why do you think this might be the case?

最常被提及的当然是社交媒体——它24/7为我们提供无法逃避的对比视角。但压力不仅来自社交媒体上的完美形象，还包括学校里的卓越竞争、现代职场中的拼命文化、以及为应对教育竞争而变化的育儿方式。各种外部压力正被年轻人内化为对完美的苛求。

Obviously, the one that most people point to is social media and the comparative lens that social media offers us twenty four seven and without escape. But it's not just images of perfection in social media, it's unrelenting pressures to excel in schools and colleges, it's the modern workplace and the intense pressures to hustle and grind, it's changing parenting practices, they're responding to pressures in schools and colleges, and you know the more competitive landscape to get into elite college by pushing young people in the realm of education. There's all sorts of different pressures now that are weighing on young people and they're being internalized as pressures to be perfect.

稍后我们将探讨如何逃离完美主义陷阱。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, how to escape the perfectionist trap? You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

心理学家托马斯·柯伦是《完美陷阱：拥抱足够好的力量》一书的作者。托马斯，你自称是一位正在康复的完美主义者，并谈到你如何努力摆脱完美主义。然而，外人看你时会看到一位顶尖学府的知名教授，著书立说、演讲广受关注，有人可能会说，显然完美主义对托马斯很有效。正是它让他取得了今天的成就。你会如何回应这种看法？

Psychologist Thomas Curran is the author of The Perfection Trap, Embracing the Power of Good Enough. Thomas, you call yourself a recovering perfectionist, and you've talked about the ways in which you're working to relinquish your perfectionism. And yet someone looking at you from the outside, you know, would see a prominent professor with a job at a top school, someone who writes books and articles and gives talks that garner wide attention, someone might say, you know, clearly perfectionism worked for Thomas. It got him to where he is today. How would you respond to that?

诚然，在某些需要的关键时刻，我的完美主义确实推动了我前进。但我能站在这里，主要是因为非常幸运地生在一个像我这样的人能获得支持上大学的时代，恰好在合适时机遇到对的导师，进入了合适的大学。若没有这些非凡的运气，我不会在此。其次，表面看来我或许是个非常成功的人，从许多方面来说也确实如此。

Well, clearly my perfectionism has pushed me forward in moments where I've needed it to. But the reason why I'm here is because I was very, very fortunate to come through at a time where people like me were supported to go to university, where it just so happened to meet the right professor at the right time, it took me to the right university. But without those remarkable moments of luck, I wouldn't be here. The second thing to say is that I look, I guess, on the surface like a very successful individual. And in many ways, I suppose I am.

但我无法负担工作所在城市的居住费用。我没有房子。不得不推迟组建家庭和经营感情。住过无数不同的住所。无法在社区扎根或建立长久的友谊圈，因为我的生活本质上长期处于动荡状态。

But I can't afford to live in the city that I work. I don't have a house. I've had to put off things like having a family and relationships. I've lived in countless different homes. I can't set root in communities or build a long and lasting friendship group because my life has just been essentially one long period of flux.

所以看似成功却感受不到成功。当我回顾这段充满艰辛与牺牲的旅程时，有时会质疑：如果留在工人阶级社区，有份赋予意义的工作，有家庭、房子和社区，或许会更幸福。

So yes it looks like success but it doesn't feel like success and when I look and reflect on this journey and how difficult it's been and the sacrifice I've had to make, I sometimes question whether I might have been better off back in my working class community with a job that gives me some sense of purpose, with a family and a house and a community, maybe I would be happier.

是否可能有人会说：完美主义是诅咒，心理不健康，但依然庆幸选择了这条路？比如不知史蒂夫·乔布斯是否完美主义者，但若是，他可能会说'我创建了三万亿美元市值的公司，虽逼疯自己和周围人，但值得'。他有资格说值得吗？还是我们该从外部评判他？

Is it possible that for some people perfectionism might be something they say? Yes, it's a curse, yes, it's psychologically unhealthy, but yes, also, I'm glad I chose this life. I don't know if Steve Jobs was or wasn't a perfectionist, but if he was, you know, I suspect that if he was around, he would tell us, you know, I got to start a $3,000,000,000,000 company. And, I drove myself and everyone around me nuts, but that's what I did, and it was worth it. Would that be okay for him to say it was worth it, or do we get to diagnose him from the outside?

不，我们无权替乔布斯发言。如果有人背负完美主义却非常成功，且认为经历的一切值得，我怎能断言他们不对？我只能基于研究和自身经历指出：完美主义代价沉重。事实上，大量证据表明我们完全可以同样甚至更成功，却不必背负完美主义的情感包袱。

No, don't think we get to speak for Steve Jobs at all. If somebody carries perfectionism around with them and they're really successful and they, yes, they go through all of the things that I've experienced and for them that's worth it, then who am I to tell them that that isn't the case? All I can say from what I understand about the work that I've done and my own experiences is that perfectionism carries a really heavy cost. And that actually there's plenty of evidence that we can be just as successful, if not more successful, and not carrying around the emotional baggage that we carry around with perfectionism.

作家玛格丽特·阿特伍德或许符合这点。六十年间她几乎每年写一本书。被问及秘诀时，她说'我不是完美主义者'。这说明高产与完美主义无关。

One of the people who might fit that bill is the writer Margaret Atwood. She's written nearly the equivalent of a book a year over six decades. When asked how she does it, she says, I'm not a perfectionist. That's one clue. So it's possible you can be very productive and get a lot of things done and not be a perfectionist.

事实上，非完美主义者可能更容易完成大量工作。

In fact, it might even be easier to get a lot of things done when you're not a perfectionist.

而且会更快乐。阿特伍德完美示范了如何将对写作的热爱、使命感和职业精神，与摆脱'必须完美卓越'的持续焦虑相结合。完美主义很大程度上是创造力的窃贼。

And you'd be a lot more happy too. I think Margaret Atwood is a great example of someone who can combine a desire, a joy, a real sense of purpose and vocation in what she does, I. Writing. And being able to do that in a way that doesn't carry with it this kind of constant self worry and self doubt about it being perfect or exceptional. And really perfectionism is the thief of creativity in many ways.

它阻止我们发布未臻完美之作，因担忧外界评价。我写书时深有体会——编辑最后几乎想掐死我，因我直到截稿还在反复修改。而阿特伍德持近乎相反的立场：她的创作过程充满愉悦，这种态度跃然纸上，也体现在她对写作动机的自我剖析中。

It stops us from putting things out there when they're not quite right because we worry about how that's going to be received. And I could tell you that firsthand from having written a book. You know, my editor, I think, was ready to throttle me at the end of the process because I was still tinkering iterating right to the end, and it was so intensely difficult to get this one out. And and Atwood has almost the opposite perspective. There seems to be a joy and an embrace of the process in her writing and that really comes through in her pages and it really comes through in her self analysis of how she writes and why she writes and the motivations behind it.

所以我认为她实际上是一个非常好的例子，展示了如何能在不追求完美主义的情况下取得巨大成功，并为世界做出重大贡献。

So I think she's a really good example actually of of how you can be incredibly successful. You can contribute so much to the world and not be a perfectionist.

要知道，我们这次对话主要是在工作语境下讨论完美主义，这或许也是完美主义最常显现的领域。但它也可能出现在家庭生活中。你提到过一个喜欢的短语——'足够好的母亲'。给我讲讲唐纳德·温尼科特的故事吧。

You know, we're talking about perfectionism mostly in a work context in this conversation, and and that is perhaps where perfectionism mostly manifests itself. But it can also show up in the domestic sphere. There's a phrase you like, the good enough mother. Tell me the story of Donald Winnicott.

唐纳德·温尼科特是英国儿科医生，他在上世纪五十年代撰写了大量育儿著作。他提出的'足够好的母亲'理念对当时那些用不可能达到的标准要求自己的母亲们来说可谓震撼弹。这些标准涉及她们养育子女的方式，而'足够好的母亲'理念不仅指出完美育儿本就不可能实现，更强调这对母亲自身和孩子都并非好事——因为孩子需要学会应对挫折、困难与计划外状况，他们需要掌握处理这些时刻的沮丧与失望的能力，毕竟人生永远充满这类挑战。

Donald Winnicott was an English pediatrician and he wrote extensively on parenting in the nineteen fifties. And his idea of the good enough mother was something that was of a bombshell, I suppose, to mothers of the day who who were holding themselves up to really impossible standards that were being placed on them in terms of the way they parent and the way they raise their children. And the idea of the good enough mother wasn't simply that perfect mothering or perfect parenting is not possible, of course, it's not possible. But it was also that it's not even desirable for the mother themselves, but also for the child. Because the child needs to learn about setbacks, difficulties, things not going quite to plan, and they need to know how to handle and deal with the frustrations and disappointments of those moments because the world is gonna present those things to us all the time.

我认为这些正是温尼科特希望灌输给母亲们的核心观点。'足够好的母亲'能培养出适应良好、快乐且对生活充满热情与目标的孩子。

And I think those were the key lessons that Winnicott really wanted to instill in mothers. The good enough mother can help to raise children that are well adjusted and happy and have a zest and purpose for life.

你提到作为个体我们可以采取一些措施来减轻完美主义的危害。其中你曾对我说过，托马斯，完美主义者往往陷入僵化不现实的思维模式，比如告诉自己'我必须完美表现，否则一切都会崩溃'。你有一套自用并推荐给他人的写作技巧来对抗这种思维，具体是怎样的？

You say there are steps that we can take as individuals to reduce the harmful effects of perfectionism. And one of the things that you've mentioned to me, Thomas, is that perfectionists tend to engage in a lot of rigid and unrealistic thinking. You know, they tell themselves, I must perform flawlessly, and if I don't perform flawlessly, everything around me is gonna fall apart. You have a writing technique that you use for yourself and that you recommend to others that pushes back against this kind of thinking. What do you do?

是的。完美主义确实伴随着这类侵入性思维模式：'我必须这样''我非得那样''为什么你不能如何如何'。

Yeah. So perfectionism indeed involves those really intrusive patterns of thinking. I must do this, I have to do that. Why can't you be this? Why can't you do that?

我认为当这些念头开始浮现时，最重要的是把它们写下来思考反省，并自问：用1到10分衡量，这有多现实？多可实现？关键的是——我现在真的需要这么做吗？如果不做会怎样？

And I think the most important thing to do when those feelings are starting to, make themselves known to you is to write them down, think about them, reflect on them, and ask yourself, maybe on a scale of one to 10, how realistic is this? How achievable is this? And importantly, do I actually need to do this right now? What if I don't? What would happen?

而且当我们真正坐下来反思时，往往会发现后果远没有完美主义让你想象的那么灾难性。

And, again, often the consequences when we actually sit down and reflect are not as catastrophic as your perfectionism would have you think that they might be.

要知道托马斯，完美主义常常把工作成就视为自我的延伸。但我们不必如此——可以将焦点从自身转移到工作本身。你身边就有一位践行'工作本身就是回报'的榜样，说说你祖父的故事吧。

You know, so often, Thomas, perfectionism is about seeing our work and our accomplishments as extensions of ourselves. But, of course, we don't have to do this. Instead of making ourselves the focus, we can make our work the focus. Now you had a role model close to home who exemplified this idea of the work being its own reward. Tell me about your grandfather.

我已故的祖父是位工艺大师。小时候我常花数小时看他如何在工作室里制作栏杆、椅子、窗框等日常物件，那些作品堪称完美。在孩童眼中简直像魔法——究竟怎么造出这些精美家具的？当然，他的一丝不苟、勤奋尽责和高标准无疑是努力工作的特质，但绝非完美主义。当我对比他的奋斗方式与我的时，明显区别在于：他在工作室完成作品后，只是把它们送到该去的地方就离开了。

My late grandfather was a master craftsman, and, I used to watch him for hours as he would fashion everyday things like banisters, chairs, window frames, in his workshop, and they were immaculate. From the vantage point of a child, they just seemed magical. Know, how on earth were you able to create these wonderful pieces of furniture? And of course, his meticulousness, his diligence, his conscientiousness, his high standards were unquestionably the traits of somebody who worked really hard and wanted to do things well, but they weren't the traits of a perfectionist. And, you know, when I reflected on his way of striving versus mine, it became evident to me really that the big difference was that when he had created the things that he created in his workshop, he just took them to where they were going to live and left them there.

他并不徘徊寻求认可，也无需那五星好评。在他看来，他们只需存在便已足够，远胜过他需要被爱、被认可或被欣赏。而高标准的关键在于，它们本不必与不安为伍，唯有完美主义将二者强行捆绑。因此完美不在于将事物或任务做到极致，而在于完善我们自身的不完美，并竭力向周遭掩饰每一处睫毛膏晕染、瑕疵与不足。

He didn't loiter for validation. He didn't need that five star review. And as far as he was concerned, they just needed to exist way more than he needed to be loved or recognized or appreciated. And that is the thing about high standards I think, they really don't have to come with insecurity, only perfectionism graphs the two together. And that's why perfection isn't about perfecting things or tasks, it's about perfecting our imperfect selves and going through life trying to conceal every lash, blemish and shortcoming from those around us.

所以每次回乡，我都会去那些仍保留祖父木工作品的地方——那些他亲手打造的门栏、楼梯和窗框，无不印证着一个将使命置于自我之上的人。当然这些物件上都没有刻他的名字，但每天都有数百人在使用并享受它们。我想正是知晓这一点，让他获得了无与伦比的自豪与成就感，这种生活方式多么美好，也是我渴望在自己生命中寻得的。

So whenever I'm back home, I visit the places where my grandfather's carpentry is still installed because all those banisters and stairs and window frames that he brought into the world are really evidence of a man who had a vocation way bigger than himself. And of course none of those things bear his name but they're used and enjoyed by hundreds of people every single day. And I think just knowing that gave him an incredible sense of pride and accomplishment, and that's a wonderful way to live and one in which I'm hoping in myself that I can also find that.

托马斯·柯伦是伦敦经济学院的心理学家，著有《拥抱足够好的力量》一书。托马斯，非常感谢你今天做客《隐藏大脑》。

Thomas Curran is a psychologist at the London School of Economics. He is the author of The Embracing the Power of Good Enough. Thomas, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

谢谢邀请。

Thank you for having me.

若你喜欢本期关于完美主义的节目，请考虑分享给生活中可能受益的一两个人——你心里清楚他们是谁。稍后回来解答听众疑问：社会学家艾莉森·普将重返节目，回答关于连接性劳动及为何被他人看见如此重要却未被充分重视的问题。这里是《隐藏大脑》。

If you like today's episode on perfectionism, please consider sharing it with one or two people in your life who could benefit from it. You know who they are. We come back, your questions answered. Sociologist Alison Pugh returns to the show to answer listener questions about connective labor and why feeling seen by other people is so powerful and underappreciated. You're listening to Hidden Brain.

我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔，这里是《隐藏大脑》。你可曾就医时感觉医生心不在焉？或遇见过老师对电脑的兴趣远胜过面前的学生？

I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Have you ever been to a doctor's office and felt your physician was not really paying attention to you? Or maybe a time when a teacher seemed more interested in her computer than in you, the student sitting before her.

想必你也曾与人共餐时，目睹对方突然掏出手机中断谈话。为何我们对这些时刻如此敏感？当我们对他人心不在焉时，自己可曾察觉？这种社交断连的代价是什么？约翰霍普金斯大学社会学家艾莉森·普研究人际互动现象。

You've certainly had a meal with someone and noticed them drop out of the conversation to check their phone. Why do we experience these moments so keenly? And are we aware when we are not fully present for others? What is the cost of such social disconnection? Johns Hopkins University, sociologist Allison Pugh studies how we relate to one another.

她是《最后的人类工作：断裂世界中的连接艺术》作者。在本期问答特辑中，我们邀请艾莉森回归节目解答关于连接的疑问。若错过此前节目，可在播客列表中找到：首期名为《关系2.0：断连的代价》，第二期《关系2.0：重拾人性温度》为Plus会员专享。首期对话中，艾莉森讲述了作为家中五个孩子里最小的成长经历。

She's the author of The Last Human Job, The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World. In this edition of Your Questions Answered, we've asked Alison to return to the show to answer your questions about connection. If you missed our earlier episodes with Alison, you can find them in this podcast feed. The first is called Relationships two point zero The Price of Disconnection and the second available to Hidden Brain Plus subscribers is called Relationships two point zero, Recovering the Human Touch. In that first conversation, Alison told me a story about growing up as the youngest of five children in her family.

约三岁时全家迁居纽约，父母需为所有孩子安排学校。

When she was about three years old, her family moved to New York City, and her parents had to find schools for all the children to attend.

嗯。当时父亲工作繁忙，母亲负责孩子们的就学事宜。她先解决了14岁长兄的学校，接着是姐姐、哥哥、另一个姐姐。直到八月某天，她低头看见我才惊觉：等等，还没给你找学校呢！最后关头总算把我塞进了一家幼儿园。

Yeah. So my father was busy at work, and my mother was, kind of in charge of figuring out what schools the kids would go to. And she solved the problem for my oldest brother, and he was I think 14, and then my sister, then my brother, then my sister. And then I think somewhere around August, she looks down and she sees me and was like, wait a minute, I don't have a place for you to go. So, you know, I think she, you know, made some last minute arrangement that got me into a preschool.

艾莉森现在回想那一刻会发笑，但她确实注意到母亲当时基本忽视了她。在我们第二次对话中，她回忆起另一个成年后感到被忽视或至少被误读的时刻。当时她在外交部门工作，一位资深外交官对她做出了某种假设。

Allison laughs about the moment now, but she did notice that her mom had basically ignored her. In our second conversation, she recalled another moment, this time as a grown up when she felt unseen or at least miss seen. She was working in the foreign service, and a senior diplomat made an assumption about her.

我的家族背景包含爱尔兰血统，但意大利文化占据了我身份认同的重要部分。我的家族传承着千层面、红酱、炸鱿鱼和酿甜椒的食谱。可以说我是个受意大利文化熏陶长大的厨师。24、25岁在洪都拉斯担任外交官时，我发现当地出售的蒜头异常小巧。

My familial background involves, I have, you know, some Irish in me, and a big portion of my identity is Italian. And my fam my family has recipes for lasagna and red sauce and calamari and stuffed peppers. And, you know, like, I am an Italian raised, cook. And so when I was about 24, 25, I was in Honduras as a, foreign service officer. In in Honduras, they have the garlic they sell is unusually small.

蒜瓣真的特别小，我记得大使曾开玩笑说用这种小蒜头做饭多困难。然后他看着我说：'我干嘛和你说这些？你不过是个盎格鲁撒克逊新教徒，懂什么大蒜？'这种误读让我愕然——他完全不了解我的背景。

The cloves are really tiny, and I remember my ambassador kind of joking about how hard it was to cook with these tiny little and then he's looking at me and what do you know, you know, about why am I talking to you about this? You're just some wasp. You don't know anything about garlic. And I was just taken aback by the misread. Like, he had no idea.

外表上我可能像个WASP（白人盎格鲁撒克逊新教徒），那是我父亲的家族背景。但他根本不知道我的曾祖母是来自南意大利的文盲契约新娘，而这部分血脉其实构成我身份认同的重要组成。

You know, I might look like a wasp on the outside. That's my father's background. But, you know, he had no idea that, you know, my great grandmother was a contract bride from Southern Italy. You know, she was not literate. And he saw this external self and not not this part that, you know, is actually a big part of my identity.

所以那确实是种误读，我认为。

So that was a misread, I I would say.

当他将你看作白人盎格鲁撒克逊新教徒，而这与你自我认知不符时，艾莉森，这对你们的关系产生了什么影响？你当时如何体验那个时刻？

So when he sees you as, as a white Anglo Saxon Protestant, but in fact, that doesn't align with how you see yourself, How did that change your relationship with him, and how did it change how you experienced that moment, Allison?

那确实是个令人不适的瞬间，不过我知道他本质不坏。虽无恶意，但这个认知偏差确实让我们产生了距离，也让我意识到他根本不了解对话对象是谁。

Yeah. I mean, it was a kind of jarring moment because I but I did still know he was a nice guy. There was nothing pernicious about it, but there was it did make us a little more distant, you know, or it did make me see it helped me understand how little he knew who he was talking to.

艾莉森，我们之前讨论的核心概念之一是你提出的'连接性劳动'，这具体指什么？

Allison, one of the primary ideas we talked about in our previous conversations is what you call connective labor. What is connective labor?

连接性劳动是指看见对方并让对方感受到被看见的工作。这包含从反思性倾听到根据对方反应调整表达的全部过程——这是种互动之舞，而互动性正是其关键所在。

So connective labor is the work of seeing the other person and having the other person feel seen. And it's all the work that that requires, from reflective listening to kind of adjusting what you're saying, given what they're how they're responding. It's an interactive dance, and the interactive part is very important.

我能想到像心理治疗师或医院牧师这类极其需要这类技能的职业。但你认为这些技能的重要性不仅限于需要倾听的专门职业，而是具有普遍重要性，对吗？

Now I can think of professions like a psychotherapist or a or a chaplain at a hospital, where I can imagine these skills are really, really vital. But you are saying it's not just in these professions which call for hearing and listening that these skills are important. You're saying these are important skills more generally, right?

没错，正是如此。这种连接性劳动支撑着众多职业，从治疗师、教师、初级护理，到你的发型师、房地产经纪人、足球教练、律师。你知道，经理人当然也在此列，还有高端销售。有很多很多人通过这类连接性劳动来实现他们获得报酬的工作成果。

Yes, exactly. They underlie so many occupations from therapy, teaching, primary care, but also your hairdresser, your real estate agent, your soccer coach, the lawyer. You know, there's there's the manager for sure, high end sales. There's many, many people who use this kind of connective labor to to achieve the outcomes for which they're getting paid.

我们都有过这样的经历，比如请承包商或提供某种服务的人来家里。对方要么仔细倾听你的需求，要么完全没在听。这就是连接性劳动的实例——在你原以为根本无关紧要的场合。

You know, we've all had the experience of, you know, having, you know, like a contractor or a or someone who's providing some service, come to your home. And the person either listens to you carefully or doesn't listen to you carefully. And it's an example of connective labor in place where you wouldn't think it matters at all.

完全正确。这些都是绝佳的例子。我们将这类工作仅与某些特定的、情感化的职业联系起来，说明我们严重低估了它的普遍性和重要性。另外可以说，这某种程度上存在性别偏见——我们误以为这只是女性的专属领域。

Exactly. I mean, those are really great examples. The fact that we associate this kind of work with only very particular, very kind of, feeling professions mean we're really underestimating its prevalence and its importance. And also, may I say, it's kind of gendered. We're misunderstanding it as only the province of women.

当男性从事这种劳动时，我们却视而不见。所以我们对它的反应带有性别色彩，但我认为这种现象遍布整个经济体系。

When men do it, we ignore it. So it's it's gender you know, how we respond to it is gendered, but it I think it happens all over the economy.

能谈谈连接性劳动的效果吗？比如你提到的汽车或冰箱销售员。请说说当试图向顾客推销时，与对方建立实际联系会产生什么影响？

Can you talk a moment about the effects of connective labor? So you you mentioned, for example, the salesperson, who is selling you a car or a refrigerator. Talk about the effect of actually forming a connection with your customer when you're trying to sell something to him or her.

就销售而言——其实很多职业都是如此——被他人真正看见会产生深远影响。大量研究证实了这点在教学、治疗和医疗领域的作用。但即便在销售行业，销售员也深谙此道。当你能有效识别客户的问题或立场时，说服力会大幅提升。

Well, for sales in particular I mean, actually, this this is happening in many different occupations. To be seen by another human being is you know, has some profound effects. There's a ton of research that talks about that for teaching and for therapy and for medicine. But even in sales, you know, salespeople know this. When you when you, the salesperson, effectively identify somebody's problems or, you know, their perspective, it is much more persuasive.

被他人真正看见的力量非常强大——即便只是为了说服目的。

It's very powerful to be seen by another human being even when that's just for persuasion.

是的。我曾与一些技巧娴熟的销售员交谈过。即便我知道他们只是在试图引导我，或只是走流程，但当他们表现出理解我为何需要某件设备或某项服务时，确实让我感觉很好。

Yeah. And I've I've had, conversations with salespeople who are very skilled. And even when I know that they're just trying to manipulate me or even if I know that they're just, you know, going through the motions, it does make me feel great when they basically feel like they have understood why I need this particular device or why I need this particular service.

没错。被理解的感觉极具力量，而被误解、被忽视或被错误认知的感受，其负面影响力同样强大。

Yes. The the feeling of being understood is a powerful one, and the feeling of being misunderstood or feeling invisible or misrecognized, that is kind of equally powerful in a negative sense.

这引出了听众弗朗西斯关于跨文化沟通的问题。某种程度上可以说所有沟通都是跨文化沟通——我们始终在跨越文化隔阂交流。但与不同背景的人对话时，连接性劳动的工作是否变得更加困难？

So this brings us to a question from a listener named Francis about cross cultural communication. And you could argue in some ways that all communication is cross cultural communication. We're always communicating across cultural divides. But when we're conversing with someone from a different background, does that make the job of connective labor even more difficult?

这是个极其重要的问题。鉴于我们其实并不了解对方，即便自以为了解，以谦逊的态度开始并非糟糕的做法。即使对方来自不同文化、背景或种族等情况时可能更容易些，但我们所有人都应该——我认为这始于谦逊。事实上，已有出色的心理学研究指出，我们不应将此视为观点采择，而应视作观点获取。

That's a super important question. Given that we don't know the other person even when we think they do, it's not a terrible approach to kind of start with humility. So even it's it's perhaps easier when you know they're from a different culture or background or race or whatever, but you we should all I think this starts with humility. And actually, there's been great, psychological research talking about how we shouldn't think of this as perspective taking. We should instead think of this as perspective getting.

因此，首先要做的是询问或检验你对他们的假设。所以你在解读对方时的姿态不应是‘这就是你的感受’，而更像是‘听起来像是这样’。这是一种更为试探性的态度，你要保持觉察。你的首要任务是倾听并保持谦逊。

So, it starts with asking or checking on your assumptions about them. So your posture towards reading them is not like this is what you're feeling. It's it's so it sounds like something like this. You know, it's a it's a more tentative, and you're you're aware. Your your first task is to listen and, to be humble.

这些听起来简单，但实际上——要知道，我们多数误读都发生在试图快速完成时。比如这些领域的从业者，以初级保健医生为例，他们根本没有时间。我对他们难以看清他人的工作环境深表同情，但我会说尽量抵制这种压力，因为效率追求会让你做得很糟糕。

And that's that's those sound simple, but actually when, you know, so much of our misreads happen under conditions of trying to do it quickly. So many of the practitioners in these in these fields, like, start with let's start with primary care physicians, you know, have, no time. So I have a lot of sympathy for the working conditions that are making it hard for them to see other people. But I would say try and hold that off because your efficiency pressures are gonna make you do this poorly.

我在想这里是否存在某种矛盾：当我们知道自己在与背景迥异的人互动时，你可能会称之为谦逊，我则称之为试探性——我们言行会变得谨慎，害怕冒犯对方，不愿被误解。但我怀疑这种如履薄冰的状态是否反而让连接性劳动更难完成？毕竟这样无法真正充分连接。

I'm wondering if there is some tension here, which is that when we know we're interacting with someone who comes from a very different background than ours, I think, you know, you might call it humility. I might call it tentativeness, which is we are a little cautious in terms of what we say and what we do. We're afraid of giving offense. We don't want the other person to misunderstand what we're saying. But I'm wondering if all of that walking on eggshells actually makes the job of connective labor more difficult because, of course, you're not connecting fully.

你没有完全投入对话，只是小心翼翼地试探。在保持极度谦逊谨慎的同时，又试图向前迈进与他人建立深刻连接——这两者是否存在张力？

You're not jumping into the conversation fully. You're sort of walking very tentatively. Is there a tension between these two things of, you know, trying to be very humble and be cautious about what you're doing and also trying to reach forward and make a deep connection with someone else?

有意思。我说试探性时并非指不去做，而是说在表达你认为对方的意思时要敢于冒险，但要意识到自己可能出错并保持开放修正的态度。研究显示，当你纠正错误时，对方反而感觉更被理解。

That's interesting. I I I'm not sure when I'm saying tentative, I'm not saying don't do it. So, don't, you know, take the risk of, saying what you think they're saying to you. But just be aware that you might be wrong and be open to that and correcting that. There's a lot of research that shows that when you correct something that's wrong, they feel more seen.

但本质上这是倾听与冒险的任务。最近在俄勒冈演讲时，有人告诉我她遭遇骑马事故后几乎无法行走，如今虽能跑跳，但对身体能力变得极其谨慎。听她讲述时我说：这像是纯真的丧失——她曾经无所顾忌地冒险只因乐趣，如今不再相信自己。

But really, it's the task listening and taking a risk. I gave a talk in Oregon recently, and someone was telling me about how they had had a horseback riding accident, and they almost couldn't walk as a result. But then they managed to now they are walking, are able to run, etcetera. But she talked about how her feelings about her body, she's become much more cautious and wary and uncertain about what her body can do. And listening to her, I said, it's like a loss of innocence.

当我说‘纯真丧失’时，她反应强烈——当连接性劳动做得好时，会产生巨大的解脱感和亲密感，那30秒的互动让我们深刻联结。对我而言，这意味着要冒险：我只是把她的话反馈给她，虽不试探但随时准备接受错误。所以这种张力在于你必须迈出那一步。

Like, she was innocent about and just taking risks because it was fun and she could do it and whatever, and now she no longer believes that about herself. And and her response to the it's a loss of this innocence was like, when you do connective labor well, it's like powerful relief, a great sense of affinity, you know, like, really we were really bonded in that thirty second interaction. And then to me, to me that felt like take a risk, you know, like what she was saying to me, I was just saying back to her. And so I wasn't tentative, but I was certainly open to the fact that I could be wrong. So, yeah, I guess the tension is you have to take that step.

你必须承担这个风险，同时保持高度可修正性。

You have to make that take that risk, but also be very correctable.

嗯。有时我们需要建立的 emotional connections 涉及与陌生人的微妙社会关系。Marsha 提出了关于情感连接的问题，但某种程度上这也是个道德问题。接下来请听她的分享。

Mhmm. Sometimes the emotional connections we are called upon to make involve delicate social relationships with strangers. Marsha had a question about emotional connection, but I think at some level, it's also a moral question. Here she is.

我偶尔会去费城看望朋友，经常会在人行道上或建筑物旁遇到无家可归的人。直接路过而不做任何眼神接触让我感到不适，但我往往也没有能力给予他们任何捐赠或帮助。径直走过似乎很无礼，但我不确定如果与他们目光相接或打招呼后继续前行，他们会作何感受。面对这种情况，最好的处理方式是什么？

I go into Philadelphia once in a while to visit my friend, and I will often pass by homeless people on the sidewalk or leaning against a building. I'm uncomfortable just passing by without making any eye contact. But I also often am not in any position to give them any kind of a donation or help. It seems rude to walk by, and yet I'm not sure how it would feel to look them in the eye or acknowledge them and then continue to walk on. What's the best way to handle this kind of a situation?

艾莉森，我认为这绝非简单的问题。这虽是日常现象，但在某种程度上是个深刻的命题。你怎么看？

So I don't think this is an easy question at all, Allison. I think it's an everyday kind of occurrence, but I think at some level, it's a profound question. What do you think?

我同意这是个深刻的问题，也认同这是城市居民的日常困境。这不仅关乎无家可归者，更关乎我们身边那些你无力满足其深层需求的人们。根据我的经验，他们其实很感激你的关注——最糟糕的反而是彻底无视他们。

I agree it's a profound question. I also agree it is an everyday one, especially for those of us who live in urban environments. And it's not just about the unhoused, it's also about just, seeing people in our midst who have deep need that you can't meet. Just speaking directly to this questioner, I would say, in my experience, they really appreciate your acknowledgment. I think the worst is when you don't acknowledge them at all.

比如看着他们的眼睛说'今天帮不上忙，但祝你顺利'这类体现人性尊重的回应。关于如何应对远超我们能力范围的需求，那些常处社会需求最前线的工作者——公交司机、图书管理员、社工、社区警察——反复向我倾诉过这种无力感。

So just looking them in the eye and saying, I can't help you today, but I hope you have a good day or something that acknowledges them as a human being is one way forward. In terms of the broader question of how do we handle interactions with those who are coming to us with much greater need than we can meet. And I heard this again and again from people I talked to because the people who do this work are often on the front line of, you know, societal need that some of us might be more protected from. So I'm talking about like bus drivers or librarians or social workers or community police. These are people who are like right on the edge.

他们不断向我描述那种令人绝望的处境：感到无能、无助、不堪重负。我们必须认识到，许多人不仅承受着不平等带来的恶果，更感到自己像个隐形人——终日被标准化流程机械对待的数字。

Again and again, they told me how desperate it felt out there. They feel incompetent or helpless or, you know, kind of overwhelmed, and that can be really daunting. We have to kind of recognize that many people are feeling not just the pernicious effect of inequality and all these unhoused, but also many people are feeling really invisible. They feel like a number. They're being kind of processed in standardized ways all day, every day.

这种隐形感正引发人格解体危机。虽然你无法彻底解决，但片刻的真诚注视确有价值。研究表明，这些容易被忽视的微小互动其实意义重大。

And the sense of invisibility is creating really a, you know, a depersonalization crisis. And you're not gonna be able to solve that completely, but you are gonna be able to see them for a moment. And I do think it makes a difference. There's a lot of research that suggests these, you know, kind of minor interactions that we might dismiss actually make a difference.

稍后我们将继续探讨社会脱节与连接性劳动的问题。这里是《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。您正在收听的是《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。

When we come back, more questions about social disconnection and connective labor. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

社会学家艾莉森·普研究发现，多数工作的核心要素并非技术能力，而是看见与倾听他人、保持在场、给予关注的能力。艾莉森，你在加州大学伯克利分校读研时，曾有位导师为你示范过这种连接性劳动？

Sociologist Alison Pugh studies how we relate to one another. She believes that an essential component of most jobs, perhaps the essential component of most jobs, is not technical skill or knowledge, but the ability to see and hear other people, to be present for them, to give them attention. Allison, you have a lovely example of a moment when you are on the receiving end of connective labor. You had a mentor in grad school at UC Berkeley who did this for you. Tell me that story.

是的。我很荣幸师从著名社会学家阿莉·霍赫希尔德，她堪称连接性劳动的典范。读研时，我对工作与家庭冲突的研究兴趣催生了一个关于睡眠社会学的论文构想。

Sure. Yeah. My I I am grateful to be mentored by Arlie Hochschild. She's a sociologist of great renown who is actually a really tremendous kind of the quintessential connective labor. So, when I was in graduate school, I came upon I thought of an idea for a dissertation that captured my interest in the conflict between work and family, and that was a sociology of sleep.

经过访谈后，包括阿莉在内的导师们都非常兴奋，认为这个原创课题无人涉足。如今回想，那确实是个既非传统又极具价值的选题。

And so I did some interviews, and my advisers, including Arlie, were extremely excited about it. They saw it as original, unique. No one's talking about this. And I can see now, like, in retrospect, that they are right. It was a, you know, kind of unconventional and and good idea.

但我对此失去了兴趣，决定放弃。转而开始研究消费文化，我们为孩子花费多少，以及这如何因阶级和种族而异，还有物质对孩子的意义。进展还算顺利，但我的导师们可能对这个不太传统的话题有些失望。同时，阿莉并没有反对，她只是试图引导我找到自己的方向。

But I lost interest in it, and I decided not to do it. And instead, I, embarked on a study of consumer culture and how much we spend on kids and how that varies by class and race and, the meaning of of stuff to kids. And it went fine, but there was some disappointment, I think, among my advisers for something that was probably a little more conventional subject. And at the same time, Arlie was not like, no. You can't do that.

她更像是想激发我内心的旋律。这正是博士生导师的职责所在。我感受到的不仅是她的许可——更是在我们长达数十年的关系中，她始终能准确解读并反馈我传递的信息。这种能力在某种程度上既深刻动人又赋予力量。是的，生命中有这样的人是莫大的幸运。

She just kind of was trying to coax my song out of me. And that's the the PhD advisor's task. And I felt, not only did she give me permission or, you know, not only was I able to do this, I just felt throughout, you know, our decades long relationship now, her capacity to read and reflect what I was giving off to her. And that really is is profoundly moving and also empowering on some level. So, yeah, it's a blessing to have that someone like that in your life.

我想这正是父母在子女成长中扮演的角色——努力告诉孩子'我要你唱属于自己的歌'。这之所以困难，部分源于父母对孩子'该唱什么歌''擅长唱什么歌'也有自己的期待。某种程度上，这需要克制你对他人应该如何思考、如何行事的看法，让对方真正绽放光芒。

I mean, I'm thinking that this is part of the role that parents play in the role of children, where you're trying to say, I want you to sing your song. And it's difficult partly because parents also have a view of the song that their children need to sing and the and the songs that their children are good at singing. And so in some ways, it requires you to hold back your own views of what the other person should be thinking, should be doing, and allow the other person to basically shine forth.

说得太好了。父母不该说'我要你唱我的歌'，而应该说'我要你唱你的歌'。你太了解自己的孩子了，很容易陷入'我认为这就是对的'的思维定式。

That's so well put. Parents shouldn't be saying, I want you to sing my song. Parents should be saying, I want you to sing your song. You know your kids so well. It's very tempting to be like, this is what I see, and I am right.

他们必须走自己的路。对于我们这些可能研究了自己孩子一辈子的人来说，所需的克制力确实非比寻常。

They have to make their way. And, yeah, that's the the restraint that that requires among those of us who have maybe studied our children all their lives, is is is considerable.

在我们最初的对话中，讨论过医生花时间与患者建立联系带来的益处。听众莫莉来信询问：当'连接性劳动者'付出情感劳动时，如何影响他们自身？作为学校心理师，莫莉感觉自己大量付出却鲜有回报，导致抱怨文化和职业倦怠。她的问题是：当专业要求你为他人提供情感连接，却无人为你提供这种支持时，该如何更好地支持这些从业者？

So in our initial conversation, we talked about the benefits that patients experience when their doctors take the time to connect with them. A listener named Molly wrote to us with a question about how connective labor affects the person making the effort, the connective laborer, if you will. Molly is a school therapist and feels she provides a lot of connective labor to others but feels she receives very little in return. She writes, I think this leads to cultures of venting and burnout. When you provide this connection for others, but have nowhere to seek it yourself, what are your thoughts on how to better support people providing emotional connection as part of their professional responsibilities?

这个问题中我听到了普遍存在的痛苦。我写这本书的初衷之一，就是为连接性劳动者提供表达需求的语汇。因为我们太常把这些人视为孤胆英雄，而实际上需要社会组织架构的支持。这位来信者显然身处其劳动被视作理所当然、甚至被体制阻碍的环境，这实在是种悲剧。

I mean, I hear the pain in that question, and I would say it's widely shared. One of the reasons why I wrote the book I wrote was to give people a vocabulary to be able to assert their needs as connective labor practitioners. Because what I found is that too often, we are relying on people as individual heroes, and instead, there's a social architecture that organizations put into place that support it or impede it. And it sounds like this writer is working in a context in which her labor is being kind of taken for granted and perhaps even impeded by her organization. And that actually is a tragedy.

通过研究，我发现构建良好社会架构的关键因素之一，是是否存在同行交流群体——我称之为'共鸣板'。这是治疗师和教师都深谙的：比如数学教师会有'数学家族'的同行圈子，治疗师则有完善的督导和咨询体系来探讨工作困境。

You know, I ended up finding a set of factors that contribute to kind of a good social architecture where, what kind of organizations are doing it right. And one of them, one of the key factors is, are there other people to talk to who do this? I end up calling that a sounding board. And are there sounding boards out there? And this is, you know, something that therapists know, teachers know.

我还想指出这封邮件隐含的倦怠问题。当前主流应对方式——休假、正念练习等——都基于'过度人际关系导致耗竭'的理论，将工作者视为会漏光的同情心容器。但许多人告诉我这些关系其实具有滋养作用，我认为这个隐喻根本是误读。

You know, like, they have those, that's a kind of common practice to have a group of people who are you know, I had one teacher who was he was like the math family. The people who teach math, that's who I'm talking to about problems. Or therapists have a kind of very extensive supervision, but also consultative practice with other therapists where they can talk about what they're experiencing or finding or processing. Those crucial. I want to say one other thing about the of what I'm hearing underneath that email's lament, and that is about burnout.

我们总把工作者想象成不断流失同情心的破桶，这种思维需要改变。真正的问题不在于关系过多，而在于缺乏支持性的组织结构。当连接性劳动者能获得充分支持和理解时，这些关系反而会成为他们的力量源泉。

A lot of the treatment for burnout is, you know, take a day off, take a vacation, take make sure you take your lunch, you know, practice mindfulness. It's very individual, and and it also kind of all subscribes to the theory that it's too much relationship is causing burnout. There's too many people, kind of sucking you dry. And I actually think that that's a misread because so many people talk to me about how sustaining they find these relationships. So I started to think like we're running around with a metaphor of workers as, like, kind of these buckets of compassion that spring holes from which their compassion drains away.

实际上，我认为这个比喻并不恰当。我们应该把工作者比作土壤，而关系则是雨水。有时雨势滂沱甚至有害，有时土壤又过于干旱。但问题不在于我们不需要雨水，而在于我们需要创造能让雨水恢复生机的劳动条件。

And, actually, I don't think that's the right metaphor. I think we should think about, like, kind of the workers are as soil and the relationships as rain. And sometimes the rain is torrential or toxic, and sometimes the soil is too dry. But it's not that we don't need rain. It's that we need the working conditions that enable the rain to be restorative.

我在思考莫莉的案例，她表示自己在为他人提供这种服务，却感觉很少获得回报。部分原因或许在于她的组织——可以建立倾听机制，鼓励人们寻找这类支持。但从莫莉自身角度，也许她应该主动寻找倾听者，尝试建立支持者网络。换句话说，如果我们所处的系统无法提供这些，或许我们可以自行争取这些资源，艾莉森？

I'm wondering in Molly's case where she basically says she's providing this service to others but feels she doesn't receive a lot of it herself. Some of it, in fact, might be what her organization can do, maybe provide these sounding boards, encourage people to find these sounding boards. But I'm also hearing in some ways from Molly's own perspective, maybe she should go looking for sounding boards. She should actually try and develop a network of people who can be sounding boards. In in other words, if the systems that we are embedded in do not provide those things for us, perhaps we can go some ways in trying to get those things for ourselves, Allison?

确实如此。只是我不希望所有责任都落在已经承担大量工作的个体身上。但我同意倾听机制是维系关系工作的关键要素。所以是的，你可以向管理者提议建立这种机制，或者自己努力寻找支持者。

Yes. For sure. I just don't want all the onus to be on the individual people who are doing so much work, but I agree. I think sounding boards are crucial component to finding relationship work sustaining. And so, yes, you should petition your manager to set that up, or you can, you know, maybe and you can work to find them yourselves.

听众黑兹尔来信询问关于连接性劳动与真实性的问题。她说：'当我在个人生活中想到连接性劳动这个词时，会感到悲伤——因为这本质上像是出于义务或习惯的工作，而非真实的连接。我好奇连接性劳动是否可能适得其反。'艾莉森，她的意思是如果不断告诫自己必须进行连接性劳动，当面对他人时在脑中机械核对清单，不仅自己感到负担，对方也会觉得虚伪。

A listener named Hazel wrote in asking about connective labor and authenticity. She says, when I think of the term connective labor in my personal life, it makes me sad because at some basic level, it feels like work we do out of obligation or habit and not authentic or real connection. Ultimately, I'm curious about the potential for connective labor to backfire. And I think what she's saying here, Allison, is that if I tell myself I need to do connective labor, I need to do connective labor, it's important for me to do connective labor. And someone's in front of me now, and I'm saying, okay.

这种状态不仅让我倍感压力，也会让对方觉得我的行为缺乏真诚。

What do I need to do? And I'm running through a checklist in my mind. At some level, that's not only gonna feel onerous for me, but it's gonna feel inauthentic to the other person.

我完全同意。一旦变成义务，就会开始令人疲惫。我认为这两个问题本质相关——当感到虚伪或被迫行事时，往往源于持续付出却得不到滋养。但矛盾的是，许多受访者都说这是他们所做的最有意义的工作。

I mean, I completely agree. As soon as it becomes a duty, it does start to feel, onerous. I guess I'm feeling like these two questions are related. Like, think feelings of inauthenticity or, you know, feeling like it's something you have to do rather than something you want to do is related to, having to give, give, give, and it feeling like they are draining you rather than sustaining you. And yet so many people I talked to said that this is the most meaningful work that they do.

我的目标正是帮助提出这类疑问的人，转向我的多数受访者所描述的那种感受。这涉及思考真实性的来源——根据研究，连接性劳动的真实性可能来自对对方的喜爱，或是作为专业实践带来的职业自豪感。但对于前者，我要稍作修正：你不需要对他人怀有深厚情感。

So my goal is actually to get people who write those kinds of questions over to the kind of feelings that my respondents, many of my respondents were attesting to. And I think part of that is about thinking about where authenticity comes from. So in my experience, doing this research, authenticity and connective labor comes sometimes from, whether you feel kind of affection for the other person, or whether you feel like you're doing it as part of your professional practice and you get some kind of pride from doing it in that way. But for the first part, the feelings of affection, I actually want to kind of push back on that a little bit. Like, I don't think you have to care about the other person too deeply or much.

比如退伍军人医院的许多治疗师，他们面对PTSD患者激烈的情绪宣泄时，任务在于'看见'对方，而不必投入深厚感情。这很重要——这类工作不依赖于情感关怀，你依然能专业地传递'对方值得被倾听'的尊重。我们收到佛罗里达州听众简的提问...

I mean, I talk to many therapists at the VA hospital, for example, who work with extreme cases of people with PTSD who might rant and vent and yell at them just like that other questioner was mentioning. And so they were like, you know, my task is really to, you know, see the other person, but I don't have to have these great wills of affection for them. And I think that is powerful and important to kind of say that this work doesn't rely on the, you know, having to emotionally care for somebody. You can still do it well, you can still convey to someone that they are human being and that they deserve, you know, to be heard and listened to without that. We received a question from listener Jane in Florida who is

她是医院志愿者，承担着在医护人员与患者家属间搭建桥梁的艰难角色。

a volunteer at a hospital, and she plays a very difficult role trying to build a bridge between the medical staff and families.

作为志愿者，我们正组建工作组探讨：如何在手术团队与等待消息的家属之间保持人性化连接并减轻压力？请问AI技术能否在保持社交连接的同时，肯定我们优秀志愿者的付出？谢谢。

As a volunteer we're trying to do a work group to determine how we keep our connection as we liaise between the surgical teams and the families who are waiting to hear how their family members are doing following surgery. But we want to keep the human connection and also reduce stress. Is there something with AI that you could suggest that would keep that social connection and yet also validate the commitment and our excellent volunteers? Thank you.

简在这里指出了一个有趣的现象，艾莉森。许多工作本质上是在扮演中间人角色。在这个案例中，简和她的志愿者同事们既要与医生合作，又要与患者及其家属沟通。这一定非常艰难，因为他们某种程度上是在进行双向的翻译工作。

So Jane points to something interesting here, Allison. There are many jobs where people are essentially playing a go between role. In this case Jane and her fellow volunteers are working with doctors and then talking with patients and their families. And that's got to be very tough because in some ways they're playing this translation job back and forth.

是的。这听起来很困难，因为无论家属——或者我们可以更泛泛地称之为接收方、学生、患者等——对专业人士有什么看法，你都得进行调解。这确实不容易。虽然可能显得我手里有锤子就看什么都是钉子，但我认为如果调解者能真正'看见'家属，对调解过程会有很大帮助。比如我认识一位家庭护理员，她被雇主机构称为'疑难案例专家'，因为她特别擅长理解对方立场——这种能力确实能平息不满情绪。

Yeah. That sounds very difficult, because whatever opinions the family members or the we could call them more generically, the recipients or the students, the patients, etcetera, might have about the professionals, you have to kind of mediate that. And that does sound difficult. At the risk of sounding like, you know, I have a hammer and everything's a nail, my opinion is that if that person effectively sees the, family members, that can actually go a long way in that mediation process. For example, I spoke to someone who was a home health care aide, and she was known by her employer, her employing agency, as a hard cases specialist because she was really good at seeing the other and and just that can really calm down the outrage if people are dissatisfied in any way.

有时家属可能并非真的不满，但当你扮演这种调解角色时，我认为实际上双方都需要被'看见'，都需要建立连接的工作。

Sometimes the family members are probably not dissatisfied, but when you're kind of handling that mediating role, it's really good. I think, actually, probably both of them need need seeing labor, need connective work.

没错。让我们再深入探讨一下这个场景。假设患者或家属对医院发生的某件事不满，比如手术效果未达预期，他们非常沮丧。志愿者花时间陪伴家属，理解他们的痛苦，让他们感受到被看见和被倾听。

Yeah. So but just stay with this for just a second. So in in this situation, let's say that, you know, the patient is, let's say, or the family of the patient is unhappy about something that happened at the hospital. Maybe there was a surgery that didn't go as well as it could have gone, and they're very upset about it. And and and the volunteer basically spends time with the family seeing and understanding why they're upset, making them feel seen and heard.

我能理解这会让家属好受些。而志愿者同时也在与医护人员沟通，后者可能有完全不同的视角——也许这是个异常复杂的病例，手术中出现了意外情况。如果志愿者对医护人员也采取同样的'看见'策略，倾听并理解他们的立场...

I can see how that feels very good for the family. The volunteer is now also talking to the medical staff and the surgical staff, and maybe they have a very different perspective. Maybe this was a very complicated situation. Maybe the surgery was unusually complex and unexpected things happened. And, again, if the volunteer is playing the same role with the surgical staff, you listen to them and you see them and you make them feel seen and heard.

某种程度上，你是在容纳两个互不相见的对立视角，这一定是个痛苦又艰难的处境，艾莉森。

At some level, are you containing these two views that, in fact, don't see each other, but you're seeing both of them? That must be a difficult and painful place to be, Allison.

我完全同意。事实上很多职业都承担着这类调解角色。理解各自立场不算难，真正的困难在于如何让双方达成共识。有些职业必须设法让对立双方走到一起。

I I agree. And, actually, I bet there I think there are many different occupations that have this kind of mediating role for sure. Seeing those individual sides doesn't sound that hard to me. What sounds hard to me is if you have to make them agree. And I think there are professions where you have to somehow bring those parties together.

特别是在双方存在隔阂且不愿互相理解时——这才是难点。比如专业调解员就面临这种挑战，他们需要让对立双方都感觉自己是赢家。就我个人经验而言，理解对立观点并不痛苦，因为你会全神贯注地倾听某方诉求，此时另一方观点只有在你试图争辩时才相关。

Assuming there is distance between them, that that's the hard part because especially since they aren't doing the work of seeing each other. So, yeah, I think, you know, I think probably professional mediators have this role, for example. And, yeah, I think, they would say, you know, given these I think they would say something like, given these two parties that disagree, how do we get the, you know, get to a point where, each of them, you know, feels like they have won or something like that. It's my experience that it's not painful to see people who disagree with each other because I guess in my experience of doing it, you're so kind of present with that person, and you're just trying to understand their perspective. So somebody else's perspective is only relevant if you're, like, trying to kind of fight with them or something.

本质上你只是在聆听他们的故事。真正的困难在于如何促成双方达成一致。

But really, you're just trying to hear what their story is. I don't think that that would be very difficult. The difficult part is if you have to make them agree somehow.

稍后我们将探讨人工智能等新技术在连接性劳动中快速扩张的角色。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, the rapidly expanding role of new technologies like artificial intelligence in performing connective labor. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

社会学家艾莉森·普夫研究我们如何相互关联。她是《最后的工人：在脱节世界中建立联系》一书的作者。在我们最初的对话中，艾莉森和我谈到的一个问题是，我们生活在一个日益注重测量的世界里。医生必须记录他们与病人相处的时间。教师的评价则基于学生在考试中的表现。

Sociologist Alison Pugh studies how we relate to one another. She is the author of The Last The Worker Connecting in a Disconnected World. One of the things that Alison and I talked about in our initial conversation was that we live in an increasingly measurement focused world. Doctors have to account for how much time they spend with a patient. Teachers are evaluated on how well their students perform on tests.

但人际联系很难量化。那位多花十分钟让学生或病人感到被倾听的教师或医生，这种付出不会体现在绩效指标上。我询问艾莉森远程工作如何影响这一点。如果现在许多人通过屏幕进行工作互动，这会削弱人情味吗？技术是否加剧了人际疏离的问题？

But it's hard to measure human connection. The teacher or doctor who spends extra ten minutes helping someone feel seen and heard, this does not show up on performance metrics. I asked Alison how remote work has affected this. If many people are now interacting in their work through screens, can that reduce the personal touch? Is technology making the problem of human disconnection worse?

当你与治疗师交谈时，他们中许多人表示现在很多来访者只愿意通过Zoom会面。新冠疫情确实改变了他们的工作场景。他们说通过Zoom可以看到对方——这其实存在争议，因为你无法真正实现眼神交流，会错过大量同处一室时的身体语言、氛围和非言语沟通。当然还会缺失其他要素。

When you talk to therapists, many of them say so many people only want to meet on Zoom now. So COVID and the pandemic really altered the terrain, the working terrain for them. And they say you can see the other over Zoom. Now that's that's actually controversial because you can't really have eye contact, and so you're missing a lot of the bodily, kind of just the vibe and the the the nonverbal communication that happens when you're in the same room. And you're missing other things, of course, also.

虽然技术上可行，但根据从业者的反馈，这种方式令人精疲力竭。我在研究中发现这种情感劳动对从业者意义重大——他们从中获得巨大满足。有人告诉我'我感到荣幸'，'能倾听这些让我觉得无比幸运'。

But but you can do it, but I believe according to what I hear from practitioners, it's completely exhausting. So one of the things that I wrote about was how sustaining this labor is actually for people. Like, they they get so much out of it. People people tell me, like, I feel honored. I feel, you know, incredibly privileged that I get to hear this.

这种实践对人们有着深刻而强大的滋养作用。但通过Zoom进行时，据我了解会让人疲惫不堪。

You know, like, that it's a deeply, powerfully sustaining practice for people. And I think when it's on Zoom, it's exhausting. That's what I hear.

说到治疗，目前有人对使用人工智能等技术提供心理治疗感兴趣。艾莉森，治疗是最深刻的情感连接劳动之一。我们在这方面有何发现？机器能提供这种连接性劳动吗？

So speaking of therapy, there's been some interest in the idea of using technologies like artificial intelligence to provide therapy to people. Alison, therapy is one of the most profound forms of connective labor there is. What do we find in that regard? Can a machine provide connective labor?

这是个绝妙的问题。像CHAT GPT这类新一代AI，某种程度上能让人产生被看见的感觉。有人反馈'哇，此刻我感觉被理解了'。那种类人的情感化语法和不可完全预测的回应，确实能营造被关注感。

That's such a good question. I think, the newer versions of, you know, CHAT GPT and its inheritors, can feel like being seen on some level. I've heard people say, wow. That I feel like I've I feel like I'm being seen right now. And, I think the kind of emotional human like syntax and the not entirely predictable responses help people feel seen.

但这存在几个问题：首先这不是真实互动，因为另一端并非人类。实际上不存在被评判的风险——这对那些背负秘密、恐惧他人眼光的人来说本是好事。无需面对人类凝视的治疗确实很有吸引力。

There's a couple of problems with it. The first is that, it's not an interaction because it's not a human being on the other end. There's actually no risk of judgment. And on one level, that's a great thing for all the people who, are afraid of the shame and judgment of others and who are walking around with, dark secrets. Many people can walk around with shame, and the idea of having therapy that doesn't involve a human gaze can be very appealing.

但正因没有人类评判，人们的投入度也会降低。研究显示使用者动力不足，因为他们知道对方不是真人。工程师们面临一个悖论：AI越拟人化，包含的评判性越强，对逃避评判者吸引力就越低；反之拟人程度越低，虽吸引羞耻感强的人，但用户流失也更快——因为人们不重视非人类的反馈价值。

But because there's no risk of human judgment, people also are less attached to it. This is also something that research has found that people, like kind of are less motivated, because they know it's not a human being. So it's kind of a it's a it's a kind of thing that engineers actually struggle with. The more human they make it, the more judgment it involves, the less appealing it is to those who want to avoid judgment. The less human they make it, the more appealing it is to those who have shame, but also then the quicker the drop off because people don't consider the the reflection of the other that hard one or that worth much.

你明白我的意思吗？

You know what I'm saying?

那么艾莉森，你最终如何看待技术与连接性劳动的关系？这究竟是一股将我们引向好方向还是坏方向的力量？

So where do you come down eventually on sort of technology and connective labor, Allison? Is this is this ultimately a force driving us in a good direction or a bad direction?

我认为确实存在一些重要的细微用途。就像那些通过翻开书本获得帮助的人，同样可以通过寻求某种技术援助获益。但我相信人与人之间会产生深刻的东西，而我们正面临失去它的风险。这种价值不仅对消费者、学习者或患者至关重要，对整个社会亦是如此。每天被不同类型的人看见，能产生一种具有社区效应的归属感。

Well, I do think that there's probably some minor uses that are important. I think the same level like those who could get help from opening a book, I think can get help from seeking out, some kind of technological assistance. But I do think that there's something profound that happens between people, and we risk losing that. And it's so valuable, not just not just for the consumer or the learner or the patient, but actually for society. For many people to be seen every day by different kinds of people produces a kind of belonging that has community effects.

我确实认为某些民粹主义的愤怒情绪，源于人们感到被忽视。因此我们的民主制度和社会分裂程度，取决于人们是否感到被看见。这不仅是个人福祉的基础，更是社会福祉的关键实践。若我们贸然转向技术，恐怕要自食其果。

And I do think that some of the kind of populist rage, etcetera, is stemming from people feeling unseen. And so our democracy, our our kind of social fragmentation is reliant on whether or not people feel, you know, unseen or seen. Like, it's it's, I think, a vitally important kind of practice that underlies not just individual well-being, but but social well-being. So we go to technology, at our peril, I think.

当我们思考人们转向数字平台替代人际连接的种种方式——社交媒体已成为社交连接的替代品，甚至连性亲密关系，无论是通过色情内容还是虚拟伴侣，都在取代真实互动。这些正是你所说的'连接性劳动'被技术替代的例证。

I mean, when we think about the different ways in which people are turning to digital platforms as substitutes for human connection, you know, so social media, you know, has become a replacement for social connection. Even, you know, sexual intimacy, whether in the form of pornography or artificial girlfriends or boyfriends, you know, are becoming a replacement for the real thing. So you you really are seeing examples of technology coming to substitute for what you are calling connective labor.

是的。许多早期采用者似乎急于拥抱技术替代品，这令我担忧。但研究发现，还有同样棘手的问题：富人将获得人工匠造的连接性劳动，而穷人只能得到机器人服务。当人们说'有总比没有好'时，这种不平等就已显现。

Yeah. People it does feel like many early adopters are just running to embrace a technological replacement, and I worry about that. But, while doing my research, I actually think there's other things to worry about that are equally problematic. One is the idea that, rich people will get artisanal connective labor from a human being and poor people will be the ones getting theirs from a bot. And I and I think that's certainly implicated when people say, oh, it's better than nothing.

我会反问：你自己会这样选择吗？如果答案是否定的，那就不是'有总比没有好'，而是我们社会不应接受的方案。这是我看到的正在发生的未来之一。另一个问题是这种分流模式——简单交易和互动都被自动化了。

And I'm like, well, would you choose it for yourself? So if the answer is no, then it's not better than nothing. It's not something we should subscribe to as a society. So that's one one future that I see that is practically a present. And then the other thing is, this kind of triage model where the simple transactions, the simple interactions become automated.

客服中心就是现成例子：当你终于接通人工服务时，往往已在电话里反复喊'转人工'许久。复杂问题才转给人类处理。医生们也向我透露，他们认为医疗领域可能出现类似情况——有人对此持开放态度，也有人预见到这种趋势。

And we already see that with, like, call centers and stuff like that. When you finally get a human, it's after you've been shouting agent or whatever at your phone for some time. Like, the complex goes bumped gets bumped to a human being. And doctors talk to me about how they think that that's a potential. Like, they they some of them were open to that, and some of them just saw that coming.

当我第二次采访艾莉森时，请她分享了一些营造情感连接的具体方法。

When I spoke with Alison a second time, I asked her to share some of the methods she uses to try to provide a feeling of emotional connection.

我会调低自身问题的'音量'，全神贯注倾听对方。比如那位骑马摔断腿的女士说'失去了纯真'，我试图重构她的叙述——她讲述的故事背后藏着情感讯息，我的任务是将这种情感转化为语言。所以既要倾听事实本身，更要感知她对事实的情绪反应。

Yeah. I try and shut my own, like like, turn down the volume on my own issues or whatever and really just, try and hear what they're saying. I'm trying to think about, like, what was it that let me say that's like a loss of innocence to that woman who, broke her leg in horseback riding? And for me, that was like trying to rephrase the statement that you know, the story that she was trying to she was telling me a story, but under the story, there was an emotional message, and I was trying to put that emotional message into words. So I am deeply listening to the the kind of facts of the case, but I'm also kind of trying to hear how she feels about the facts of the case.

然后尝试重新表述，或用意象和隐喻来捕捉那种感受。就是这样。

And then I'm trying to rephrase it or maybe even find an image or a metaphor that captures it or something like that. Yeah.

我是说，力量就藏在那里，不是吗？因为有时候，我们自己甚至意识不到那些潜藏的情感层面。当有人认真倾听我们并指出：‘看，你话语中流淌着这条暗河’时，我们就会突然顿悟：天哪，原来如此。

I mean and that is where the power lies, isn't it? Because sometimes, in fact, we ourselves are not aware of that subterranean emotional layer. And when someone comes along and listens to us carefully and says, look. Here's this underground river that's flowing through what you're saying, we suddenly have this moment of epiphany of saying, oh my god. Of course.

这正是我想表达的。

That is what I'm saying.

没错。那种顿悟就像减压阀，能让人感受到并传递出释然。这是为无名之物命名的力量——无论是对你自己还是他人而言的无名，因为你可能觉得不够安全。通过命名，你其实在对他人说：在我面前可以安全地说出来。

Exactly. And that epiphany, it's like a release valve. It has this relief, that people feel and convey. It's the power of naming what is unnamed, and that can be unnamed to you or unnamed to other people because you don't feel like it's safe. Like, by naming it, you're saying to the other person, it's safe to say this in front of me.

所以有时顿悟是‘我居然没意识到’，有时则是‘啊，我可以大声说出来’。这两种顿悟都极具冲击力。

So sometimes there's an epiphany like, I didn't even realize. And sometimes there's an epiphany like, oh, I can say this out loud. And both of those are very strong or have have strong effects.

约翰霍普金斯大学的社会学家艾莉森·皮尤研究人际互动关系，她是《最后的人类工作：断联时代的连接艺术》的作者。艾莉森，非常感谢你再次做客《隐藏大脑》。

Sociologist Alison Pugh at Johns Hopkins University studies how we relate to each other. She is the author of The Last Human Job, The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World. Alison, thank you so much for joining me again on Hidden Brain.

谢谢，很荣幸能参与。

Thank you. I really appreciate the time.

《隐藏大脑》由Hidden Brain Media制作。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。塔拉·博伊尔是我们的执行制片人，我是《隐藏大脑》的执行主编。今天要感谢的是我在达拉斯巡演时遇到的一群超级听众。

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Quarrell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Our unsung heroes today are a group of Hidden Brain superfans I met while on tour in Dallas.

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You can try Hidden Brain Plus with a free seven day trial at support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, go to apple.co/hiddenbrain. Those sites again are support.hiddenbrain.org and apple.co/hiddenbrain. I'm Shankar Vedantham. See you soon.