彻底善意

这里是《隐藏的大脑》。我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。2017年4月，一名女子在布朗克斯区匆忙赶在地铁门关闭前下车。纽约人每天都会上演这样的惊险逃脱，但这位乘客没那么幸运。地铁门将她卡住，半身在内，半身在外。

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. In April 2017, a woman hurried to step off a subway train in the Bronx just as the doors were closing. New Yorkers pull off such near escapes every day, But this passenger was not so lucky. The subway doors pinned her in place, half in, half out of the car.

接下来发生的事令人深感不安。并非地铁开始行驶——由于一扇门未完全关闭，列车本不会离站。真正令人震惊的是现场手机视频中显示的景象：人们从被困者身边漠然走过。

What happened next was deeply unnerving. It wasn't that the subway train started moving. With one of its doors partially open, the train was not going to leave the station. No, the shocking thing visible in a cell phone video recorded at the scene was the sight of people walking past the trapped

这位女士下车时被门夹住。路过的人似乎都没注意到或在意。

woman was walking off the train when the doors closed on her. No one walking by seems to notice or care.

非但无人相助，还有目击者拍下视频。视频疯传后，舆论哗然。

Instead of helping, one witness recorded it. Once the video went viral, horrified reactions poured in.

比如，怎么会有人视而不见？人们只顾着自己。他们只想做自己的事。就像在说，我没时间，懂吗？

Like, how could someone just pass by there? People just caught in their own head. They wanna do their own thing. Like, you know, I don't have time. You know?

这反映了纽约人怎样的特质？

What does that say about New Yorkers?

换作我肯定会拼命挣扎吓坏了。

I would be flailing and freaking out.

最终地铁员工打开车门释放了女子。但目睹她孤立无援处境的人们心中萦绕着一个问题：当有人明显需要帮助时，目击者却漠然走过。这就是人性的本质吗？冷酷无情？

In time, a subway employee got the doors open, released the woman, and allowed her to go on her way. But for those who saw evidence of her lonely plight, a question lingered. A person is suffering, clearly in need of help and those who see her simply walk by. Is this what we can expect from human nature? Callous indifference and heartlessness?

还是另有隐情？本期《隐藏的大脑》探讨利他主义科学：为何有人能展现非凡的无私精神，我们如何向他们学习。无论我们是谁，无论身体多么强壮，资源多么丰富，每个人终有需要他人援手之时。危急时刻，会有人伸出援手吗？

Or is there more to the story? Week on Hidden Brain, the science of altruism. Why some human beings perform acts of extraordinary selflessness and how the rest of us can learn to be more like them. No matter who we are, no matter how physically strong we may be, and no matter how many resources we have, all of us will need the help of others at some point. In the hour of crisis, will someone extend a hand?

阿比盖尔·马什是乔治城大学的心理学家兼神经科学家。她长期研究人们互助与冷漠的原因。阿比·马什，欢迎来到《隐藏的大脑》。

Abigail Marsh is a psychologist and neuroscientist at Georgetown University. She has long been interested in why people help one another and also why they don't. Abby Marsh, welcome to Hidden Brain.

谢谢邀请我。

Thank you for having me.

艾比，三十年前你还是个大学生。你在西雅图见完朋友后，正沿着5号州际公路开往塔科马。那时大约是午夜。据我所知，那是一条极其繁忙的高速公路。

Abby, thirty years ago, you were a college student. You were driving on Interstate 5 to Tacoma after meeting a friend in Seattle. It was around midnight. I understand this was an extremely busy freeway.

是的。那是一条车流量大得惊人的高速公路。我当时正从西雅图沿5号州际公路南行进入塔科马，公路在一个立交桥上爬升。那里完全没有路肩。但不知怎么的，那晚有只狗跑上了高速公路，它横穿马路时正好从我车前窜过。

Yes. It's it's a incredibly busy freeway, very heavily trafficked. I was coming into Tacoma on I 5 South from Seattle when the freeway rises up over an overpass. And so there are no shoulders whatsoever. And yet somehow, a dog had made it onto the freeway that night, and it ran across the freeway right in front of my car.

我做了现在才知道绝不该做的事——急打方向盘试图避开它。不幸的是，我还是撞上了。撞击加上急转导致我的车在多个车道间甩尾打滑。没撞上其他车真是奇迹。当我拼命想重新控制车辆时，车开始像甜甜圈般不断旋转，最终在快车道上停了下来，车头逆向对着迎面而来的车流，就停在立交桥顶坡之后。

And I did what I now know you should never do, which is I swerved to try to avoid it. And, unfortunately, I hit it anyways. And the combination of hitting the dog and swerving sharply sent my car into a series of fishtails across several lanes of freeway. It's a miracle I didn't hit anybody. And then it ended up, as I tried to wrestle back control of the car, spinning in these huge donuts around and around until finally it came to a rest in the fast lane of the freeway facing backward into the oncoming traffic just past the crest of the overpass.

所以你的车现在逆向停在快车道上？

So your car is now sitting on the highway facing in the wrong direction in the fast lane?

在快车道上。由于连续打转，引擎熄火了。因为是没有任何尽头的立交桥，所以根本没有路肩。我既没法把车开到别处，也不能跳车逃跑。只能困在快车道上，其他车辆勉强及时转向避开我——他们刚驶过立交桥顶坡才突然看到我。

In the fast lane. And the engine had died, as a result of all of this spinning around. And there's no shoulder because it's an overpass that didn't have any end. So there was nowhere I could drive the car to or that I could jump out of the car and run to. I was just stuck in this fast lane of, the freeway with cars barely swerving in time to avoid me because they just, you know, just caught sight of me as they were coming across the crest of the overpass.

每次那些大车或半挂车最后一刻急转避让时，我的车都会震动。我知道被撞只是时间问题。

And so my car would shake every time these big cars and semis would swerve around it at the last minute. And I knew I just knew it was a matter of time until one of them was going to hit me.

这太可怕了，艾比。你既无法挪车，又不能弃车逃生。车子无法启动。你肯定觉得那是生命最后时刻了。

Well, this is absolutely terrifying, Abby. And you had no way of moving the car. You had no way of getting out of the car. The car wouldn't start. You must have thought these were your last moments.

确实。那是我人生中最恐惧的时刻。我记得反复尝试重新发动车子，却始终不明白为什么引擎就是点不着。我记得打开了远光灯。

I did. I did. It was the the most terrified I've ever been in my life. And I remember trying over and over to turn the car back on, and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get the engine to reengage. I remember turning on the brights.

我打开双闪试图警示他人，但当时没有手机——毕竟是九十年代。我完全无计可施，心想迟早会被撞上，不是重伤就是丧命。

I turned on the flashers just to try to alert people to my presence, but I didn't have a phone, because it was the nineties. And so there was absolutely nothing else I could do. And I thought that eventually I was going to get hit, and I would either get very badly hurt or killed.

就在这一切发生时，车辆以极快的速度从你身边驶过，在最后一秒急转避开你。此刻你车的另一侧，即乘客座那边发生了些状况。告诉我发生了什么。

So while this is happening, cars are coming by you at great velocity and swerving and missing you at the very last second. Something happens now on the other side of your car, on the passenger side. Tell me what happens.

没错。那是我人生中最震惊的时刻之一。那是个夏夜，车窗都摇了下来。在混乱中，我突然听到有人敲击乘客座车窗，这让我非常惊讶——由于我的朝向，车窗正对着快车道边缘那条极其狭窄的凸起带。我转头看见车外站着个男人，据我回忆，他穿着西装，戴着剃光头、挂着金链子，脖子上还有金饰，甚至半夜还戴着墨镜。

Yeah. One of the great shocks of my life. So it was a summer night, and the windows were rolled down. And I was very surprised in the middle of all this to hear a knock on the passenger side window, which because of which way I was facing, was on the very narrow sort of tiny ridge on the edge of the fast lane. And I turned to see a man standing outside the car wearing, as best as I can recollect, a suit, And he had a shaved hat and chains around his neck, gold jewelry, and sunglasses, even though it was the middle of the night.

艾比当时有太多需要担心的，但最先闪过她脑海的是这个陌生人的意图。他问她是否需要帮助。

Abby had a lot to be worried about in that moment. But the first thought that leaped to her mind was about the stranger's intentions. He asked if she needed help.

我记得当时脑子里闪过个愚蠢念头：哦不，天啊。你知道的，这是个陌生人，妈妈说过不能让陌生人上她的车。而他说'你看上去需要帮助'——这话说得实在太轻描淡写了。

And I remember the the silly thought flashing through my head of, like, oh, no. Oh, no. You know, this is a stranger. I'm not supposed to let strangers into my mom's car. And he said, you look like you could use some help, which was quite an understatement.

当然，我回答：是的，我需要。

And, of course, I said, yeah. I do.

他说了什么？他建议你怎么做？

What did he say? What did he advise you to do?

于是他说：好的，介意我坐到驾驶座吗？我说没问题。我挪过中控台爬到副驾驶时，他正等待车流间隙——这花了一分钟，因为在我们对话时，车辆仍在不断呼啸而过。

So then he said, okay. Do you mind if I get into the driver's seat? So I said, okay. That's fine. And I scooched myself over the central console into the passenger seat while he waited for a break in the traffic, which took a minute because, of course, they all while we're, you know, talking to each other, the the cars are still continuing to blow by.

他等到间隙后，飞速绕到车另一侧，打开驾驶门跳了进来。现在他把自己置于巨大危险中——如果被撞我们都会没命。他发现车还挂在D挡（所以我无法重新启动），换到P挡后重新点火，又等待车流间隙，接着猛踩油门带我们急速穿过高速路，甩进另一侧的匝道——确切说是匝道旁停着他车辆的斑马线区域。我们终于停下，此刻基本安全了。

So he waited for a break, ran around the car at top speed, opened the driver's door, and hopped in the driver's seat. So now he's put himself in great danger because now we're both gonna get killed if we get hit. He figured out the car was still in drive, which is why I couldn't get it to turn back on, put it in park, turned it back on, waited again for a break in all the cars blowing by us, And then he gunned it real fast and arced us across the freeway into the off ramp on the other side or the sort of stripy section by the off ramp where his car was parked. And there we came to a stop. And we were more or less safe at that point.

我至今记得他看向我时声音的质感。我当时面色惨白，浑身冷汗发抖，难受极了。他问：你还好吗？

And, again, I remember the sound of his voice as he looked at me. I'm gray. I'm sure and sweaty and shaking. I felt awful. And he said, are you gonna be okay?

需要我护送你回家吗？我说：不用，不用。我会没事的。我能行。

Do you need me to follow you home? And I said, no. No. I'm gonna be okay. I'll be okay.

你知道，我当时脑子不太清醒。他只说了句'好吧，照顾好自己'就下车回到自己车里，消失在夜色中。那是我最后一次见到他。

You know, I wasn't thinking quite straight in the moment. And he said, okay. You take care of yourself. And out of the car he got and went back to his own car and drove off into the night. And that is the last I ever saw of him.

艾比，你当时有向他道谢吗？

Did you even get to thank him, Abby?

这件事至今让我耿耿于怀——我好像没道谢，也不知道他的名字。永远都没机会感谢他了。

It is one of the things that eats at me to this day that I I don't think I said thank you, and I didn't get his name. So I'll never be able to thank him.

艾比，我很好奇，你后来弄清楚他是怎么出现在你副驾驶窗边的吗？

So I'm wondering, Abby, did you ever figure out how he came to be standing by the passenger side window of your car? How did he get there?

问得好。我是后来才想明白的。他应该是那些驶过高速公路坡顶、看见我抛锚车辆的司机之一，在瞬间决定驶入匝道区，然后半夜横穿六车道来救我。

It's a great question. I only figured it out later. And what I realized is that he must have been among all of those cars that came across the crest of the freeway and saw my stranded car there. He was the one that decided in the fraction of a second he had to make a decision to pull over into the off ramp area and then run across six lanes of freeway traffic in the middle of the night to get to my car.

所以他先驶离高速，冒险横穿马路来到你这边，让你挪到副驾，又冒死进入车流坐上驾驶座，想办法发动车辆，再次等待车流间隙把车开到安全地带——那晚他为你冒了三次生命危险。

So he pulls off the freeway, gets out of his car, runs across the freeway middle of the night, comes to your side, gets you to move over to the passenger side, risks his life again getting into traffic to get into the driver's seat, finds a way to turn on the car, again waits for a break in the traffic, risks his own life to pull the car around to safety. I mean, he risked his life three times that night for you.

确实如此。

He did. He did indeed.

艾比，这件事之后几周里你的感受是怎样的？

I'm wondering how this left you feeling in the days and weeks that followed, Abby.

当时我惊魂未定，第二天早上我妈都看出我遭遇了可怕的事。我可能有点创伤后应激，作为爱狗人士，撞死狗的阴影困扰了我很久。但更让我震惊的是自己与死亡擦肩而过的体验。

Well, in the immediate aftermath, I was so shaken up that my mom could tell when I woke up the next morning something terrible had happened. I I I was in a little bit of shock, I think. Dog lover that I am, I was horrified that I had killed a dog. That really ate at me for a long time. But more than that, I was in real shock over how close I had come to dying.

那是我离死亡最近的时刻。虽然这种冲击感随时间淡去，但有个念头始终萦绕着我：这个素未谋面的陌生人，为何会在根本不知道我是谁的情况下，多次冒着生命危险做出救我的决定？

Closer than I have ever come before since. And that dissipated over time, as it does. What didn't dissipate is this worm in my brain that I sort of felt at the idea that the reason I had died or been terribly injured was because of the decisions of this man and struggling to understand what caused him to make the choice that he did, to endanger his life multiple times so seriously, to help a person he'd never met and whose identity he could not possibly have known when he made the choice to help me.

艾比，如果角色互换，你能想象为别人这样做吗？

Could you have imagined doing this for someone else if the tables had been turned, Abby?

这个问题很难回答。我从未完全置身于那种处境，但也从未为帮助陌生人做过如此危险的事。当然没有。我认为这是非常罕见的抉择，而我从未面临过。

That's a hard question to answer. I have never been put in exactly that situation, but I've never done anything so dangerous to help a stranger. Certainly not. No. I think it's a very, very rare decision to make, and I have never made it.

当时你还在上大学。我想知道这段经历是否改变了你的学业轨迹，以及你原本打算攻读的专业方向。

So you're still in college at this time. I'm wondering whether the experience changed the course of your college career and what you thought you wanted to study.

回想起来确实如此。我早已修过心理学课程，并痴迷于人类认知与行为可被科学研究的理念。但之后很快，我开始思考人们为何帮助他人的心理机制——究竟为何有人会甘冒生命危险救助陌生人。很快，我的研究就转向了这个特定领域。

In retrospect, absolutely. I had already taken a course in psychology and had fallen in love with the idea that there is a science of human cognition and behavior. But what very quickly happened after that is I started thinking about the psychology of why people help other people, why on earth somebody would make the decision to risk their own life to help another person. And very quickly, my research took a turn toward that specific topic.

我们常认为人性本质自私，人人皆为自己谋利。那么如何解释有些人甘愿付出巨大代价帮助他人，却不求任何认可或回报？稍后节目将探讨无私心理。您正在收听《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。

We often assume that people are fundamentally self interested, that everyone is out for themselves. How then to explain the fact that some people help others at great cost to themselves without any expectation of recognition or reward. When we come back, the psychology of selflessness. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

这里是《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。在乔治城大学，心理学家阿比盖尔·马什研究某些人为何会表现出非凡的无私善举。她的兴趣源于人生中一个戏剧性时刻——当她的车在繁忙高速路上失控时，一位陌生人拯救了她。艾比始终不知恩人姓名，但后来意识到对方曾多次冒着生命危险救她。

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. At Georgetown University, psychologist Abigail Marsh studies why some people are given to great acts of selfless generosity. Her interest was spurred by a dramatic moment in her own life when a stranger rescued her after her car spun out of control on a busy freeway. Abby never learned the stranger's name, but she realized afterwards that he had risked his life multiple times in order to save hers.

艾比，在遇见这位非凡的利他主义者后，你成为心理学家并开始广泛研究利他行为。这包括那些英勇救援者，也包括你特意研究的特殊人群。他们是？

Abby, after your encounter with this extraordinary altruist, you became a psychologist, and you became interested in altruism writ large. Now that includes people who engage in these kinds of heroic rescues, but also a very select group of people whom you sought out to study. Who are these people?

我选择研究的第一类人是利他性肾脏捐赠者（或称非定向肾脏捐赠者），他们向陌生匿名者捐献肾脏，清楚可能永远无法相见或知晓捐赠结果。选择研究这部分人，部分因为美国当时刚允许向陌生人捐肾，案例极其罕见。幸运的是，存在这类捐赠者的数据库，使我得以联系招募研究对象。

The first group of people that I chose to study to try to understand real world extraordinary altruism was altruistic kidney donors, or as they're sometimes called, nondirected kidney donors who give a kidney to an anonymous stranger knowing they may never meet them, or know anything about what happened to them at the time of the donation. And I chose altruistic kidney donors to study in part because it had only very recently become even permissible in The United States to donate a kidney to a stranger. And at the time, it was very, very rare. And luckily, there are databases databases of people who have donated kidneys to strangers. So I was able to reach out to start recruiting participants that way.

当你开始接触这些捐赠者时，他们共有的特质令你印象深刻。其一是他们愿意协助研究的热情。

When you began identifying and working with these donors, you were struck by the characteristics they seemed to share. One was their willingness to help you with the research.

确实令人惊叹。研究罕见人群时（我在其他领域也做过），有时需耗费数年才能招募到足够样本。但当我开始招募利他性肾脏捐赠者时，首封征集邮件刚在会议前发出，就立刻收到大量响应，这让我非常震惊。

Yes. It was incredible. When you're studying a rare group of people, which I have done in other contexts, it sometimes can take a long time, years to recruit enough people to fill even a small study. And I was shocked when I started recruiting altruistic kidney donors that the very first missive I sent out asking for altruistic kidney donors to please reach out if they would like to participate in research. Had sent right before leaving for a conference.

我记得到达会议现场后，坐在酒店的咖啡厅里，打开笔记本电脑查看邮件时，看到如潮水般涌来的邮件——都是那些曾向陌生人捐献肾脏的人发来的，他们以你能想象到的最愉快、最乐于助人的方式主动提出要参与研究。

And I remember getting to the conference, sitting down in the coffee shop of the hotel, I think, opening my laptop to check my email, and seeing an absolute flood of emails from people who had donated kidneys to strangers, offering to participate in research, in the most cheerful and, just helpful way you could possibly imagine.

一位来自中西部的年轻男子告诉你，他有兴趣参与，但需要几个月时间攒钱买机票才能来参加你的研究。

One, young man from the Midwest told you that he was interested in taking part but would need a few months to save up for a plane ticket in order to come and be part of your study.

确实如此。我简直不敢相信。我当即表示：不，不行。

He did. He did. I I I couldn't believe it. I said, no. No.

不，当然不用。我们会承担费用。你不需要自费参与我们的研究。

No. No. Of course. We will pay. You don't have to pay to take part in our research.

我们会为你支付所有开销。这太令人感动了。

We will cover everything for you. It was incredible.

但这实际上不仅表明了他参与研究的意愿，更体现了他愿意为此做出更多牺牲的决心。

But but really what it indicated was not just his willingness to take part in this, but his willingness, in fact, to make further sacrifices to take part in the study.

完全正确。参与研究本身就是一种利他行为，因为我们支付的补偿很少。这是有意为之——我们不想通过高额报酬强迫人们做违背意愿的事。心理学研究的设计初衷就是要激发参与者的一点利他精神。

Absolutely. And taking part in research is an altruistic thing to do because we don't compensate very much. Unfortunately, we can't, and that's also by design. We don't wanna be coercive and pay so much money that people will do it just for the money even if it's something they don't wanna do. And so by design, psychology research is set up to be acquire a little bit of altruism.

当我开始招募这些利他主义者时，才真正认识到利他精神在其中扮演的重要角色。

And I discovered just how much altruism plays a part when I started recruiting people who are altruistic.

那么当你把这些志愿者请进实验室开始研究后，发现你称之为'极端利他主义者'的群体对他人恐惧情绪异常敏感。艾比，请谈谈这项研究。

So once you got these volunteers into your lab and started to study them, you found that extreme altruists, as you came to call them, display a very high sensitivity to when other people might be frightened. Tell me about this research, Abby.

这项研究的雏形源于我早先对'关怀连续体'另一端人群的研究。人们在关心他人福祉的能力上差异显著——连续体低端是那些具有精神病态特征的人，他们性格冷酷且经常表现出反社会行为。十余年研究证实，这类人通常对他人的痛苦迟钝，难以识别他人 distress 信号。

The germ of this research was research I'd conducted previously in people who were at the opposite end of what I call the caring continuum. So people vary quite a bit in their capacity to care about other people's welfare. And, at the low end of this continuum are people who are psychopathic, so people who have, callous personalities and engage in frequent antisocial behavior. And what we've known from over a decade of research with people who are psychopathic is that they tend to be insensitive to other people's distress. They have trouble recognizing it.

因此，如果他们看到一张恐惧的面孔，可能甚至不知道这种表情叫什么。我的一位在英国的朋友埃西·比廷曾在一所监狱里测试一名精神病患者识别情绪面部表情的能力。这个人未能识别出她展示给他的每一个恐惧表情。他自己也知道表现很差，即使对精神病患者来说这也是相当糟糕的表现。因为当他看到最后一个恐惧表情时，他说，我不知道这种表情叫什么，但我知道这就是人们在被刺之前的样子。

So if they see the face of somebody who's afraid, they might not even know what the expression is called. A friend of mine, Essie Beating, in The United Kingdom was testing a psychopathic person in a jail once for about their ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. And this man failed to recognize every single fearful facial expression that she showed him. And he knew he was doing badly, and that is a pretty bad performance even for somebody who's psychopathic. Because when he got to the very last fearful expression, he said, you know, I don't know what that expression is called, but I know that's what people look like right before you stab them.

这揭示了一种对他人痛苦的真实情感盲视，这可能帮助我们理解为什么精神病患者对他人的痛苦如此冷漠。他们甚至不太懂得如何很好地解读这种痛苦。这种现象的根源部分在于大脑中一个叫做杏仁核的结构存在缺陷。杏仁核是一个复杂的大脑结构，它负责许多不同的功能，但对许多功能来说并非必不可少。

And this reveals a real sort of emotional blindness to other people's distress, which may help us understand why people who are psychopathic are so callous in response to other people's distress. They don't even really know how to interpret it very well. And the origin of that is partly deficits in a brain structure called the amygdala. And the amygdala is a complicated brain structure. It does a lot of different things, but it's not essential for doing that many things.

其中一个似乎非常重要的功能是，代表他人的恐惧。即生成这种状态的内在表征，帮助你识别他人的恐惧。我们在研究利他主义者的初期假设，如果非常冷漠的人对他人的痛苦异常不敏感，并且这种现象的根源在于杏仁核的缺陷——既包括对他人痛苦反应时激活程度降低，也包括其体积较小。精神病患者的杏仁核平均来说异常小。也许异常关心他人和高度利他的人会表现出完全相反的特征。

One of the things that seems to be really important for doing is, representing fear in other people. So generating an internal representation of that state that helps you then recognize it in others. And what we hypothesized at the beginning of our research with altruistic people is that if very uncaring people seem to be unusually insensitive to other people's distress, and that is underpinned by deficits in a structure called the amygdala, both in its reduced activation in response to other people's distress and its lower volume. So people who are psychopathic have amygdala that are unusually small on average. Maybe people who are unusually caring and highly altruistic will look exactly the opposite.

他们会对他人的痛苦敏感，更好地识别它，我们会看到杏仁核对这种痛苦的反应增强，也许杏仁核的体积也会更大。这些就是我们的初始假设。

They'll be sensitive to other people's distress, better recognizing it, and we would see increased amygdala activation in response to that distress and maybe larger amygdalas as well. So those were our hypotheses setting out.

你们发现的结果是这样吗？

Is that what you found?

这正是我们的发现。在我们最初的研究中，测试的利他主义者与精神病患者的表现完全相反。他们相对更擅长识别他人的恐惧，但在识别其他表情方面并不更优秀。我们还测试了他们识别愤怒的能力，结果他们并没有更擅长识别愤怒，实际上稍微差一些。

That was exactly what we found. The the altruistic people that we tested on our very first study looked the opposite of people who were psychopathic. They were relatively better at recognizing other people's fear, and they were not better at recognizing other expressions. So we also tested how well they recognized anger, and they didn't recognize anger better. In fact, they recognized it a little worse.

但他们对他人的痛苦特别敏感。在我们的脑部扫描研究中，他们的杏仁核对他人恐惧图像的反应更强烈，而对愤怒图像则没有这种反应。最后，他们的杏仁核平均比我们测试的非利他主义肾脏捐赠者的对照组成年人大约8%。

But they were very specifically sensitive to other people's distress. And we also found that in our brain scanning studies, their amygdala showed more activation in response to images of other people's fear, whereas, again, it did not show that response to other people's anger. And finally, their amygdalas were on average about 8% larger than in a comparable group of adults that we also tested who were not altruistic kidney donors.

所以你发现的非凡利他主义者的另一个特征是，他们表现出心理学家称为社会折扣的倾向显著降低。艾比，什么是社会折扣？社会折扣反映了你如何根据他人与你的社会距离来评估他们的结果。

So another characteristic of extraordinary altruists that you identified was a dramatically reduced tendency to engage in what psychologists call social discounting. What is social discounting, Abby? So social discounting reflects how you value other people's outcomes as a

基本上，你愿意牺牲多少来帮助另一个人？在标准的社会折扣任务中，大多数人非常愿意为了亲近的人牺牲，但随着社会距离的增加，他们的牺牲意愿急剧下降，呈双曲线式减少。

function of their social distance from you. Basically, how much are you willing to sacrifice to benefit another person? And, most people in standard social discounting tasks are very willing to sacrifice to benefit people close to them, but their willingness to sacrifice drops dramatically, hyperbolically, as people become more socially distant.

换句话说，如果我有100美元，与伴侣、父母或孩子分享非常容易做到。但与一个完全不认识的人分享，我几乎不可能这样做。

So in other words, if I have, you know, a $100 sharing it with a partner or a parent or a child, very easy to do. Sharing it with someone whom I don't know at all, very unlikely I'm gonna do it at all.

确实如此。在多次测试和跨国研究中，我们发现人们分享资源、做出牺牲以帮助不认识或几乎不认识的人的意愿非常有限。

Exactly. And across testing sessions and countries, we see that people have a very limited desire to share resources, to sacrifice, to benefit people that they don't know or barely know.

那么你在那些非凡的利他主义者身上发现了什么？

And what did you find with the extraordinary altruists?

当我们测试利他性肾脏捐赠者在社会贴现任务中的表现时，发现了一条前所未有的曲线——这条曲线几乎不随社交距离的增加而下降。那些向陌生人捐肾的人，愿意为帮助陌生人做出的牺牲程度，相当于普通人为帮助介于疏远朋友和熟人之间关系的人所愿意做出的牺牲，尽管他们完全不认识那个人。显然，那个人的福祉对他们而言具有内在价值。

When we tested the altruistic kidney donors in the social discounting task, we found a curve unlike any that's ever been found in any social discounting task, which was a curve that dropped almost not at all across social distances. So people who donate kidneys to strangers, are willing to sacrifice as much to help a stranger as most people are willing to sacrifice to help somewhere between a distant friend and an acquaintance, even though they don't know that person at all. That person's welfare clearly intrinsically matters to them.

也就是说，他们心中认为与自己有联系的人群范围似乎要大得多。

So in other words, it's almost as if the circle of who they thought as being connected to them was just much, much larger.

完全正确。他们的关怀半径要广阔得多。他们将素未谋面之人的命运视为具有内在价值的事物，认为值得关心并为之牺牲。

Exactly. They have a much wider circle of caring. They view the outcomes of people they've never met before as intrinsically valuable, as something that it's worth caring about and worth sacrificing for.

你遇到一位名叫哈罗德·明斯的肾脏捐赠者，他的态度完美诠释了这种社会贴现减弱的现象。艾比，讲讲他的故事吧。

You met one kidney donor named Harold Minns whose attitude exemplifies this phenomenon of reduced social discounting. Tell me his story, Abby.

哈罗德是全国首批利他性肾脏捐赠者之一，也是华盛顿特区的首位。他实际上是把肾脏捐给了我工作的乔治城大学。哈罗德是自主萌生向陌生人捐肾这个想法的，他此前从未认识任何这样做的人，但他知道可以向陌生人捐赠骨髓，也知道可以向认识的人捐肾。于是他想——

So Harold was one of the first altruistic kidney donors in the country, and he was the first in Washington DC. He actually donated to Georgetown where I work. And Harold came up with the idea to donate a kidney to a stranger on his own. He had never known anybody who'd done it before, but he knew you could donate bone marrow to strangers, and he knew you could donate kidneys to people you know. And so he thought, hey.

既然我能把肾捐给认识的人，而我又不认识需要肾的人，为什么不直接捐给有需要的人呢？于是他联系了几家移植机构，结果对方寄来一堆关于遗体捐赠的宣传册。他说这不是我想要的，我想现在就捐给急需肾脏的人。之后很长一段时间他都没收到回复。

If I could donate a kidney to somebody I know and I don't know anybody that needs a kidney, why don't I just donate to somebody that needs a kidney? And so he called around to several transplantation organizations, and they sent him a bunch of pamphlets for deceased donation. And he said, that's not what I want. I I wanna donate to somebody now, who needs my kidney. And, he didn't hear anything for a while.

后来特区终于启动了一个非定向利他肾移植试点项目。接受哈罗德肾脏的是一位在自己社交圈内找不到合适捐赠者的女性，经过检测后，当时她正因肾病濒临死亡。这种疾病非常可怕，靠透析维持生命被患者形容为'活着的死亡'。而哈罗德决定捐赠时根本不知道她是谁。

And then eventually, they ran a pilot program in DC to try nondirected altruistic kidney donation. The person that was chosen to receive Harold's kidney was, a woman who had no eligible donors in her own circle, and other people had been tested and was dying of kidney disease. It's it's an awful disease. Living on dialysis is is like a living death is how people describe it. And, Harold didn't know who she was when he decided to donate to her.

他接受手术摘除肾脏后，这颗肾立即被植入受赠者体内。移植外科医生称之为'拉撒路效应'——很少有疾病能通过一场手术就立竿见影：肾脏立即开始工作产生尿液，患者就像重获新生。就像延时摄影中一株得到浇灌的植物，他们恢复健康、生机与活力的速度令人惊叹。

He went into surgery, had a kidney removed. It was planted into his recipient. Transplant surgeons describe it as a Lazarus effect. When there are very few diseases like this that you can perform a surgery, the kidney starts working immediately, it starts producing urine right away, and the person is, like, brought back to life. You know, that a plant that has been watered in in a time lapse is how quickly they're restored to health and life and vigor.

那是一次巨大的成功。我相信这促成了我们现在能在更广泛范围内开展此类项目。而哈罗德与受赠者们至今仍保持着非常深厚的友谊。

And it was a tremendous success. I'm sure it contributed to the fact that we now have programs like this on a wider scale. And Harold and his recipients remain very good friends to this day.

哈罗德和你交谈过的其他捐赠者令人印象深刻的一点是，这些捐赠者往往不认为他们的利他行为需要解释。当你问他们为何如此利他时，他们的反问是：为什么不是每个人都这么利他？

So one of the things that's striking about Harold and some of the other donors that you spoke with is that these donors often don't feel like their altruism requires an explanation. When you ask them, you know, why are you so altruistic? Their question is, why isn't everyone so altruistic?

是的。关于利他性肾脏捐赠者最重要的事实是：尽管许多自己不会考虑捐肾的人觉得向陌生人捐肾需要理由，但真正的捐赠者感受完全相反。他们认为如果你有两个肾且靠一个也能活得很好（事实如此），而另个人没有你的肾就会死亡时，选择捐赠是理所当然的决定。这对他们如此直觉且清晰，以至于难以理解为何有人不做这个选择。

Yes. That's one of the most important things to know about altruistic kidney donors is that although many people who themselves would not consider donating a kidney find the choice to donate a kidney to a stranger in need of explanation, actual donors feel exactly the opposite. They think if you have two kidneys and you could survive just fine with one, which is true, that if another person is gonna die unless they get your kidney, the choice to donate to them is the obvious choice. It feels to them so intuitive and so clear that they have trouble understanding why anybody wouldn't make that decision.

这些利他者的另一个显著特征是他们惊人的谦逊感。艾比，你能谈谈这个观点吗？

Another distinguishing characteristic of these altruists was their striking sense of humility. Can you talk about this idea, Abby?

是的。刚开始研究利他性肾脏捐赠者时，这个发现让我非常惊讶。我原以为他们对捐赠决定的谦逊态度可能只是某种古怪的小特质。但现在我相信这是帮助他人决策的内在特征。与我合作过的多数捐赠者，包括哈罗德，都表示乐意参与我的研究。

Yes. It was something I was really surprised to discover when I started working with altruistic kidney donors. And I thought maybe how humble they were about their choice to donate was sort of a, you know, just a quirky little bug. But I now believe it's it's an intrinsic feature of the decision to help other people. Many donors I've worked with, I would say most donors, including Harold, have told me that they're happy to take part in my research.

他们很高兴我在做这项研究，但很确定我不会发现他们与其他成年人有何不同——因为他们或任何想捐肾的人都没什么特别。这只是获得正确信息、恰好在正确时间出现在正确地点的结果，是任何人都能做到的事。许多利他者都向我保证他们并无特殊之处，这在我看来完全合理。

They're glad I'm doing it, but they're pretty sure I'm not gonna find any differences between them and other adults because there's nothing special about them or anybody else who wants to donate a kidney. It's just a function of having the right information, being in the right place at the right time. It's something anybody could do. And I've had many altruists reassure me that there's nothing special about them. And that to me makes perfect sense.

因为如果你真认为自己最特别，为何要与不如你特别的人分享？这说不通。最特别的人应该拥有所有肾脏。但如果你是如此谦逊、认为自己不比别人特别的人，那么说'我这个毫无特别之处的人为何要独占肾脏资源？分配给任何需要的人显然更合理'就完全讲得通了。

Because if you really do believe that you're the most special person, why would you wanna share with somebody less special? That doesn't make any sense. The most special person should have all the kidneys. But if you're such a humble person that you don't think you're any more special than anybody else, it does make complete sense that you would say, well, why should me, who's not in any way special, have all the kidney resources? It really makes much more sense to allocate them among anybody who happens to need one.

演员丹尼·特雷霍就是其中一位非常谦逊的利他者。为可能不熟悉他的听众介绍一下，他通常扮演什么角色？以及他如何引起你注意的？

One of these very humble altruists is the actor Danny Trejo. For listeners who might not be familiar with him, tell me what kind of roles he portrays and how he came to your attention.

我通过《非常小特务》认识丹尼·特雷霍，他在片中饰演反派——这也是他常演的角色，因为他沙哑的嗓音、棱角分明的面容和令人生畏的外形。

I'm familiar with Danny Trejo from his role in Spy Kids, where he plays a villain as he often does in the movies because he has this very gravelly sounding voice and a craggy face and looks very forbidding. And so he usually plays villains in the movies.

那么他是如何作为利他者引起你注意的呢？

And so how did he come to your attention as an actualist?

当时他因一件极其无私英勇的事迹登上新闻。那天他正在家附近跑腿办事，目睹了一场可怕的车祸——一辆轿车与他旁边的SUV相撞，引发连锁反应导致SUV翻覆。车内困着一名据信有特殊需求的男孩，还有他的母亲和祖母。特雷霍像这类情境中常见的那样立即行动，他闻到了从车辆残骸中渗出的汽油味。

Well, he was in the news for something very altruistic and heroic that he did. He was running errands, I think near his home one day when he witnessed a terrifying car crash when, a sedan next to his car collided with an SUV, and it resulted in this chain reaction that flipped this SUV upside down. And inside was trapped a little boy who, I believe, had special needs along with his mother and his grandma. And Trejo, as is often the case in these situations, reacted immediately. He, could smell gas trickling out of the wreckage of the cars.

但尽管如此，他仍爬进当时底朝天的SUV，设法将男孩救出车外，随后守在男孩身边帮助他保持镇定，同时等待救援人员将其余家人救出。

But despite that, he crawled into the SUV, which was upside down at that point, and figured out how to extract the boy from the car and then sat by him and helped keep him calm while emergency rescuers got the rest of his family out of the car.

据我了解，事后人们问他为何这样做时，他依然没有刻意突显自己，也不认为自己的行为有何特殊之处。

So I understand that when people ask him afterwards, you know, why he had done what he did, again, didn't draw particular attention to himself. He didn't single himself out as special.

确实如此。他的回应完美体现了众多利他主义者和英雄描述自身行为时的典型特征。他后来是这样说的：人们必须明白，上帝让我们降临世间就是为了互相帮助。我们生来就要服务他人，生来就要接纳彼此。

Absolutely. His quotation was perfectly characteristic of how so many altruists and heroes describe their own actions. What he said afterward was, people have to understand that god put us on this earth to help each other. We're here to serve. We're here to welcome.

我们生来就要传递爱。这就是我们的使命。今天能践行这一点，我只感谢上帝的恩准。这番话隐含的意思是：重点不在于我，我并不特别。

We're here to love. That's what we're supposed to be doing. I'm just thankful to God because he let me do that today. I think the implicit message was, it's not about me. I'm not special.

我只是做了我们每个人都应该做、且在类似情境下都能做到的事。

I was just doing what any of us should do and what any of us could do in a similar situation.

那么艾比，你的研究还发现这些利他主义者不仅认为陌生人值得他们施以援手，其思维模式也促使他们主动帮助陌生人。能谈谈这项研究吗？

So, Abhi, your research has also found that these altruists not only feel that strangers are as worthy of their help as loved ones, they also engage in mental processes that orient them toward taking action to help strangers. Can you talk about this research?

研究情绪的学者发现，人们对情感情境存在不同的评估方式，这些解读方式会改变当事人的行为倾向。当目睹他人陷入危难等痛苦情境时，若以某些方式解读——比如‘我可能无能为力’或‘会有别人帮忙’——虽能缓解自身负面情绪，却不会促使人采取行动。

Well, the researchers who study emotion know that there are different ways that you can appraise, emotional situations or interpret those situations that do change the way that you're likely to act in those situations. When you see a distressing situation, if somebody's in danger, for example, it's very upsetting. And sometimes people tend to interpret those situations in a way that reduces their own negative feelings but doesn't induce them to act. For example, there's probably nothing I can do. Somebody else will help, for example.

但同样存在充满希望的解读方式。例如‘我肯定能做些什么来缓解他的痛苦’，或是‘或许可以通过捐款帮助世界上类似处境的人’。我们通过对利他主义者与对照组的对比研究确实发现，持有更积极评估模式的人更倾向于帮助困境中的人。

But there are also hopeful ways that you could appraise situations like that. For example, I bet that there's something I can do to alleviate that person's distress. Maybe I could donate money in a way that would help people like this, elsewhere in the world. And, we did find in a study that we conducted of altruists and controls that having a more hopeful appraisal pattern was associated with being more likely to help people in need.

你可能已注意到艾比研究的极端利他主义者存在某种共性。无论是丹尼·特雷霍还是高速公路上救助艾比的那个人，他们做出利他决定时并非权衡利弊，而是快速、直觉性地，有时甚至是瞬间完成的。

You may have noticed a pattern in the extreme altruists that Abby has studied. Like Danny Trejo or the man who rescued Abby on the freeway, they don't arrive at the decision to be altruistic by thinking through all the pros and cons. They arrive at their decisions quickly, intuitively, sometimes instantaneously.

关于利他性肾脏捐赠者一个非常有趣的现象是，尽管他们有充足时间做决定，但这并非像英雄救援者那样需要瞬间决断。但他们确实表示，决定本身往往来得非常迅速且自发。当他们得知可以向陌生人捐肾，且等待名单上有数万美国人急需肾脏时，大多数人会立即萌生'我来做吧，我很乐意'的念头。

One of the really interesting things about altruistic kidney donors is even though they do have a lot of time to make their decision, it's not sort of a flash decision they have to make like a heroic rescuer. They do report that the decision itself was made very quickly and spontaneously. They discover that it's possible to donate a kidney to a stranger and that there's tens of thousands of Americans in need of a kidney on the waiting list. And they often think essentially immediately, I'll do it. I would love to do that.

所以你讲述了一个不假思索就采取行动的人——1982年的莱尼·斯库特尼克。艾比，能详细说说他的故事吗？

So you tell the story of a man who leaped into action without really thinking very much about it. His name was Lenny Skutnik, and this happened back in 1982. Can you tell me his story, Abby?

八十年代初，政府职员莱尼·斯库特尼克在华盛顿特区拼车返回弗吉尼亚途中，目睹从里根国家机场起飞的飞机坠入波托马克河。这场空难极其惨烈，导致桥上交通瘫痪。斯库特尼克下车查看时，发现许多奇迹生还的乘客正在冰河中逐渐冻僵或溺亡——当时正值严冬，飞机失事原因正是除冰故障。

Lenny Skutnik was a government worker who in the early eighties was carpooling home from his job in DC to Virginia. And while he was in the car, a plane taking off from Reagan National Airport crashed into the Potomac River. It was a really horrific plane crash. And, of course, all the traffic backed up on the bridge, and Skutnik ended up getting out and walking to the bridge and seeing all of these people who miraculously had survived the crash, but now were slowly freezing to death and or drowning in the icy river. It was the middle of winter, and the deicing problem had been why the plane had crashed.

由于交通堵塞，克鲁兹救援队迟迟未到。令人惊叹的是，斯库特尼克决定挺身而出。他脱掉鞋子和外套跳入冰河，冒着生命危险救起一位紧抓浮冰或残骸的妇女，并将其拖回岸边。

And, obviously, it took Cruz a long time to get to the scene of the crash in part because of all the backups. And Skutnik incredibly decided that he was going to help. And he walked down to the banks of the Potomac, and, I think he took off his shoes and his coat and leaped into the river and ended up rescuing, a woman who'd been clinging, I think, to a piece ice or a piece of wreckage in the river and bringing her to shore at enormous risk to his own life.

当你与这些非凡的利他者交谈时，发现他们从不用理性语言解释行为？他们不会进行成本效益分析，即便事后可能如此归因，但行动瞬间绝非如此，对吗？

And when you talk with these people, when you talk with these extraordinary altruists, you often find that they do not use the language of rationality to explain their actions. So they're not basically saying this is a cost benefit equation. Perhaps after the fact, they say, you know, this is a cost benefit equation. But in the moment, that's not how they're coming to their conclusions, is it?

完全不会。他们几乎都表示行动前根本未加思索，甚至常在救援中途才意识到自己在做什么。事后才惊觉'天啊，我本可能受重伤或遭遇不测'。

Absolutely not. No. They almost always report that they didn't even think about anything before they started to act, that oftentimes they hardly even realized what they were doing until they were in the middle of rescuing somebody. And that afterwards, they often think, oh my gosh. I could have really been badly hurt or something else terrible could have happened.

但在行动瞬间，他们完全不会考虑自身风险与代价，而是基于某种深刻的本能冲动立即行动。

But in the moment, no, they're not thinking about the the risks and cost to themselves at all. They they really act immediately on a very, I think, sort of deep impulse.

艾比实验室研究的超凡利他者看似超人，但其研究揭示无私可能比想象中更普遍。稍后节目将探讨：为何我们都具备非凡利他潜能及培养方法。这里是《隐藏大脑》，我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。

The extraordinary altruist that Abby brought into our lab might seem superhuman, but her research offers clues that selflessness might be more common than we imagine. When we come back, why all of us already possess the capacity for extraordinary altruism, and how we can cultivate it. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain.

我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔。若您对利他行为有后续问题、评论或故事愿与《隐藏大脑》听众分享，请录制语音备忘录发送至ideas@hiddenbrain.org，邮件主题注明'慷慨'。乔治城大学心理学家艾比盖尔·马什著有《恐惧因子：一种连接利他者、精神病患与常人的情感》。

I'm Shankar Vedanta. If you have follow-up questions, comments, or stories altruism and generosity that you'd be comfortable sharing with the Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideas@hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line generosity. Abigail Marsh is a psychologist and neuroscientist at Georgetown University. She is the author of The Fear Factor, How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone in Between.

艾比，听下来这些超凡利他者似乎与我们截然不同。但你说深度关怀他人的能力其实深植于整个人类物种？

From what we've heard so far, Abby, extraordinary altruists seem impossibly different from the rest of us. But actually, you say that the capacity to care deeply about others is woven into our species as a whole?

确实如此。当我提到人类是一个异常利他的物种时，很多人会感到惊讶，但这一点毋庸置疑。比如，与其他灵长类动物相比，人类是最具利他精神的。他们最愿意无私地与他人分享，而不求回报。

Absolutely. I think many people are surprised when I say that humans are an unusually altruistic species, but there's no question about it. We are. If you look across, for example, other primate species, humans are the most altruistic. They're the most likely to share freely with other people with no expectation of benefit for themselves.

原因可能有些出人意料——人类还被称为‘异亲抚育’物种。这意味着成年人愿意并确实会照顾非亲生的婴儿。这在其他灵长类中并不多见。跨物种研究表明，一个物种的利他程度与其照顾非亲生幼崽的行为高度相关，而人类在这方面表现尤为突出。

And the reason seems to be, maybe a little bit surprisingly, that humans are also what's called an alloparental species. And that means that human adults are prepared to care and do care for infants who are not their own. And that's not something you see in that many primate species. But if you look across species, the very best predictor of how altruistic a species is is how much care they provide for babies that are not their own. And humans do this a lot.

这似乎是我们如此利他的最佳解释。

And it seems to be the best explanation for why we're so altruistic.

想想医生、医疗体系或护士，本质也是如此，对吧？人类以某种方式致力于关怀他人，这种模式在物种间实属罕见——尤其当你对比其他生物的行为时。

And of course, when you think about doctors or the medical system or nurses, it's the same idea. Right? People are devoted in some ways to caring for others in a way that really is very unusual when you think about it and think about what other species do.

这确实令人惊叹。人们容易忽视这点，是因为我们长期被全球各地的负面新闻包围——社交媒体和传统媒体出于利益驱动不断放大这些信息。这些关于人性之恶的报道会让人产生愤世嫉俗的错觉，认为人类多么糟糕。但我总提醒人们：请回想你真实的日常互动——

It's truly astonishing. And I think one of the reasons it's easy to forget is we spend so much of our life immersed in stories about the worst things that happen all around the world, which, of course, unfortunately, is what, you know, many social media and some traditional media sources are incentivized to tell us about. And all of that information pours into our brain about the terrible things that people do, and it can leave people with sort of a cynical view that, oh, humans are so awful. We do such awful things. But what I always tell people is think about the interactions you have.

观察生活中与你相处交往的人。这些互动是怎样的？他们是否普遍乐于助人、愿意在危急时刻相互扶持？这样思考时，多数人会发现：天啊，我身边原来有这么多善良的人。

Think about the people around you in your real life that you spend time with and that you interact with. How have those interactions been? Have those people generally been pretty helpful, pretty cooperative, willing to help each other out in a pinch? And when you do that, I think most people think, oh my gosh. I'm really lucky.

我...我的人生被许多真正美好的人环绕着。

I I spend my life surrounded by a lot of really nice people.

你和同行还指出，人类社会中存在历史性趋势——这种泛化的关怀正变得更加普遍，并逐渐扩展到更广泛的人群。能否谈谈这个观点？即使纵观历史，现代人可能比五百或一千年前更慷慨利他？

You and others have also pointed out that even within human societies, there seems to be a historical trend where this kind of generalized caring is becoming more common and is being extended in some ways to ever widening circles of people. Can you talk about that idea that even when we look down history, we might actually be more generous and altruistic now than people, let's say, five hundred or a thousand years ago.

这完全正确。人类进化初期生活在百人规模的社群中，极少遇见陌生人。即便相遇，危险性与合作可能性同等存在。直到近代，我们才具备知晓万里之外陌生人遭遇的能力——更不用说施以援手。在此背景下，人们竟愿为素未谋面、永不会相见的异乡人投入时间、精力和金钱，实在非凡。

That's certainly true. Humans, we believe, evolved to live in societies of a 100 to a 150 people where they very rarely would have encountered strangers. And when they did, it was just as likely to be a dangerous interaction as one in which there would be any cooperation. And it's only quite recently in the course of our species history that we've even had the capacity to know what is happening to people on the other side of the world and people that we've never met before, Never mind help them. And so I think in that context, it's really remarkable just how much time and energy and money people spend trying to help people who don't live in their town, don't live in their country, they've never met, they never will meet.

即便如此，仍有无数人认为那些陌生人的福祉值得自己付出与帮助。

But still that person's welfare matters enough that people, many people, are willing to give and help.

你说一百年前的人们会认为向陌生人捐献血液和骨髓是荒谬的。所以在某种程度上，也许一百年后，人们会觉得向陌生人捐肾就像我们今天觉得献血一样正常普通。

You say that a hundred years ago, people would have thought it ludicrous to donate, you know, their blood and bone marrow to complete strangers today. So in some ways, it's possible that, you know, maybe a hundred years from now, people will think that donating a kidney to a stranger is just as normal and ordinary as we think donating blood is today.

完全同意。我认为很多人不知道献血刚出现时有多不可思议——居然有人愿意让陌生人抽血再输给另一个陌生人。事实上，世界上很多地方至今仍不流行这种献血方式。但部分原因是随着时间推移，人们普遍变得更利他，尤其是对更广泛群体的利他行为在增加。正因如此，献血这类行为正变得越来越常态化。

Absolutely. I I think many people aren't aware of just how strange it was considered when blood donation first became a thing that anybody would wanna open up their veins and let blood be taken out by a stranger and given to another stranger. And in fact, you know, there are many places in the world where people really don't give blood in this way. But I think in part because people are becoming generally more altruistic and certainly more altruistic toward a widening group of people over time. And as that is happening, things like blood donation are becoming more normative.

所以对很多人来说，献血已成理所当然——在国家紧急状态或血库短缺时，这就是我们都能出力相助的方式。它已从一种非凡的利他行为转变为更普通的利他形式。我希望未来骨髓捐献、器官捐献这类罕见利他行为也能遵循相同轨迹。

And so it's become sort of a matter of course for many people that, oh, blood donation is something you do if there's a national emergency, if there's a blood shortage. This is a way that we can all pitch in to help. And so it's gone from, I think, at one time being somewhat extraordinarily altruistic thing to do to being a more ordinary form of altruism. And I I hope that in the future, rare forms of altruism, donating bone marrow or donating organs, will maybe follow the same course.

艾比，你认为不同国家在践行利他主义的能力或意愿上存在差异吗？

Are there differences, do you think, between countries in their capacity or willingness to exercise altruism, Abby?

在国家层面，我们发现整体更富裕、更健康、人均寿命更长、教育水平更高，且民众生活幸福感和满意度更高的国家，其利他主义水平远高于主客观福祉都较低的国家。

At the national level, we find that countries that are overall wealthier, that are healthier, people live longer, that have higher levels of education, and also where people report higher levels of flourishing and life satisfaction, we see much higher levels of altruism than countries in which both objective and subjective well-being are lower.

确实存在守财奴和坐拥财富却一毛不拔的亿万富翁。但我最近读到比尔·盖茨正考虑捐出99%的财产——2000亿美元用于慈善。从客观角度看这其实很疯狂对吧？一个人明明有足够财富让子孙后代永世无忧，却选择全部捐给陌生人。

I mean, is the case that there are people who, you know, hoard their wealth and and, you know, billionaires who sit on their fortunes without sharing any of it. But I remember reading just recently that, Bill Gates, for example, is thinking of giving away 99% of his wealth, dollars 200,000,000,000 to philanthropy. And again, when you think about it from an objective standpoint, that is actually kind of crazy, right? That one person is basically saying, I have enough money to basically give to my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, you know, essentially from now until eternity. And he's saying, no.

我想把钱捐给陌生人。

I wanna give it away to strangers.

这难道不非凡吗？我们不该觉得'亿万富翁就该如此'而忽视其意义——他们凭什么被这样期待？如此多富豪将财产捐给公益事业实在令人惊叹，幸运的是这已成为超级富豪间的某种常态。

Isn't that remarkable? I think that it's something that we should not overlook and think, oh, well, that's what billionaires are expected to do. Why would they be expected to do that? It's incredible that this is something that is so common among very wealthy people to just give their money away to help various causes. And fortunately, it is something of a norm among the very wealthy.

当然也要承认，自私自利、贪婪成性的人往往渴望金钱权力。财富金字塔各阶层都存在极度无私和极度自私的人。但纵观整个客观福祉谱系——包括社会地位和财富等变量，平均而言，境遇越好的人越愿意帮助他人。这表明当人们拥有帮助他人的物质和心理资源时，助人行为就会自然发生，这也是大多数人的选择。

Now I will also say that it's true that people who are very selfish and narcissistic and greedy often desire to have a lot of money and power and status. And so of course there are people of any strata of the wealth distribution who are very unselfish and people who are very selfish. There's no question that that's true. And there are some very selfish people who do seem to seek out a lot of wealth. That said, if you look across the whole spectrum of objective well-being, variables like social status and wealth, on average, it seems like the better off people are, the more likely they're willing to give to help others, which I think suggests that when people have the physical and psychological resources to help other people, helping other people is the natural thing to do, and it is what most people do.

能谈谈危机和灾难如何激发我们内心利他主义的一面吗？

Can you talk a moment about how crisis and disaster in some ways, you know, unlocks the altruism that is inside many of us?

这看似有些矛盾——如果幸福感提升能促进利他行为，那么危机时期同样可能激发更多利他行为，但这两者似乎都是事实。这个现象非常令人惊讶，因为我们熟知的《蝇王》这类故事总描绘灾难会暴露人性最黑暗的一面，导致人们互相攻击。但若观察现实中的危机与灾难场景，人们团结互助的频率之高令人震惊。我们在新冠疫情后就观察到，全球范围内的利他行为在疫情后反而增加了。人们报告称相比疫情前，他们给予陌生人更多帮助、参与志愿服务和慈善捐赠的行为有所增加，或许是因为灾难引发的强烈恐惧感反而激励了我们。

It may seem a little bit paradoxical that if improved well-being leads to greater altruism, that times of crisis could also lead to greater altruism, but both things seem to be true. This fact is very surprising because we're all familiar with stories like the Lord of the Flies where a disaster setting brings out the worst in people and and causes them to turn on one another. But if you look at real life scenarios of crises and disasters, it's astonishingly common how often people actually band together to help one another. We saw after the COVID nineteen pandemic that globally, altruistic behavior went up in the aftermath of the pandemic. People actually reported giving even more help to strangers, volunteering, and donating to charity than they had before the pandemic, Perhaps because that acute fear response we get in times of disaster actually motivates us.

这种恐惧既让我们产生救助他人的紧迫感，也让我们产生自我保护的本能冲动。

It gives us the sort of urgency to help other people just the same way it gives us the sense of urgency about helping ourselves.

你讲述了一个关于佛罗里达海滩游客的动人故事，他们发现有人面临溺水危险。艾比，请详细说说当时发生了什么？

You tell a remarkable story about a group of Florida beachgoers who noticed that there were some people who were at risk of drowning. Tell me that story. What did they do, Abby?

这是个震撼人心的故事。几年前在佛罗里达海滩，一股离岸流将两个小男孩、他们的父母和祖母卷向深海。众所周知，离岸流极其危险，常造成溺水事故。但那天，70名陌生人自发组成人链向海中延伸，几乎触及遇险家庭所在位置。

This is an incredible story. A couple of years ago on a Florida beach, a riptide formed and sent two young boys, their parents, and their grandmother way out to sea. Of course, reptiles are very dangerous. People drown on them all the time. But what happened this particular day was that 70 strangers spontaneously formed a human chain out into the water that extended almost all the way to the drowning family.

随后一位名叫杰西卡·西蒙斯的女士和她的丈夫游到人链末端，将这个家庭逐个救回安全区域。

And then a woman named Jessica Simmons and her husband swam out to the end of the human chain, rescued the family, and got them all back to safety one by one.

你最近也有过一个小型助人经历。艾比，能否描述下你在社区散步时遇到的情景？

So you recently had an opportunity to perform a small act of helping. This happened in your neighborhood when you were out on a walk. Paint me a picture of what happened, Abby.

那是个繁忙的早高峰时段，我刚步行送孩子上学回来。当我走在一条车水马龙的大道上时，发现有个男子站在路边双手捧在胸前，却不断环顾四周的树木。这怪异举止让我不得不停下来询问。当他放下手时，我看见他掌心里蜷缩着一只毛茸茸的幼年蓝松鸦。

So it was a rush hour, a busy morning, and I had just returned from dropping my child off at school on foot. And as I was walking down a very busy boulevard, I encountered a man standing on the side of the street with his hands kept in front of him, but he was looking around into the trees around him. And it was such strange behavior. I had to stop and ask what was going on. And he lowered his hands to reveal a fuzzy little baby bluejay crouched in them.

它乌黑的小眼睛平静地注视着我们——出奇地镇定。那位男士说：‘我在马路中间发现这只雏鸟就救了它，但我得赶去上班，不知该怎么办。’我当即表示：‘交给我吧。’

Its little black eyes glittering up at us. Very calm, interestingly. And he said, I saw this little baby bird out in the road, and I had to go and get it, but I have to go to work. I don't know what to do. And I said, well, I'll take over.

于是他把小鸟转交到我手中。我接手后开始搜寻周围树木，想看看是否有亲鸟在附近能托付，但毫无发现。我实在不忍弃之不顾，所幸旁边就是家兽医诊所。我抱着小鸟走进去，暗自期待他们能帮忙。结果他们只给了我一个安置小鸟的盒子。

And so he he dumped the little bird into my hands, and I took over scanning the trees around me looking to see if there were any parents nearby that I could leave the the baby with. And there was just nothing. And so I couldn't possibly leave it there. And so I luckily was right next to a local vet, and I wandered in with a bird hoping dimly that maybe they would be able to help with the bird. All they could do was give me a box to put it in.

我把雏鸟放进盒子带回家，联系了本地动物救助中心。他们表示愿意接收，于是我花了约一小时将小鸟送到了野生动物保护站。

And so I put the little baby bird in a box. I walked home with it, called my local animal rescue center, and they said they would be happy to take the baby bird in. And so I took about an hour out of my morning and dropped the baby bird off at a little wildlife center.

这并非某种戏剧性的利他行为。要知道，我们不是在捐献肾脏，也不是在将自己的生命置于危险之中。但当你退一步思考时，会发现这其实相当不寻常——毕竟蓝松鸦甚至不属于你的物种。这个生命与你并非同类。

Now this wasn't sort of a dramatic act of altruism. You know, were not giving up a kidney. You were not sort of putting your own life in danger. But when you step back and look at it, it's kind of extraordinary, which is that, you know, the blue jay is not even your species. This is not a creature that belongs to your species.

然而你却愿意花费时间和精力去保护它的福祉。

And yet you are willing to take time and effort to protect its well-being.

完全正确。回想起来，这确实是异亲抚育的绝佳范例。我并非这只幼鸟的父母，却立即愿意以监护者身份接管，提供它生存所需的照料。再说，这在宏大的生命图景中微不足道，对我而言根本算不上什么重大牺牲。

Absolutely. And this really was a very good example of alloparental care when I look back on it. I was not this baby bird's parent, but I was immediately willing to take over in loco parentis and provide the care it needed to make sure that it was going to survive. And, again, it's such a tiny thing in the scheme of things. This is no huge sacrifice on my part.

但回顾当时，那种促使我伸出援手的利他冲动——尽管确实会耗费不少时间和精力——对我而言根本无关紧要。我只想确保这个小生命能平安无事。

But looking back, that altruistic impulse that I had to help, of the fact that it was going to cost me certainly quite a bit of time and effort, really didn't matter to me at all. I just needed to make sure that this little baby was gonna be okay.

艾比，当你把这只鸟送到野生动物救助中心后，你的感受如何？

What was your feeling after you dropped off this bird at this wildlife rescue center, Abby?

我发现自己短时间内就对它产生了深厚感情，并持续关注着它的动态。救助中心非常贴心地给我发邮件告知近况：它正与其他被送来的蓝松鸦幼鸟一起养育，已学会飞翔和自主觅食，最后还通知了我它被放归自然的时刻。

I found that I had grown very attached to it in a short period of time, and I kept track of it. The wildlife center very kindly sent me emails about it, that it was being raised with a bunch of other blue jay fledglings that had been dropped off. It had learned to fly. It had learned to feed itself, and then they let me know when it was finally ready to be released back into the wild.

恐惧是阻止我们无私行动的重要因素。我们担忧自身安全。稍后节目将带来关于英雄主义的非凡故事，以及我们对勇气的误解。这里是《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·维丹塔姆。

One potent factor that stops us from acting selflessly is fear. We worry for our own safety. When we come back, a remarkable story of heroism and what we get wrong about courage. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

这里是《隐藏的大脑》，我是尚卡尔·维丹塔姆。今天我们正与心理学家兼神经科学家阿比盖尔·马什探讨利他与慷慨的科学。如果您有后续问题、评论，或愿意与听众分享的利他故事，请用手机录制语音备忘录发送至ideashiddenbrain.org，邮件主题请注明'慷慨'。

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We're talking today to psychologist and neuroscientist Abigail Marsh about the science of altruism and generosity. If you have follow-up questions, comments, or stories about altruism and generosity that you'd be comfortable sharing with the Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideashiddenbrain dot org. Use the subject line generosity.

心理学家兼神经科学家阿比盖尔·马什多年研究自私与无私行为。她发现，恐惧是向困境中的他人施以援手的最大障碍。艾比，2012年时任新泽西州纽瓦克市长的科里·布克曾有过惊人壮举，你能为我们描述当时的情景吗？

Psychologist and neuroscientist Abigail Marsh has spent years studying selfishness and selflessness. She has found that one of the most powerful barriers to offering assistance to others in distress is fear. Abby, in 2012, when he was mayor of Newark, New Jersey, the politician Cory Booker carried out a remarkable act of heroism. Can you set the scene for me and describe what happened?

当然。这是个震撼人心的故事。某晚布克在安保人员陪同下回家时，发现邻居房屋起火。浓烟从窗口翻滚而出，邻居杰奎琳·威廉姆斯在院子里尖叫说她女儿还被困在二楼。

Absolutely. It's an incredible story. So Booker was coming home one night with a couple members of his security detail. And when they got close to his house, they discovered that the home of the neighbor next door was on fire. Smoke was pouring through the windows, and Booker's neighbor, whose name was Jacqueline Williams, was outside in the yard screaming that her daughter was still trapped inside the house on the Second Floor.

而布克后来所说的，正是许多英勇救援者常说的话——他当时根本来不及思考。他跳下车，冲过院子，在安保人员紧随其后的情况下跑向房屋。当然，一进门他就发现空气中弥漫着浓烟，几乎什么都看不见，只能一边呛咳一边摸索着爬上二楼厨房。到达时，他们看到火焰已吞噬了整面墙，正沿着天花板蔓延。

And what Booker said later is exactly what many, many heroic rescuers say is that he acted without even thinking. He jumped out of the car. He ran across the yard and started to run into the house with one of his security detail running right behind him. And, of course, once he got into the door, he discovered that the air was full of smoke, and he could see hardly anything as he's gasping and choking his way up to the kitchen on the Second Floor. Once they got there, they discovered that there were flames everywhere going up the walls across the ceiling.

他们能听到小型爆炸声，名叫罗德里格斯的安保人员表示：'我受够了，你不能再前进了。'他试图让布克放弃救援邻居女儿离开房子。布克拒绝了，两人短暂扭打起来。

They could hear little explosions, and the security detail, whose name was Rodriguez, was like, I've had enough. You were not going any further. He tried to get Booker to leave the house without rescuing his neighbor's daughter. Booker refused. They wrestled for a little bit.

布克说：'你必须让我进去，如果我不进去，她会死的。'最终安保妥协了。布克冲进火场，在浓烟中挣扎着进入卧室，发现邻居女儿已意识模糊。他将女孩扛在肩上，踉跄着穿过已被火焰吞没的厨房——此时燃烧的余烬如雨点般落在他身上，最终成功逃出房屋后倒在院子里，因吸入浓烟和双手二度烧伤被救护车送医。

Booker said, you know, you have to let me go in. If I don't go in, she's gonna die. And so he the detective said, okay. And Booker plunged into the house, fought his way through the smoke into the bedroom where his neighbor's daughter was barely conscious, flung her over his shoulder, and staggered back through the kitchen, which was engulfed in flames at this point, burning embers are raining down on him. And he finally makes it back out of the house and collapses into the yard where he was taken by ambulance to the hospital with injuries from smoke inhalation and second degree burns to his hands.

当这件事在媒体和社交媒体上引发轰动时，很多人形容布克的行为简直像超级英雄。你能谈谈这个现象吗？人们把他当作超级英雄来讨论。

So when the story explodes in the media and it and it takes off on social media, a lot of people describe what Booker did as almost, you know, the actions of a superhero. Can you talk about that? That people talked about him as if he was a superhero.

确实如此。当我们旁观这类英勇行为时，往往无法感知当事人内心的真实感受。我们常会想：'我肯定不敢那么做，那个人一定毫无畏惧。'社交媒体上有些将布克描绘成无所畏惧的超级英雄的段子非常有趣。

Absolutely. So I think when we look at acts of courage like this from the outside, it's not obvious to us how the person is feeling on the inside. And we often assume, well, I would be too afraid to do that. That person must not have been afraid at all. And some of the quotes on social media were really hilarious in painting Booker as this, you know, impervious to fear superhero.

我最喜欢的一个是：'当动作巨星查克·诺里斯做噩梦时，科里·布克会开灯陪他入睡。'还有个经典段子：'科里·布克不怕黑暗——是黑暗害怕科里·布克。'

You know, one of my favorite was when Chuck Norris, the action hero has nightmares, Cory Booker turns on the lights and sits with him until he falls asleep. Yeah. One of my other favorites is somebody who posted, Cory Booker isn't afraid of the dark. The dark is afraid of Cory Booker.

我想播放一段科里·布克在CBS早间节目中的采访片段，听听他亲述当时的真实感受。

I'd like to play a clip of Cory Booker appearing on the program CBS this morning talking about what the experience was actually like for him.

当...当安保最终松手让我冲进火场时，那种体验对我而言截然不同。这非常非常可怕。虽然我希望当时能表现得英勇无畏，但说实话，整个过程令人胆战心惊。

When you it was very different for me when I was had left him when he finally got him to let go of me, went through the the the flames. It is a very, very scary thing. And I'd like to say that I at that point, I was feeling so courageous, but honestly, it was terrifying.

艾比，我们总认为勇敢者毫无恐惧，但科里·布克的情况似乎完全不是这样。

So we think that people who act bravely feel no fear, Abby, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all with Cory Booker.

当然不是。在事后所有采访中，他都坦诚自己当时充满恐惧。这其实很重要——我们要区分真正的无畏（那其实是对危险的麻木）与勇敢。勇敢者是那些清楚危险存在、会为自己感到害怕，但明白有比自身恐惧更重要的事物，并依然选择行动的人。这才是真正的美德。

Absolutely not. In every interview he gave after what happened, he was very honest about how terrified he had been throughout. And I think it's really important to distinguish between people who are truly fearless, which is a really a form of recklessness to not even log the danger that you're confronting in a scary situation, and people who are brave. And people who are brave are people who recognize that there's a danger to themselves, who might feel quite frightened on their own behalf, but who realize that there's something more important than their fear for themselves and who act anyways in the face of their fear. And that's real virtue.

我希望人们能理解，真正的英雄往往心怀恐惧，却依然选择行动。

And I hope that people can appreciate just how often real heroes are very frightened, and they're acting anyhow.

这对许多肾脏捐赠者也是如此。他们并非对接受大手术毫无畏惧，也不是将其视为微不足道的小事。

I mean, this was true for many of your kidney donors as well. I mean, it wasn't that they lack trepidation about going through major surgery. It wasn't something that they brushed off as basically trivial.

完全正确。我接触过许多有针头恐惧症的利他性肾脏捐赠者。其中一位19岁的捐赠者每次抽血都会晕厥——她极度害怕针头，而捐肾过程中需要频繁抽血。

Absolutely. I've worked with many altruistic kidney donors who have true phobias of needles. One 19 year old altruistic kidney donor that we worked with would often faint when she got blood draws. She was so frightened of needles. And, of course, you get a lot of blood draws in the process of donating a kidney.

因为她更在意自己将拯救之人的生命，远胜过在意当下的不适或恐惧。为了帮助他人而承受些许恐惧与不适，对她而言根本不算什么。

Because she cared much more about the welfare of the person whose life she would be saving than she cared about her own discomfort or fear in the moment, it just didn't bother her that she would have to feel a little fear and discomfort in order to help.

所以你是说，应对恐惧的第一步，某种程度上是要反驳'我们不该感到恐惧'或'感到恐惧就无法行动'的观念？

So are you saying that one of the first steps toward dealing with our fear is in some ways pushing back on the idea that we shouldn't feel fear or cannot act if we feel fear?

正是如此。情绪是很好的信息来源，却是糟糕的决策者。我们永远不该认为情绪代表绝对真理——恐惧常常驱使我们做出违背价值观的行为。

That's exactly right. Emotion is, I think, a good source of information, but it's a very bad boss. We should never assume that our emotions are the true source of truth. And oftentimes, our fear is telling us to do things that aren't consistent with our values. Right?

若你真心想帮助他人，在明知可能受伤或经历痛苦时感到害怕很正常。而真正的英雄会在感受恐惧的同时，依然选择行动。

If you really do wanna help somebody, it's normal to feel afraid when you know that there's a risk that you might be injured or that you might experience pain or discomfort. And truly heroic people act in the face of that feeling and despite that feeling.

那么父母在子女遇险时展现的勇气，以及恐惧、爱与勇气之间的关系，能给我们什么启示？

So there is a domain where large numbers of people put the well-being of another creature above themselves. Talk a moment about the courage that parents show when their children are in danger and what this might teach us about the relationship between fear and love and courage.

某个夏日午后，当我年幼刚学会游泳的孩子在邻居泳池被救生圈形状的玩具困住时，我短暂体会到了英雄们的感受。眼看她的小脸即将没入水中，那声'妈妈救我'的尖叫如闪电击中我的大脑——我毫不犹豫跳进泳池，手机还在口袋里。

I think I had just a little taste of what some true heroes and altruists experience, one, summer afternoon when one of my kids was younger and had just learned how to swim and was paddling in a neighbor's pool and got trapped under, like, a life preserver shaped pool toy and didn't know how to tread water. And so she started to sink underneath the surface of the water. And just before her little face went under, she screamed, mommy, help me, in this voice that, like, zapped like lightning through my brain. And I truly acted without thinking. I was in the pool, fully clothed, phone in my pocket before I had thought even just for a second about what I was doing.

我把她从救生圈下拉出来抱上岸，整个过程毫无迟疑。女儿的安危如此重要，即便处境对我更危险，我也会同样行动——我相信天下父母皆如此。

And I pulled her out from under the life preserver, and I got her back on the shore. And there was no thought whatsoever involved. I was going to get in that pool, and I was going to help her no matter what. The welfare of my daughter, her life, her safety is so overwhelming that I can imagine the situation could have been much more dangerous for me, and I would have acted the same way. And I think most parents would.

我们之前讨论过人类天生具有共同养育特质这一观点，即我们不仅关心自己的孩子，也关心他人的孩子。鉴于你的研究表明这种帮助他人的冲动可能源于我们照料幼儿的本能，我在想，某种程度上扩大共同养育的范围可以提升我们的利他主义。换句话说，就是像对待自己孩子那样去考虑他人、陌生人。

So we talked earlier about this idea that humans are designed to be alloparents, that we are interested in caring not just for our own children but for other people's children. And I'm wondering, given your research on how this urge to help may be rooted in our capacity to provide care to young children, one way to increase our altruism in some ways is to expand the circle of alloparenting. In other words, to think about people, other people, strangers, the way we might think about our own children.

完全正确。要记住每个人都曾是个孩子，我们成年后和幼时一样需要他人的帮助，这种需求永远不会完全消失。如果我们能用考虑孩子需求的心态去考虑他人需求，就会更有动力伸出援手。

Absolutely. I mean, it helps to remember that everybody out there once was a child, that many of us need help and assistance from other people as adults just the way that we all do when we're younger. It's not something you ever completely grow out of. And I think if we can adopt the same mentality when thinking of the needs of other people that we would when we're thinking about the needs of children, we would be much more inspired to help.

你说克服阻碍我们帮助他人的恐惧感，方法之一可能是主动接触令人害怕的经历？

You say that one way we might overcome the fear that could hold us back from helping others is to expose ourselves to scary experiences?

应对恐惧和危险情境的能力是可以培养的。有充分证据表明，当人们经历过足够多的危险情境，学会管理恐惧并确信自己能应对时，他们在危险时刻会表现得更勇敢。亲身经历最能让人明白：我曾身处险境感到害怕，但最终安然无恙。

The capacity to work through your fear and frightening situations is a capacity that can be developed. And there's pretty good evidence to suggest that people are more capable of acting bravely in dangerous situations when they've been in enough dangerous situations to be able to manage their fear and to have a good sense that they can handle it. Right? If there's no there's nothing like learning by experience that I've been in a dangerous situation. I felt scared, but it was okay.

我成功应对并渡过了难关，完成了想做的事。我们越多地让自己经历这种最终化险为夷的挑战，就越可能在危险情境中——包括他人遇险时——做出理想行为。有趣的是，许多好莱坞动作明星如丹尼·特雷霍、杰米·福克斯、汤姆·克鲁斯、凯特·温丝莱特和本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇都曾在现实中勇救他人。

I managed, and I got through to the other side, and I did what I wanted to do. And so the more that we can expose ourselves to challenges and risks that give us the experience of feeling afraid and it being okay in the end, the more likely we are to act the way we want to in dangerous situations, including those when somebody else is in danger. I think it's really quite interesting how often Hollywood actors who are action heroes leap in to help other people from danger with Danny Trejo being one example. But the actors Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise and Kate Winslet and Benedict Cumberbatch. Like, there's an enormous number of celebrities who have helped real life people in danger.

我认为这很可能与他们多次在影视作品中演绎英雄行为有关。

And I think it's not a 0% chance that that's because they have acted out, acting heroically in dangerous situations many times previously.

听起来你的意思是，变得更利他的方法就是去实践利他行为？

I mean, in some ways, what I hear you saying is that the way to become more altruistic is to be more altruistic.

道理就是这么简单。通常行为改变会先于心态改变。人们总想先改变感受再改变行为，但往往顺序相反。你必须先行动起来，你的大脑、思维和情绪自会跟上。所以培养利他精神最好的方式就是立即开始——从小事做起。

It's really as simple as that. Oftentimes, changing your behavior comes before changing your mindset. People often think, well, I need to change the way I feel about a situation before I change the way I act when often it's the reverse. Really, you have to just start doing the thing you wanna do, and your brain, your mind, your mood will catch up later. And so the best way to become more altruistic is to just start and start small.

从最轻松微小的善举开始。利他行为最妙之处在于它能带来强烈愉悦感，对多数人而言，助人本身就有内在回报。这既因为践行价值观让我们自豪，

Start as small as is comfortable. Start as small as is easy. But the best thing about altruism is that it feels really good. For most people, it's intrinsically rewarding to help other people, and this is true for a lot of reasons. It's because we feel proud when we've done something consistent with our values.

也因为应对挑战性情境时获得的自我效能感，更不用说见证他人因你而快乐产生的替代性满足。利他行为具有自我强化效应——做得越多，就越想做。

We feel a sense of self efficacy when we've acted to take on a situation that was challenging. And, of course, we feel the vicarious reward we get for making somebody else feel good. And because altruism is reinforcing, the more we do it, the more we'll want to do it.

所以当许多人面临挑战，尤其是像饥饿、疾病或战争这样的大问题时，他们会自问，一个人能做些什么来阻止这一切？一个人如何能产生影响？艾比，你对这些人有什么建议？

So when many people confront a challenge, especially a big problem like starvation or disease or war, you know, they tell themselves, what can one person do to stop this? How can one person make a difference? What advice would you have for them, Abby?

当我们面对世界上所有的苦难和挑战时，确实很难有动力去行动，因为这些问题看起来如此庞大。我认为有很好的理由相信，我们的大脑并没有进化到能处理当前这个时代我们所知的那种范围和规模的挑战。因此，我认为专注于你能解决的那些挑战非常重要。就像制定任何其他计划一样，对吧？

It is really hard when we confront all the suffering and challenges in the world to feel motivated to act because these problems can seem so big. And I think there's very good reason to believe that our brains really didn't evolve to handle challenges at the kind of scope and scale that we have access to knowledge about at this moment in time. And so I think it's really important to focus on the kinds of challenges that you can solve. Just like forming any other plan. Right?

如果你想以符合自己价值观的方式行动，你会思考下一步我能做什么，让我的行动更接近我的价值观。所以，重要的是要观察你周围的物理世界，注意到那些有人需要帮助的情况。这可能是当地的慈善机构，你的行动真的可以产生影响。也可能是你在街上遇到的陌生人，如果你留心，可能会发现他们有需求，他们遇到了麻烦，而你可以提供帮助。

If you wanna act in ways that match your values, you you think of what's the next step I can take to bring my actions closer to alignment with my values. And so it's really important to just look around the world around you, the physical world that you inhabit, and take notice of situations where there's somebody who is in need. This could be local charities where your actions really could make a difference. It could be strangers that you pass by in the street who if you're paying attention, you may see that they have a need, that they are in trouble in ways that you could help.

你告诉过我你从邻居的游泳池里救出你女儿的故事。当时，你是个不错的游泳者，跳进游泳池时并不真的担心自己的生命安全。但几年前，我了解到你在当地的滑雪场上发生了一件事，你必须去救一个人。而这次，你可能不像游泳时那样自信和熟练。

You told me the story about how you rescued your daughter from your neighbor's swimming pool. Now presumably, you know, you're a decent swimmer. You didn't really fear for your life when you jumped in the pool. But some years ago, I understand that you were on a local ski hill, and something happened where you had to rescue someone. And in this case, perhaps you were not as good and confident a skier as you might have been a swimmer.

告诉我发生了什么。

Tell me the story of what happened.

是的。这是最近在当地的滑雪场上发生的，我的一个孩子决定想去滑雪场的地形公园区域滑雪。我对地形公园非常害怕。我是个不错的滑雪者，但我绝对不喜欢滑得太快，也不喜欢跳跃。但我在地形公园的顶部等待，而我的一个孩子决定滑下去。

Yes. This was more recently on a local ski hill, and one of my kids decided that they wanted to ski in the terrain park area of the ski hill. And I am deeply afraid of terrain parks. I am a fine skier, but I definitely do not like going very fast, and I do not like doing jumps. But I waited at the top of the terrain park while one of my kids decided to go down the terrain.

结果，他们对这个地形公园准备不足，滑过一堆凹凸不平的地方后，从视线中消失了，飞在空中然后不见了。我惊慌失措，因为我知道他们可能摔在了某个地方，受了重伤。还没等我反应过来，我就发现自己飞快地穿过这个地形公园，尽力避开那些大跳台，速度比我平时滑雪时快得多，去找到我的孩子，确保她没事。她在跳台底部摔得很重，脸上血流不止，当时她很不高兴。

And lo and behold, they were not well enough equipped for this terrain park and ended up, you know, juttering over a bunch of bumps and then disappearing from sight, flying in the air and disappearing from sight. And I panicked because I knew that they could have fallen in the spot that they were and hurt themselves really badly. And before I knew it, I found myself flying through this terrain park, avoiding as best I could the really big jumps, much faster than I normally comfortable skiing, to get to my child and, make sure that she was okay. Now she had smashed her face pretty badly at the bottom of the series of jumps she'd been over, and blood was pouring down her face. And she wasn't very happy in the moment.

幸运的是，她没事。但我记得事后在想，那是我很长时间以来滑得最快的一次。但就像多年来我交谈过的许多人告诉我的那样，你在那一刻不会想到自己，你只想着对方需要什么，以及如何提供帮助。

Luckily, she was okay. But I do remember thinking afterward, that is the fastest I have skied in a very long time. But I just you know, as so many people I've talked to over the years have told me, you know, you don't think of yourself in the moment. You just think of what the other person needs and and about trying to help.

阿比盖尔·马什是乔治城大学的心理学家和神经科学家。她是《一种情感如何连接利他主义者、精神病患者和介于两者之间的所有人》一书的作者。艾比，非常感谢你今天加入《隐藏的大脑》节目。

Abigail Marsh is a psychologist and neuroscientist at Georgetown University. She is the author of The How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone in Between. Abby, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

非常愉快。

It's been a real pleasure.

您是否有关于利他主义与慷慨行为的后续问题、评论或故事？若愿意与《隐藏大脑》的听众分享您的想法，请用手机录制语音备忘录并发送至我们的邮箱：ideashiddenbrain.org，邮件主题请注明“慷慨”。再次提醒邮箱地址是ideashiddenbrain.org。《隐藏大脑》由Hidden Brain Media制作出品。

Do you have follow-up questions, comments, or stories about altruism and generosity? If you'd be comfortable sharing your thoughts with the Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideashiddenbrain dot org. Use the subject line generosity. That email address again is ideashiddenbrain dot org. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media.

我们的音频制作团队包括安妮·墨菲·保罗、克里斯汀·王、劳拉·奎瑞尔、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·博伊尔担任执行制片人，我是《隐藏大脑》的执行主编。今日的无名英雄是我近期在波特兰站《隐藏大脑》巡回见面会上遇到的超级粉丝们——福雷斯特·英格拉姆、莱夫·莫·安德森、唐·施耐德、凯瑟琳·科妮莉亚，以及艾米与戴夫·维兰特，能与你们共进晚餐真是荣幸之至。

Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Quirrell, 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 super fans I met recently in Portland during stop on Hidden Brain's live tour. Forrest Ingram, Laif Mo Anderson, Don Schneider, Catherine Corneille, and Amy and Dave Vellant, it was wonderful to meet you and have the opportunity to share a meal with you.

感谢你们对《隐藏大脑》及我们工作的支持，我们由衷感激。即将启程的“感知之旅”巡演将途经菲尼克斯、巴尔的摩、华盛顿特区和洛杉矶。了解更多信息及购票请访问hiddenbrain.org/tour。我是尚卡尔·韦丹塔姆。

Thank you for your support of Hidden Brain and the work that we do. We are truly grateful. Upcoming stops on what we are calling the Perceptions Tour include Phoenix, Baltimore, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. For more information and to purchase tickets to those shows, go to hiddenbrain.org/tour. I'm Shankar Vedantham.

期待很快再见。

See you soon.