TED演講: 未來(lái)自我的心理

At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we're going to become, and then when we become those people, we're not always thrilled with the decisions we made. So young people pay good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers paid good money to get. Middle-aged people rushed to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry. Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain. On and on and on. The question is, as a psychologist, that fascinates me is, why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret?

在我們生命的每個(gè)階段，我們都會(huì)做出一些決定，這些決定會(huì)深刻影響未來(lái)我們自己的生活，當(dāng)我們成為未來(lái)的自己時(shí)，我們并不總是對(duì)過(guò)去做過(guò)的決定感到高興。所以年輕人花很多錢(qián)洗去當(dāng)還是青少年時(shí)花了很多錢(qián)做上的紋身。中年人急著跟年輕時(shí)迫不及待想結(jié)婚的人離婚。老年人很努力的揮霍著作為中年人時(shí)不停工作所賺的錢(qián)。如此沒(méi)完沒(méi)了。作為一個(gè)心理學(xué)家，讓我感興趣的問(wèn)題是，為什么我們會(huì)做出讓自己將來(lái)常常后悔的決定?

Now, I think one of the reasons -- I'll try to convince you today — is that we have a fundamental misconception about the power of time. Every one of you knows that the rate of change slows over the human lifespan, that your children seem to change by the minute but your parents seem to change by the year. But what is the name of this magical point in life where change suddenly goes from a gallop to a crawl? Is it teenage years? Is it middle age? Is it old age? The answer, it turns out, for most people, is now, wherever now happens to be. What I want to convince you today is that all of us are walking around with an illusion, an illusion that history, our personal history, has just come to an end, that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives.

我認(rèn)為其中一個(gè)原因——而我今天想說(shuō)服你們的——就是我們對(duì)時(shí)間的力量有個(gè)基本的錯(cuò)誤概念。你們每個(gè)人都知道變化的速度隨著人的年齡增長(zhǎng)不斷放慢，孩子們好像每分鐘都有變化，而父母?jìng)兊淖兓瘎t要慢得多。那么生命中這個(gè)讓變化突然間從飛速變得緩慢的神奇轉(zhuǎn)折點(diǎn)應(yīng)該叫什么呢?是青少年時(shí)期嗎?是中年時(shí)期嗎?是老年階段嗎?其實(shí)對(duì)大多數(shù)人來(lái)說(shuō)，答案是，現(xiàn)在，無(wú)論現(xiàn)在發(fā)生在什么。今天我想讓大家明白的是，我們所有人都在圍繞著一種錯(cuò)覺(jué)生活，這種錯(cuò)覺(jué)就是，我們每個(gè)人的過(guò)去，都已經(jīng)結(jié)束了，我們已經(jīng)成為了我們應(yīng)該成為的那種人，在余下的生命中也都會(huì)如此。

Let me give you some data to back up that claim. So here's a study of change in people's personal values over time. Here's three values. Everybody here holds all of them, but you probably know that as you grow, as you age, the balance of these values shifts. So how does it do so? Well, we asked thousands of people. We asked half of them to predict for us how much their values would change in the next 10 years, and the others to tell us how much their values had changed in the last 10 years. And this enabled us to do a really interesting kind of analysis, because it allowed us to compare the predictions of people, say, 18 years old, to the reports of people who were 28, and to do that kind of analysis throughout the lifespan.

我想給你們展示一些數(shù)據(jù)來(lái)支持這個(gè)觀點(diǎn)。這是一項(xiàng)關(guān)于人們的個(gè)人價(jià)值觀隨時(shí)間變化的研究。這里有3種價(jià)值觀。每個(gè)人的生活都與這三個(gè)價(jià)值觀相關(guān)，但是你們可能知道，隨著你們慢慢長(zhǎng)大，變老，這三個(gè)價(jià)值觀的平衡點(diǎn)會(huì)不斷變化。到底是怎么回事呢?我們?cè)儐?wèn)了數(shù)千人。我們讓他們當(dāng)中一半的人預(yù)測(cè)了一下在未來(lái)10年中，他們的價(jià)值觀會(huì)發(fā)生多大的改變，讓另一半人告訴我們?cè)谶^(guò)去的10年中，他們的價(jià)值觀發(fā)生了多大的變化。這項(xiàng)調(diào)查可以讓我們做一個(gè)很有趣的分析，因?yàn)樗梢宰屛覀儗⒋蠹s18歲左右的人的預(yù)測(cè)同大約28歲左右的人的答案相比較，這項(xiàng)分析可以貫穿人的一生。

Here's what we found. First of all, you are right, change does slow down as we age, but second, you're wrong, because it doesn't slow nearly as much as we think. At every age, from 18 to 68 in our data set, people vastly underestimated how much change they would experience over the next 10 years. We call this the "end of history" illusion. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this effect, you can connect these two lines, and what you see here is that 18-year-olds anticipate changing only as much as 50-year-olds actually do.

這是我們的發(fā)現(xiàn)。首先，你們是對(duì)的，隨著我們年齡的增長(zhǎng)，變化會(huì)減緩。第二，你們錯(cuò)了，因?yàn)檫@種變化并不像我們想象的那么慢。在我們的數(shù)據(jù)庫(kù)從18歲到68歲的每一個(gè)年齡段中，人們大大的低估了在未來(lái)的10年他們會(huì)經(jīng)歷多少變化。我們把這叫做“歷史終止”錯(cuò)覺(jué)。為了讓你們了解這種影響有多大， 你們可以把這兩條線連接起來(lái)，你們現(xiàn)在看到的是18歲的人群預(yù)期的改變僅僅和50歲的人群實(shí)際經(jīng)歷的一樣。

Now it's not just values. It's all sorts of other things. For example, personality. Many of you know that psychologists now claim that there are five fundamental dimensions of personality: neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness. Again, we asked people how much they expected to change over the next 10 years, and also how much they had changed over the last 10 years, and what we found, well, you're going to get used to seeing this diagram over and over, because once again the rate of change does slow as we age, but at every age, people underestimate how much their personalities will change in the next decade.

現(xiàn)在不僅僅是價(jià)值觀了。其他的方面都也有變化。比如說(shuō)，人格。你們當(dāng)中的很多人知道現(xiàn)在心理學(xué)家們認(rèn)為人格可以分為五個(gè)基本維度：神經(jīng)質(zhì)性，經(jīng)驗(yàn)汲取度，協(xié)調(diào)性，外向性和道德感。回到原來(lái)的話題，我們問(wèn)人們他們期待未來(lái)的10年中自己會(huì)有多大的變化，以及他們?cè)谶^(guò)去的10年中發(fā)生了多少變化，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)了，你們會(huì)習(xí)慣不斷地看到這個(gè)圖表，因?yàn)橛忠淮?，變化速率隨著我們的年齡增長(zhǎng)減慢了。但是在每一個(gè)年齡階段，人們都低估了在未來(lái)的十年中他們的人格會(huì)發(fā)生多大的改變。

And it isn't just ephemeral things like values and personality. You can ask people about their likes and dislikes, their basic preferences. For example, name your best friend, your favorite kind of vacation, what's your favorite hobby, what's your favorite kind of music. People can name these things. We ask half of them to tell us, "Do you think that that will change over the next 10 years?" and half of them to tell us, "Did that change over the last 10 years?" And what we find, well, you've seen it twice now, and here it is again: people predict that the friend they have now is the friend they'll have in 10 years, the vacation they most enjoy now is the one they'll enjoy in 10 years, and yet, people who are 10 years older all say, "Eh, you know, that's really changed."

而且不光是像價(jià)值觀和人格這樣的臨時(shí)性的特質(zhì)。你們可以問(wèn)問(wèn)人們關(guān)于他們喜好和厭惡的事，他們基本的偏好。比如說(shuō)，說(shuō)出你最好朋友的名字，你最喜歡什么樣的假期，你最大的愛(ài)好是什么，你最喜歡什么樣的音樂(lè)。人們可以說(shuō)出這些事情。我們讓他們當(dāng)中的一半人告訴我們，“你認(rèn)為這在未來(lái)10年內(nèi)會(huì)改變嗎?”讓另一半告訴我們，“這個(gè)在過(guò)去十年內(nèi)變化了嗎?”我們的發(fā)現(xiàn)是，嗯，這個(gè)圖你們已經(jīng)看過(guò)2次了，再展示一次：人們推測(cè)他們現(xiàn)在的朋友在未來(lái)10年中還會(huì)是他們的朋友，他們喜歡的度假之地在未來(lái)10年內(nèi)還會(huì)是他們喜歡的地方，然而，年長(zhǎng)10歲的人都會(huì)說(shuō)：“嗯，你知道，這確實(shí)不一樣了。”

Does any of this matter? Is this just a form of mis-prediction that doesn't have consequences? No, it matters quite a bit, and I'll give you an example of why. It bedevils our decision-making in important ways. Bring to mind right now for yourself your favorite musician today and your favorite musician 10 years ago. I put mine up on the screen to help you along. Now we asked people to predict for us, to tell us how much money they would pay right now to see their current favorite musician perform in concert 10 years from now, and on average, people said they would pay 129 dollars for that ticket. And yet, when we asked them how much they would pay to see the person who was their favorite 10 years ago perform today, they say only 80 dollars. Now, in a perfectly rational world, these should be the same number, but we overpay for the opportunity to indulge our current preferences because we overestimate their stability.

這有什么關(guān)系嗎?這只是一種并不會(huì)有什么后果的錯(cuò)誤的預(yù)測(cè)嗎?不，這有很大的關(guān)系，我會(huì)舉例告訴你們?yōu)槭裁础Ｋ诤芏嘀匾姆矫胬_著我們做決定?，F(xiàn)在想想你們此時(shí)此刻最喜歡的音樂(lè)人，還有10年前你們最喜歡的音樂(lè)人。我把我的答案放在大屏幕上作為提示。現(xiàn)在我們讓人們預(yù)測(cè)一下，告訴我們他們現(xiàn)在愿意付多少錢(qián)來(lái)參加他們現(xiàn)在最喜歡的音樂(lè)人從現(xiàn)在起10年后的音樂(lè)會(huì)，平均來(lái)講，人們會(huì)說(shuō)他們會(huì)付129美元買(mǎi)票。然而，當(dāng)我們問(wèn)他們?cè)敢飧抖嗌馘X(qián)去看他們10年前喜歡的人現(xiàn)在的演出，他們說(shuō)只有80塊。那么，在一個(gè)完全理性的世界里，這兩個(gè)數(shù)字應(yīng)該是相同的，但是我們?yōu)槌两诋?dāng)前喜好中的機(jī)會(huì)付了更多的錢(qián)，因?yàn)槲覀兏吖懒怂鼈兊某志眯浴?/p>

Why does this happen? We're not entirely sure, but it probably has to do with the ease of remembering versus the difficulty of imagining. Most of us can remember who we were 10 years ago, but we find it hard to imagine who we're going to be, and then we mistakenly think that because it's hard to imagine, it's not likely to happen. Sorry, when people say "I can't imagine that," they're usually talking about their own lack of imagination, and not about the unlikelihood of the event that they're describing.

為什么會(huì)發(fā)生這樣的變化呢?我們也不是很確定，不過(guò)這可能與記憶的消逝和想象的難度相關(guān)。我們中的大多數(shù)人都能記得10年前的我們是什么樣子，但是要想像我們會(huì)成為什么樣的人就困難了，然后我們會(huì)錯(cuò)誤地認(rèn)為因?yàn)楹茈y想象，就不太可能會(huì)發(fā)生。很遺憾，當(dāng)人們說(shuō)“我可想象不出來(lái)”，他們通常是在表達(dá)他們?nèi)狈ο胂罅?，而不是他們所描述的不可能發(fā)生的事情。

The bottom line is, time is a powerful force. It transforms our preferences. It reshapes our values. It alters our personalities. We seem to appreciate this fact, but only in retrospect. Only when we look backwards do we realize how much change happens in a decade. It's as if, for most of us, the present is a magic time. It's a watershed on the timeline. It's the moment at which we finally become ourselves. Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you've ever been. The one constant in our life is change.

總而言之，時(shí)間是一種強(qiáng)大的力量。它改變了我們的喜好。它重塑了我們的價(jià)值觀。它改變了我們的人格。我們似乎會(huì)感激這個(gè)事實(shí)，但是只在回想過(guò)去的時(shí)候。只有在我們回首過(guò)去的時(shí)候我們才會(huì)認(rèn)識(shí)到在過(guò)去的十年里發(fā)生了多么大的變化。好像，對(duì)我們大多數(shù)人來(lái)說(shuō)，當(dāng)前是個(gè)有魔力的時(shí)刻。它是時(shí)間軸上的分水嶺。它是一個(gè)使我們最終成為我們自己的時(shí)刻。人類還處在發(fā)展變化的過(guò)程中，卻錯(cuò)誤地以為他們不會(huì)發(fā)生任何改變了?，F(xiàn)在的你只是處于過(guò)渡中，轉(zhuǎn)瞬即逝，暫時(shí)的的狀態(tài)而已，就像所有那些過(guò)去的你。在我們的生命中唯一不變的就是，變化。

Thank you.

謝謝大家。