TED英语演讲视频：放弃做“好人”，才能成为更好的人

TED是Technology, Entertainment, Design(科技、娱乐、设计)的缩写，这个会议的宗旨是"用思想的力量来改变世界"。TED演讲的特点是毫无繁杂冗长的专业讲座，观点响亮，开门见山，种类繁多，看法新颖。而且还是非常好的英语口语听力练习材料，建议坚持学习。TED演讲视频视频简介：

执着于做一个“好人”，有时候会阻碍你成为一个更好的人，社会心理学家多莉 · 丘格的这个演讲，解释了这一令人费解的道德行为中的心理学。我们对好人的定义总是非此即彼的，“我要做好人”的观念限制了你的成长，敢于承认错误，成为一个更好的人吧。

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?width=500&height=375&auto=0&vid=d0903ubbgvo

TED演讲稿

So a friend of mine was riding in a taxi to the airport the other day, and on the way, she was chatting with the taxi driver, and he said to her, with total sincerity, "I can tell you are a really good person." And when she told me this story later, she said she couldn't believe how good it made her feel, that it meant a lot to her. Now that may seem like a strong reaction from my friend to the words of a total stranger, but she's not alone. 

某天，我的一位朋友乘出租车去机场。在路上，她跟出租车司机闲聊，他用非常真诚的语气对她说：“我看得出你是个好人。”当她后来告诉我这个故事时，她说这让她感到无比的开心，那句话对她的意义重大。这看起来像是我朋友对陌生人话语的一种强烈反应，但她并非特例。

I'm a social scientist. I study the psychology of good people, and research in my field says many of us care deeply about feeling like a good person and being seen as a good person. Now, your definition of "good person" and your definition of "good person" and maybe the taxi driver's definition of "good person" -- we may not all have the same definition, but within whatever our definition is, that moral identity is important to many of us. 我是一个社会科学家。我研究关于好人的心理学，这个领域的研究显示，大家对自认为是“好人”，和被他人视为”好人“的感觉颇为在意。你对“好人”的定义，或是你对“好人”的定义，可能跟出租车司机定义的“好人”不同，我们也许没有相同的定义，但不管我们的定义是什么，这种道德认同对我们很多人都很重要。Now, if somebody challenges it, like they question us for a joke we tell, or maybe we say our workforce is homogenous, or a slippery business expense, we go into red-zone defensiveness a lot of the time. I mean, sometimes we call out all the ways in which we help people from marginalized groups, or we donate to charity, or the hours we volunteer to nonprofits. We work to protect that good person identity. It's important to many of us. 如果有人挑战这个事实，比如他质疑我们讲的笑话，或者他说我们的劳动是同质的，或者是一笔狡猾的商业支出，我们在这些时候会进入一种“红区警戒”状态。我的意思是，有时候我们会用各种方式来帮助那些处于社会边缘的人，或者向慈善组织捐赠，或者自愿成为非营利组织的义工。我们努力捍卫这种好人的身份，这对我们多数人都很重要。But what if I told you this? What if I told you that our attachment to being good people is getting in the way of us being better people? What if I told you that our definition of "good person" is so narrow, it's scientifically impossible to meet? And what if I told you the path to being better people just begins with letting go of being a good person? 但如果我告诉你们，我们对做好人的向往会阻止我们成为更好的人呢？如果我告诉你们，我们对“好人”的定义很狭隘，在科学角度上是无法实现的呢？又如果我告诉们，你成为更好的人的路径只需从抛弃做一个好人开始呢？

Now, let me tell you a little bit about the research about how the human mind works to explain. The brain relies on shortcuts to do a lot of its work. That means a lot of the time, your mental processes are taking place outside of your awareness, like in low-battery, low-power mode in the back of your mind. That's, in fact, the premise of bounded rationality. Bounded rationality is the Nobel Prize-winning idea that the human mind has limited storage resources, limited processing power, and as a result, it relies on shortcuts to do a lot of its work. So for example, some scientists estimate that in any given moment ... Better, better click, right? There we go. 

那么，让我告诉你们一些有关人类大脑是如何运作的研究，来解释我的说法。大脑依靠捷径完成很多工作，这意味着大部分时间，你的思维过程发生在你的意识之外，就像大脑处于低电量、低功耗模式下。其实，这是“有限理性”的前提。“有限理性”是诺贝尔奖得主的观点，人类大脑的存储资源是有限的，处理能力是有限的，因此，它依靠捷径来完成很多工作。所以举个例子，有些科学家估计在任何时刻…比如打个响指的瞬间，再来一次，这下打响了吧?

At any given moment, 11 million pieces of information are coming into your mind. Eleven million. And only 40 of them are being processed consciously. So 11 million, 40. 

在任意一个瞬间，数以千万计的信息会涌入你的大脑。整整1100万。而其中只有四十个被有意识地处理。所以1100万和40做下对比。

I mean, has this ever happened to you? Have you ever had a really busy day at work, and you drive home, and when you get in the door, you realize you don't even remember the drive home, like whether you had green lights or red lights. You don't even remember. You were on autopilot. Or have you ever opened the fridge, looked for the butter, swore there is no butter, and then realized the butter was right in front of you the whole time? These are the kinds of "whoops" moments that make us giggle, and this is what happens in a brain that can handle 11 million pieces of information coming in with only 40 being processed consciously. That's the bounded part of bounded rationality. 

你有没有经历过这样的事？在工作超忙的一天，你开车回家，到家门口时，发现你甚至不记得驾车时的事，比如是否过了红灯或绿灯。你甚至不记得这些。你当时相当于是在“自动驾驶”模式下。或者你有没有开过冰箱，寻找黄油，发誓没有黄油的痕迹，然后才意识到黄油一直就在你面前？这些都是回想起来让我们觉得好笑的时刻，这就是大脑为了应付1100万条涌进来的信息，但只有40条被有意识处理时所发生的事。这就是“有限理性"的有限部分。

This work on bounded rationality is what's inspired work I've done with my collaborators Max Bazerman and Mahzarin Banaji, on what we call bounded ethicality. So it's the same premise as bounded rationality, that we have a human mind that is bounded in some sort of way and relying on shortcuts, and that those shortcuts can sometimes lead us astray. With bounded rationality, perhaps it affects the cereal we buy in the grocery store, or the product we launch in the boardroom. With bounded ethicality, the human mind, the same human mind, is making decisions, and here, it's about who to hire next, or what joke to tell or that slippery business decision. 

这个关于有限理性的研究提供了我和我的搭档马克斯·巴泽曼和马扎林·巴纳吉研究“有限道德”的灵感来源。这和“有限理性”的前提是一样的，我们的大脑是受束缚的，它需要依赖捷径，并且这个捷径有时候会让我们误入歧途。考虑到人的有限理性，可能它会影响我们在杂货店买的麦片，或者我们在会议室推出的产品。当“有限道德”发生时，人类的大脑，如同有限理性一样，在做出决策。比如要雇佣谁？去讲什么笑话？或是那个狡猾的商业决策。

So let me give you an example of bounded ethicality at work. Unconscious bias is one place where we see the effects of bounded ethicality. So unconscious bias refers to associations we have in our mind, the shortcuts your brain is using to organize information, very likely outside of your awareness, not necessarily lining up with your conscious beliefs. Researchers Nosek, Banaji and Greenwald have looked at data from millions of people, and what they've found is, for example, most white Americans can more quickly and easily associate white people and good things than black people and good things, and most men and women can more quickly and easily associate men and science than women and science. And these associations don't necessarily line up with what people consciously think. They may have very egalitarian views, in fact. So sometimes, that 11 million and that 40 just don't line up. 

那么让我给你们一个有限道德体现在工作中的案例。“无意识偏见”是“有限道德”体现出的一个方面。“无意识偏见”指我们大脑中的联想，那些大脑用来组织信息的捷径，很可能在你的意识之外，不一定会符合你的意识信念。研究者诺斯，巴纳吉和格林沃尔德看过了数百万人的数据，他们发现的是，例如：多数美国白人能够更快和更轻松地把白人和好事联系起来，而非黑人和好事，而且多数人更倾向于把男性跟科学家联系起来，而不是把女性和科学家联系起来。而这些联系不一定与人们有意识的想法一致。事实上，他们可能有非常平等的观点。所以有时候，1100万与40的对比并不是很合理。

And here's another example: conflicts of interest. So we tend to underestimate how much a small gift -- imagine a ballpoint pen or dinner -- how much that small gift can affect our decision making. We don't realize that our mind is unconsciously lining up evidence to support the point of view of the gift-giver, no matter how hard we're consciously trying to be objective and professional. We also see bounded ethicality -- despite our attachment to being good people, we still make mistakes, and we make mistakes that sometimes hurt other people, that sometimes promote injustice, despite our best attempts, and we explain away our mistakes rather than learning from them. Like, for example, when I got an email from a female student in my class saying that a reading I had assigned, a reading I had been assigning for years, was sexist. Or when I confused two students in my class of the same race -- look nothing alike -- when I confused them for each other more than once, in front of everybody. 

这是另外一个例子：利益冲突。我们往往会低估一个小礼物的作用——比如一支圆珠笔或一顿晚餐——这个小礼物能对我们的决策产生多大的影响。我们意识不到自己的大脑会无意识地收集证据来支持送礼人的观点，无论我们多么努力地保持客观和专业。我们也能看到有界的道德——即便我们希望当一个好人，我们仍会犯错，我们犯的错误有时候会伤害他人，有时候会促进不公，尽管我们尽了最大的努力，我们还为自己的错误辩解，而不是从中学习。比如说，有天我收到了班上女同学的电邮，说我布置的阅读材料，这个我指定了好些年的阅读材料，有性别歧视。或者当我把班上同种族的两个学生弄混时——他们俩看起来一点也不像——当我在大家面前，不止一次把他们弄混时。

These kinds of mistakes send us, send me, into red-zone defensiveness. They leave us fighting for that good person identity. But the latest work that I've been doing on bounded ethicality with Mary Kern says that we're not only prone to mistakes -- that tendency towards mistakes depends on how close we are to that red zone. So most of the time, nobody's challenging our good person identity, and so we're not thinking too much about the ethical implications of our decisions, and our model shows that we're then spiraling towards less and less ethical behavior most of the time. 

这些类型的错误让我们……让我，进入了”红色警戒区“。它们让我们为好人的身份而战。但是我最近和玛丽·克恩做的关于有限道德的研究发现我们不仅容易犯错，犯错的倾向还取决于我们离红色区域的距离。大多数时候，没人质疑我们的好人身份。所以我们也没有想太多关于我们决定的伦理意义，我们的模型显示我们大部分时间都在朝着越来越少的道德行为发展。

On the other hand, somebody might challenge our identity, or, upon reflection, we may be challenging it ourselves. So the ethical implications of our decisions become really salient, and in those cases, we spiral towards more and more good person behavior, or, to be more precise, towards more and more behavior that makes us feel like a good person, which isn't always the same, of course. The idea with bounded ethicality is that we are perhaps overestimating the importance our inner compass is playing in our ethical decisions. We perhaps are overestimating how much our self-interest is driving our decisions, and perhaps we don't realize how much our self-view as a good person is affecting our behavior, that in fact, we're working so hard to protect that good person identity, to keep out of that red zone, that we're not actually giving ourselves space to learn from our mistakes and actually be better people. 另一方面，有人可能会质疑我们的身份。或者，经过反思后我们会挑战自己。所以我们决定的伦理意义变得非常突出，在这些情况下，我们会越来越倾向于好人的行为，或者，更准确地说，越来越倾向于使我们感觉像个好人的行为，当然，有时候两者并不一样。有限道德的观点是，我们可能高估了我们内在的指南针在道德决策中的重要性。我们可能高估了我们的自身利益驱使我们做出决策的程度，也许我们没有意识到身为一个好人的自我认同感对我们的行为有多大的影响，事实上，我们如此努力地去捍卫我们的好人身份，远离红区，以致于我们没有足够的空间从错误中学习，去真正做一个更好的人。It's perhaps because we expect it to be easy. We have this definition of good person that's either-or. Either you are a good person or you're not. Either you have integrity or you don't. Either you are a racist or a sexist or a homophobe or you're not. And in this either-or definition, there's no room to grow. And by the way, this is not what we do in most parts of our lives. Life, if you needed to learn accounting, you would take an accounting class, or if you become a parent, we pick up a book and we read about it. We talk to experts, we learn from our mistakes, we update our knowledge, we just keep getting better. But when it comes to being a good person, we think it's something we're just supposed to know, we're just supposed to do, without the benefit of effort or growth. 这可能是因为我们期待它会很容易。我们对好人的定义是非此即彼的。要么你是好人，要么不是。要么你诚实，要么不诚实。要么你是种族主义者，或者性别歧视，或者恐同者，要么都不是。在这个非此即彼的定义中，没有任何成长的空间。顺便说一句：这不是我们在大部分生活中做的事情。生活中，如果你需要学习会计，你可能会报个会计班，或者如果你成为父母，我们会去找本书，学习为人父母之道。我们跟专家交流，我们从错误中学习，我们更新我们的知识，我们不断变得更好。但当涉及到成为好人时，我们则认为这是我们应该知道的，我们应该去做的，却无需获得努力和成长带来的好处。So what I've been thinking about is what if we were to just forget about being good people, just let it go, and instead, set a higher standard, a higher standard of being a good-ish person? A good-ish person absolutely still makes mistakes. As a good-ish person, I'm making them all the time. But as a good-ish person, I'm trying to learn from them, own them. I expect them and I go after them. I understand there are costs to these mistakes. When it comes to issues like ethics and bias and diversity and inclusion, there are real costs to real people, and I accept that. As a good-ish person, in fact, I become better at noticing my own mistakes. I don't wait for people to point them out. I practice finding them, and as a result ... Sure, sometimes it can be embarrassing, it can be uncomfortable. We put ourselves in a vulnerable place, sometimes. But through all that vulnerability, just like in everything else we've tried to ever get better at, we see progress. We see growth. We allow ourselves to get better. 所以我在想的是：如果我们忘记做一个好人会怎样？就这么随它去，反之，设立一个更高的标准，一个善良人的更高标准？一个善良的人无疑仍会犯错误。作为一个善良的人，我常常都会犯错误。但作为一个善良人，我试图从错误中学习，解决问题。不逃避错误，而是直面它们。我知道这些错误要付出代价，当涉及到伦理、偏见、多样性和包容等问题时，这对真实的人来说是真实存在的代价，而我接受这个事实。作为一个好人，事实上，我变得更善于发现自己的错误。我不用等别人指出它们，我锻炼自己去寻找它们，结果呢？当然，这有时候会让人感到很尴尬，会觉得不舒服。有时，我们会变得很脆弱。但克服了所有的弱点后，就像所有一切我们努力改进的东西一样，我们可以看到进步。我们可以看到成长。我们允许自己变得更好。

Why wouldn't we give ourselves that? In every other part of our lives, we give ourselves room to grow -- except in this one, where it matters most. 

为什么我们不能允许自己变得更好？在我们生活的其他方面，我们都给了自己成长的空间，然而在这个最重要的方面，却始终无所作为。

Thank you. 谢谢大家。▼往期精彩回顾▼艾玛沃特森联合国经典演讲《HE FOR SHE》，英音之典范！
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