ted演讲稿：人际关系的潜在影响

ted演讲稿：人际关系的潜在影响

我们都身处在由朋友、家人、同事等所构建的庞大的社会网络之中。医学社会学家尼古拉斯追踪发现了一系列的特质，诸如快乐和肥胖，是如何传递的，解释了你在社会网络中所处的地位是如何以你意想不到的方式影响着你的生活。

For me, this story begins about 15 years ago, when

I was a hospice doctor at the University of Chicago.

And I was taking care of people who were dying and their

families in the South Side of Chicago. And I was

observing what happened to people and their families

over the course of their terminal illness. And in my

lab, I was studying the widower effect, which is a very

old idea in the social sciences, going back 150 years,

known as "dying of a broken heart." So, when I die, my

wife's risk of death can double, for instance, in the

first year. And I had gone to take care of one particular

patient, a woman who was dying of dementia. And in this

case, unlike this couple, she was being cared for by

her daughter. And the daughter was exhausted from

caring for her mother. And the daughter's husband, he

also was sick from his wife's exhaustion. And I was driving home one day, and I get a phone call from the

husband's friend, calling me because he was depressed

about what was happening to his friend. So here I get

this call from this random guy that's having an

experience that's being influenced by people at some

social distance.

XX

对于我来说，这个故事是15年前开始的。当时我是芝加哥大学安养院的医生，在芝加哥的南边地区照顾临终的病人和他们的亲属。我借此来观察疾病晚期病人和家属所经历的一切。而在我的实验室里，我当时正在研究“寡妇效应”，这是社会科学中非常古老的一个观点，可追述到150年前，当时被称为是“心碎之死”。举个例子来说，如果我去世的话，我妻子在我逝世之后一年的死亡率会加倍。我当时照料的病人中，有一位是死于痴呆症的女士。和夫妻的例子不同的是，当时照顾这位女士的是她的女儿。这个女儿因为照顾老母而筋疲力竭，而女儿的丈夫也因为妻子的疲劳而患上疾病。有一天我正开车回家，收到一通来自这个丈夫的朋友的电话，原因是他为他朋友所经历的一切感到忧郁。我就这样神奇地接到一个陌生人的电话，全因为他的经历受到了一些和他有一定“社会距离”的人的影响。

XX And so I suddenly realized two very simple things:

First, the widowhood effect was not restricted to

husbands and wives. And second, it was not restricted

to pairs of people. And I started to see the world in

a whole new way, like pairs of people connected to each

other. And then I realized that these individuals would

be connected into foursomes with other pairs of people

nearby. And then, in fact, these people were embedded

in other sorts of relationships: marriage and spousal

and friendship and other sorts of ties. And that, in

fact, these connections were vast and that we were all

embedded in this broad set of connections with each

other. So I started to see the world in a pletely new

way and I became obsessed with this. I became obsessed

with how it might be that we're embedded in these social

networks, and how they affect our lives. So, social

networks are these intricate things of beauty, and

they're so elaborate and so plex and so ubiquitous, in

fact, that one has to ask what purpose they serve. Why

are we embedded in social networks I mean, how do they

form How do they operate And how do they effect us

XX 我也因此突然意识到了两件很简单的事情。首先，“寡妇效应”不仅仅局限于丈夫和妻子之间。其二，它也不仅仅局限于两个人之间。我开始以全新的视角观察这个世界，将世界看成是成双成对联系在一起的人们。我随后又意识到这些人，如果俩俩相配，便会变成四人小组。事实上，这些人都身处在其他各种人际关系中──婚姻、伴侣、友情、等等。事实上，这些关联是如此之广泛，我们所有人都身处在这个广博的网络中，与彼此相连。所以我开始以全新的角度看待这个世界，并沉迷其中。我为我们是如何陷入这些社会网络中而着迷，也为这些网络是如何影响我们的生活而着迷。这些社会网络是错综的艺术之作，它们是如此的精致、如此复杂、如此无所不在，使得我们不得不询问它们存在的意义是什么。我们为什么会身陷这些社会网络中它们是如何成立的是如何工作的它们是如何影响我们的

XX

So my first topic with respect to this, was not

death, but obesity. It had bee trendy to speak about

the "obesity epidemic." And, along with my collaborator,

James Fowler, we began to wonder whether obesity really

was epidemic and could it spread from person to person

like the four people I discussed earlier. So this is

a slide of some of our initial results. It's 2,200 people in the year 20XX. Every dot is a person. We make

the dot size proportional to people's body size; so

bigger dots are bigger people. In addition, if your body

size, if your BMI, your body mass index, is above 30

-- if you're clinically obese -- we also colored the

dots yellow. So, if you look at this image, right away

you might be able to see that there are clusters of obese

and non-obese people in the image. But the visual

plexity is still very high. It's not obvious exactly

what's going on. In addition, some questions are

immediately raised: How much clustering is there Is

there more clustering than would be due to chance alone

How big are the clusters How far do they reach And, most

importantly, what causes the clusters

XX

而我据此的第一个研究课题，不是死亡，而是肥胖症。突然间，讨论肥胖症变成了一个热门话题。我与同事James

Fowler开始研讨肥胖症是否真的是一种流行病，是否可以从一个人传染到另一个人身上，就如我之前讨论的那四个人一样。 这里看到的是我们的初步研究结果。 这是20XX年接受研究的2200人。每个圆点代表着一个人。圆点的大小和人的身形成正比。所以大的圆点代表身形大的人。除此之外，