如何与人打交道：人际关系的潜在影响

Q168

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。

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.

Q168

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？
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 completely 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 complex 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?

夜神◕_̯͡◕

学习了，签个到.

Q168

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2000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，如果你的体重指数超过30的话，如果你被诊断有肥胖症，我们便把圆点涂成黄色。如果你这么大略地看看这张图的话，你也许可以看到肥胖的人和非肥胖的人有聚集的症状。但是这个视觉复杂性还是很高的，很难确切地说清其中的关联。除此之外，很多问题也立即产生。到底有多少聚集？所产生的聚集是不是要比单纯的巧合下所产生的聚集要多？聚集的大小是怎样？可以触及到多远？最重要的是，聚集的原因是什么？

So my first topic with respect to this, was not death, but obesity. It had become 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 2000. 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 complexity 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?

Q168

所以我们用数学的办法研究了一下这些聚集的大小。在这里可以看到，纵轴上代表的是，如果一个人的社会联系人中有人患有肥胖症的话，那么这个人患有肥胖症的几率会增加多少；横轴上代表的是，这两个人之间的分离指数。在最左端，你看到那条紫色线。它显示如果你的朋友们有肥胖症，你肥胖的可能性就会高出45%。接下来的那条红色线显示的是，如果你的朋友的朋友有肥胖症，你患肥胖症的可能性就会高出25%。 下一条线显示如果你朋友的朋友的朋友──你可能都不认识这个人──患有肥胖症的话，你患肥胖症的可能性就会高出10%。一直追溯到你朋友的朋友的朋友的朋友的时候，这层关系才会消失，这个人的身形和你的身形才不再会有关联。

So we did some mathematics to study the size of these clusters. This here shows, on the Y-axis, the increase in the probability that a person is obese given that a social contact of theirs is obese and, on the X-axis, the degrees of separation between the two people. On the far left, you see the purple line. It says that, if your friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 45 percent higher. And the next bar over, the [red] line, says if your friend's friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 25 percent higher. And then the next line over says if your friend's friend's friend, someone you probably don't even know, is obese, your risk of obesity is 10 percent higher. And it's only when you get to your friend's friend's friend's friends that there's no longer a relationship between that person's body size and your own body size.

Q168

所以，造成这种聚集的原因有哪些呢？至少有三种可能。第一种就是当我体重增加时，也导致了你的体重增加，类似磁场感应，由一个人传到另一个人。另一种可能，很显然，就是同类的聚合效应，物以类聚、人以群分。我之所以和你建立关系，正是因为我们俩身形相似。而最后一种可能，叫做混杂因素，因为它模糊我们找到真正原因的能力。这意味着我的增肥，并没有直接导致你体重增加，我也不是因为咱俩身形相似才和你建立关系，而是因为我们俩都接触到了相同的经历，比如说健康俱乐部，导致我们俩同时减肥。

Well, what might be causing this clustering? There are at least three possibilities: One possibility is that, as I gain weight, it causes you to gain weight. A kind of induction, a kind of spread from person to person. Another possibility, very obvious, is homophily, or, birds of a feather flock together; here, I form my tie to you because you and I share a similar body size. And the last possibility is what is known as confounding, because it confounds our ability to figure out what's going on. And here, the idea is not that my weight gain is causing your weight gain, nor that I preferentially form a tie with you because you and I share the same body size, but rather that we share a common exposure to something, like a health club that makes us both lose weight at the same time.

Q168

而当我们进一步研究这些数据的时候，我们发现了支持这三种可能的证据，包括磁场感应。我们发现如果你的朋友患有肥胖症，你在同一时期，患肥胖症的可能性会增加57%。造成这一现象的机理可以有很多。一种可能是你的朋友对你说──他们的行为传染了你，比如他们会说：“咱俩一起去吃点糕点，喝瓶啤酒吧。”致命的搭配，但你还是接受了这个搭配，你也开始和你朋友一样开始增肥。另一个潜在的可能性是当他们开始增肥的时候，你对合理身形的概念也随之发生了改变。在这种情况下，从一个人传到另一个人身上的不再是行为，而是准则。一个想法得以蔓延。
When we studied these data, we found evidence for all of these things, including for induction. And we found that if your friend becomes obese, it increases your risk of obesity by about 57 percent in the same given time period. There can be many mechanisms for this effect: One possibility is that your friends say to you something like -- you know, they adopt a behavior that spreads to you -- like, they say, "Let's go have muffins and beer," which is a terrible combination. (Laughter) But you adopt that combination, and then you start gaining weight like them. Another more subtle possibility is that they start gaining weight, and it changes your ideas of what an acceptable body size is. Here, what's spreading from person to person is not a behavior, but rather a norm: An idea is spreading.

Q168

一些新闻头条记者借机盗用我们的研究。我记得当时《纽约时报》的头条是“你越来越肥吗？ 怪罪你的那些肥朋友吧。”我们觉得很有趣的是，欧洲的头条记者们对此有不同的理解，他们的头条是：“你的朋友增肥了吗？也许你要自责一下。”（笑声）我们觉得这是对美国的一种很有趣的评论，一种事不关己、高高挂起，明哲保身的现象。

Now, headline writers had a field day with our studies. I think the headline in The New York Times was, "Are you packing it on? Blame your fat friends." (Laughter) What was interesting to us is that the European headline writers had a different take: They said, "Are your friends gaining weight? Perhaps you are to blame." (Laughter) And we thought this was a very interesting comment on America, and a kind of self-serving, "not my responsibility" kind of phenomenon.

Q168

在这里我要澄清一下，我们并不认为我们的研究支持对某一种身材的歧视。我们的下一个问题是：我们能否在视觉上直接看到这种传染现象？体重的增加真的是从一个人身上传到另一个人身上吗？这就变得很复杂了，因为我们要考虑到这个网络的结构、关系之间的建筑构造，是随时都在变的。更何况，肥胖症并不是只有单一中心的流行病，没有肥胖流行病的“零号病人”──如果找到这个人，那么肥胖症就是从他那边传出来的。但相反，肥胖症的流行有多个中心，多个人都在同时做着同样的事情。我将向你们展示一段30秒钟的视频演示，是花了我和James五年的人生才做好的。同样的，每个圆点都是一个人。每条连线都代表着某种人际关系。我们现在就要让它动起来，在30年间对这个网络进行每天的切割。

Now, I want to be very clear: We do not think our work should or could justify prejudice against people of one or another body size at all. Our next questions was: Could we actually visualize this spread? Was weight gain in one person actually spreading to weight gain in another person? And this was complicated because we needed to take into account the fact that the network structure, the architecture of the ties, was changing across time. In addition, because obesity is not a unicentric epidemic, there's not a Patient Zero of the obesity epidemic -- if we find that guy, there was a spread of obesity out from him -- it's a multicentric epidemic. Lots of people are doing things at the same time. And I'm about to show you a 30 second video animation that took me and James five years of our lives to do. So, again, every dot is a person. Every tie between them is a relationship. We're going to put this into motion now, taking daily cuts through the network for about 30 years.

Q168

圆点变得越来越大，你将看到一整片黄色，也会看到人的出生与死亡，圆点将会出现、又消逝。人际关系成立又瓦解。婚姻与离异，友情与断交，非常复杂，在短短30年间很多事情在发生，包括了肥胖的流行。在结尾处，你们将会看到肥胖者和非肥胖者在这个网络中出现扎堆的现象。 通过这个演示，我看待事物的方式得以改变，因为这个网络，这个随时间而变换的网络，是有记忆的，它移动着，其中的事物随其所动，它拥有着一种持久性；其中的人也许死去，但这种网络却不会死去，它仍旧持续着。它有着一种坚韧性，允许它恒久不变。

The dot sizes are going to grow, you're going to see a sea of yellow take over. You're going to see people be born and die -- dots will appear and disappear -- ties will form and break, marriages and divorces, friendings and defriendings. A lot of complexity, a lot is happening just in this 30-year period that includes the obesity epidemic. And, by the end, you're going to see clusters of obese and non-obese individuals within the network. Now, when looked at this, it changed the way I see things, because this thing, this network that's changing across time, it has a memory, it moves, things flow within it, it has a kind of consistency -- people can die, but it doesn't die; it still persists -- and it has a kind of resilience that allows it to persist across time.