2024年06月四级第2套长篇阅读匹配原文翻译及答案

A) Hal Hershfield, a psychologist at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, wanted to know why people weren't saving for retirement. Across the board, people are living longer. Logically, they'll need more money to live comfortably in their post-work years. And yet, savings rates in the U.S. have gone down in recent decades, not up.

加州大学洛杉矶分校安德森管理学院的心理学家哈尔·赫什菲尔德想探究人们为何不为退休储蓄。总体而言，人们的寿命在延长。按理说，他们需要更多钱才能在退休后舒适生活。然而，近几十年来，美国的储蓄率不升反降。

B) To help explain this seemingly irrational behavior, Hershfield and his team scanned the brains of study participants while asking them to what degree various traits (特征)—like "honorable" or "funny"—applied to their current self, their future self, a current other, or a future other. As participants answered, Hershfield's team recorded which parts of their brains lit up. Unsurprisingly, people's brains were most active when thinking about their current selves and least active when thinking about a current other. But the team found that participants' brain activity while considering their future selves more closely resembled their brain activity while thinking about a current other rather than the current self.

为了解释这种看似非理性的行为，赫什菲尔德及其团队在扫描研究参与者大脑的同时，询问他们各种特征（如“可敬”或“有趣”）在多大程度上适用于当前自我、未来自我、当前他人或未来他人。在参与者回答时，赫什菲尔德团队记录了哪些大脑区域被激活。不出所料，人们在思考当前自我时大脑最活跃，在思考当前他人时最不活跃。但团队发现，参与者在考虑未来自我时的大脑活动，更接近于思考当前他人时的大脑活动，而非当前自我。

C) Put in practical terms, when thinking of yourself in a month or a year or a decade, your brain registers that person in ways similar to how it would register Taylor Swift or the mailman. Understood in that way, saving for retirement is the equivalent of giving money away to someone else entirely.

从实际角度看，当你想象一个月、一年或十年后的自己时，大脑对这个人的处理方式类似于对泰勒·斯威夫特或邮递员的处理。这样理解的话，为退休储蓄就等同于把钱完全给了别人。

D) In light of Hershfield's study, one simple question arises: Is it possible to make our present selves give a damn about our future selves? The answers are anything but simple.

鉴于赫什菲尔德的研究，一个简单的问题浮现：我们能否让当前自我关心未来自我？答案绝非简单。

E) Seen through the lens of the present self versus the future self, our self-defeating actions—like choosing to watch television rather than go to the gym—suddenly make perfect sense. We get to enjoy the very concrete, immediate benefits of our actions while someone else (namely, our future selves) suffers the hypothetical (假设的), far-off consequences. As a result, the decisions we make for our present selves often look very different from our decisions for our future selves. We believe that tomorrow will be different. We believe that we will be different tomorrow; but in doing so, we prioritize our current mood over the consequences of our inaction for the future self.

从当前自我与未来自我的视角来看，我们的自毁行为——比如选择看电视而非去健身房——突然变得完全合理。我们享受行为带来的具体、即时的好处，而其他人（即我们的未来自我）承受假设的、遥远的后果。因此，我们为当前自我做出的决策，往往与为未来自我做出的决策大相径庭。我们相信明天会不同。我们相信明天我们会不同；但这样一来，我们优先考虑当前情绪，而非不作为对未来的后果。

F) Understanding our procrastination (拖延) through the lens of the present and future selves, we're left with three possible solutions: The first is to force your future self to do whatever your present self doesn't want to do. The second is to convince your present self that your future self is, in fact, still you. If the central problem is that we think of our future selves as other people, it follows that trying to identify more closely with our future selves will encourage us to make better long-term decisions.

从当前自我和未来自我的角度理解拖延症，我们有三种可能的解决方案：第一种是强迫未来自我去做当前自我不愿做的事。第二种是说服当前自我，未来自我实际上仍然是你。如果核心问题在于我们将未来自我视为他人，那么更紧密地认同未来自我将鼓励我们做出更好的长期决策。

G) In a follow-up study, Hershfield wanted to explore ways to bridge the disconnect between the present and future selves and encourage people to save more for retirement. He and his team took photos of study participants, and then used image processing to visually age their faces. Participants were then placed in a virtual reality setting where they could look into a mirror and see their aged selves looking back at them. Participants who saw their aged selves said they would save 30% more of their salary for retirement than the control group.

在一项后续研究中，赫什菲尔德想探索如何弥合当前自我与未来自我之间的脱节，并鼓励人们为退休多储蓄。他和团队拍摄了研究参与者的照片，然后使用图像处理技术视觉老化他们的面部。参与者随后被置于虚拟现实环境中，可以照镜子看到年老的自己回望他们。看到年老自己的参与者表示，他们将为退休储蓄比对照组多30%的工资。

H) Whatever your long-term goals may be—getting in better shape, launching your own business, writing a book—thinking about your deadline in terms of days rather than months or years can help you wrap your mind around how close the future really is.

无论你的长期目标是什么——塑形、创业、写书——用天数而非月或年来思考截止日期，可以帮助你更好地理解未来究竟有多近。

I) The third solution is to forget about your future self and use your present self's love of instant gratification (满足感) to your advantage. While the two tactics (手段) above can be effective in making better long-term choices, in the end, you're still struggling against human nature. Our brains are hard-wired for instant gratification. Instead of fighting your present self's need for immediate rewards, why not use it to your advantage? When most of us set goals, we focus on long-term results we want to see—e.g., losing weight, getting a promotion, retiring in comfort, etc. While those visions of our future selves can be inspiring, when it comes to actually doing the day-to-day work, it may be more effective to reframe activities in terms of their immediate, or at least very near-term, rewards.

第三种解决方案是忘记未来自我，并利用当前自我对即时满足感的热爱来为自己谋利。虽然上述两种手段在做出更好长期选择方面可能有效，但最终，你仍在与人性斗争。我们的大脑天生追求即时满足。与其对抗当前自我对即时奖励的需求，何不利用它？当我们大多数人设定目标时，我们关注的是希望看到的长期结果——如减肥、升职、舒适退休等。虽然这些未来自我的愿景可能鼓舞人心，但当实际执行日常工作时，将活动重构为即时或至少非常近期的奖励可能更有效。

J) Take writing this article, for instance. It's easy for me to imagine how amazing it will feel at the end of the workday to have this article done. This isn't just my opinion. Research partners Kaitlin Woolley of Cornell University and Ayelet Fishbach of the University of Chicago have made a career out of studying the differences between the goals that people achieve and the ones that fall to the wayside.

以写这篇文章为例。我很容易想象，在工作日结束时完成这篇文章会有多棒。这不仅仅是我的观点。研究合作伙伴康奈尔大学的凯特琳·伍利和芝加哥大学的阿耶莱特·菲什巴赫，一直致力于研究人们实现的目标与半途而废的目标之间的差异。

K) "In one study, we asked people online about the goals they set at the beginning of the year. Most people set goals to achieve delayed, long-term benefits, such as career advancement, debt repayment, or improved health. We asked these individuals how enjoyable it was to pursue their goal, as well as how important their goal was. We also asked whether they were still working on their goals two months after setting them. We found that enjoyment predicted people's goal persistence two months after setting the goal far more than how important they rated their goal to be," Woolley said.

“在一项研究中，我们在线询问人们年初设定的目标。大多数人设定目标以实现延迟的长期利益，如职业发展、债务偿还或健康改善。我们询问这些人追求目标的乐趣程度，以及目标的重要性。我们还问他们在设定目标两个月后是否仍在努力。我们发现，在设定目标两个月后，乐趣比他们评级的目标重要性更能预测人们的坚持程度，”伍利说。

L) This pattern held true across a wide variety of goals from exercising to studying to eating healthier foods. For example, people ate 50% more of a healthy food when directed to focus on the good taste rather than the long-term health benefits. Other studies have shown a greater uptake of exercise in people who were told to think of the enjoyment of doing the exercise now rather than future health gains.

这种模式在从锻炼、学习到吃更健康食物等多种目标中都成立。例如，当被指示专注于美味而非长期健康益处时，人们多吃了50%的健康食品。其他研究表明，那些被引导思考当下锻炼乐趣而非未来健康收益的人，锻炼参与度更高。

M) These findings suggest that when it comes to achieving your goals, enjoying the process itself is more important than wanting the long-term benefits. In other words, present self trumps (战胜) future self. Who says instant gratification has to be a bad thing? By all means, set ambitious long-term goals for your future self, but when it comes to actually following through day-to-day, make sure your present self knows what's in it for her too.

这些发现表明，在实现目标方面，享受过程本身比渴望长期利益更重要。换句话说，当前自我战胜了未来自我。谁说即时满足一定是坏事？尽管为你未来的自己设定雄心勃勃的长期目标，但在实际日常执行中，也要确保当前自我知道她能从中获得什么。