2010年考研英语一阅读 Text 3 原文翻译及答案解析

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that "social epidemics" are driven in large part by the actions of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well connected. The idea is intuitively compelling, but it doesn't explain how ideas actually spread.

在他的书《引爆点》中，马尔科姆·格拉德威尔认为，“社会流行”在很大程度上是由极少数特殊个体的行动所驱动的，这些人通常被称为影响者，他们异常见多识广、有说服力或人脉广泛。这个想法在直觉上很有说服力，但它并没有解释思想是如何实际传播的。

The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible-sounding but largely untested theory called the "two-step flow of communication": Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else. Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those select people will do most of the work for them. The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of certain looks, brands, or neighborhoods. In many such cases, a cursory search for causes finds that some small group of people was wearing, promoting, or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. Anecdotal evidence of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends.

影响者所谓的的重要性源于一个听起来合理但很大程度上未经检验的理论，称为“两级传播理论”：信息从媒体流向影响者，再从他们流向其他所有人。营销人员拥抱了这一理论，因为它表明，如果他们能找到并影响影响者，这些精选的人将为他们完成大部分工作。该理论似乎还能解释某些外观、品牌或社区的突然且意外的流行。在许多此类情况下，粗略地寻找原因会发现，在其他人注意到之前，一小群人就已经在穿着、推广或发展任何相关事物。这类轶事证据很好地契合了只有某些特殊人物才能驱动趋势的观点。

In their recent work, however, some researchers have come up with the finding that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they don't seem to be required at all.

然而，在他们最近的研究中，一些研究人员发现，影响者对社会流行的影响远小于通常认为的。事实上，他们似乎根本不是必需的。

The researchers' argument stems from a simple observation about social influence: With the exception of a few celebrities like Oprah Winfrey - whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence - even the most influential members of a population simply don't interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these non-celebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics, by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example, the cascade of change won't propagate very far or affect many people.

研究人员的论点源于对社会影响的一个简单观察：除了少数像奥普拉·温弗瑞这样的名人——其巨大影响力主要源于媒体而非人际影响——即使是一个群体中最有影响力的成员，也根本不会与那么多人互动。然而，根据两级传播理论，正是这些非名人影响者本应通过直接影响他们的朋友和同事来驱动社会流行。然而，对于社会流行的发生，每个受影响的人随后必须影响他或她自己的熟人，这些熟人又必须影响他们的熟人，依此类推；而其他人中有多少人关注这些人中的每一个，与最初的影响者关系不大。例如，如果网络中距离最初影响者仅两级的人证明有抵抗力，那么变化的级联就不会传播得很远或影响很多人。

Building on this basic truth about interpersonal influence, the researchers studied the dynamics of social influence by conducting thousands of computer simulations of populations, manipulating a number of variables relating to people's ability to influence others and their tendency to be influenced. They found that the principal requirement for what is called "global cascades" - the widespread propagation of influence through networks - is the presence not of a few influentials but, rather, of a critical mass of easily influenced people.

基于关于人际影响的这一基本事实，研究人员通过进行数千次人口计算机模拟来研究社会影响的动态，操纵了多个与人们影响他人能力和受影响倾向相关的变量。他们发现，所谓的“全球级联”——影响力通过网络的广泛传播——的主要要求不是少数影响者的存在，而是足够数量的易受影响人群的存在。