雪妖精01的小说:为什么高智商的人更易吸毒

Why Kids With High IQs Are More Likely to Take Drugs为什么高智商的人更容易吸毒

By MAIA SZALAVITZ 

People with high IQs are more likely to smoke marijuana and take other illegal drugs, compared with those who score lower on intelligence tests, according to a new study from the U.K.

根据英国一次最新的研究，高智商的人群比在智力测试中得低分的人更可能吸食大麻或者服用其它非法药品。

"It's counterintuitive," says lead author James White of the Center for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement at Cardiff University in Wales. "It's not what we thought we would find."

“这是有悖直觉的，”威尔士卡迪夫大学公众健康综合干预发展与评估中心的首席作者，詹姆斯怀特说。“调查的结果与我们事先的预测大相径庭。”

The research was based on interviews with some 7,900 British people born in early April 1970. Researchers measured the participants IQs at ages 5 and 10, then followed up with them at ages 16 and 30, asking about symptoms of psychological distress and drug use as part of a larger survey.

这项研究建立在对约7900名出生在1970年4月上旬的英国人的抽样调查基础上。研究者曾在受访者5-10岁时测试过他们的智商，其后又在他们16-30岁时期做了跟进调查，了解他们的心理问题症状以及毒品使用情况，作为一个更大规模调查的一部分。

At age 30, about 35% of men and 16% of women said they had smoked marijuana at least once in the previous year; over the same time period, 9% of men and 4% of women said they had taken cocaine. Previous-year drug users tended to have scored higher on IQ tests than non-users.

在30岁时，约35%的男性和16%的女性声称在前一年里他们至少抽过一次大麻。在同一时间阶段，9%的男性和4%的女性承认吸食过可卡因。总体上，这些在过去一年中有毒品经历的人比没有的人在智商测试中取得过更好的成绩。

The IQ effect was larger in women: women in the top third of the IQ range at age 5 were more than twice as likely to have taken marijuana or cocaine by age 30, compared with those scoring in the bottom third. The men with the highest IQs were nearly 50% more likely to have taken amphetamines and 65% more likely to have taken ecstasy, compared to those with lower scores.

这种智商对吸毒倾向性的影响在女性中表现的更为明显。在5岁智商测试中排前三位的女性比起最后三位，到30岁为止吸食过大麻或可卡因的可能性高出了两倍多。测试中智商最高的男性服用过安非他命和迷幻剂的概率比得分较低的男性分别高50%和65%。

And these results held even when researchers controlled for factors like socioeconomic status and psychological distress, which are also correlated with rates of drug use.

这些结果在研究者抑制其它影响因子时仍然成立，比如社会经济地位，心理问题等也跟毒品使用有关的因素。

So why might smarter kids be more likely to try drugs? "People with high IQs are more likely to score high on personality scales of openness to experience," says White. "They may be more willing to experiment and seek out novel experiences."

那么，为什么更聪明的孩子可能更容易尝试毒品呢？“高智商的人在对经历的个人开放尺度上，得分会更高，”怀特说。“他们可能更愿意去体验和发现小说一般的经历。”1

Another factor could be that the messages used to attempt to deter teens from drug use — particularly during the 1980s in the U.K. when the study group was in adolescence — weren't exactly known for the subtlety of their reasoning, so they may not have targeted the smarter group well.

另一个可能的原因是，那些用于试图阻止青少年吸毒的标语和口号—特别是在英国80年代，对毒品的研究和了解还处于幼稚阶段时的—因缺乏令人信服的说服力，对高智商人群的效果可能不佳。

"What you typically find is that people with high IQs are less likely to smoke [cigarettes], more likely to be active and to have a good diet," says White, noting that they are also likely to have high socioeconomic status. People in this group tend to make healthy choices, based both on health information and their own experience.

你通常会发现，高智商的人吸烟的可能性更小，积极生活以及科学膳食的可能性更高，”怀特补充道，同时他们的社会经济地位往往更高。这个人群倾向于作出健康层面的选择，既根据医疗健康知识，也根据其自身经历。

This group isn't likely to see occasional drug use as particularly harmful, White says, both because there is little data to suggest great risk of harm from such use and because evidence of harm is rare among their peers. "With smoking, the evidence [about its dangers] is overwhelming," says White, "whereas when you look at things like cannabis use, since they are more likely to associate with people who are similar to them, they are likely to see that smoking cannabis relatively infrequently doesn't have huge impact."

这个人群通常不会认为偶尔使用毒品有特别大的危害，怀特说，因为既没有什么数据可以支持这个理论，他们的交际圈里这种危害存在的实际例证也微乎其微。“说到吸烟的危害，现实例子铺天盖地数不甚数，”怀特说，“但是当你考虑像吸食大麻这类事物，由于他们往往结交的都是与自己类似的人，所以通常会觉得相对偶发的吸食大麻没有太大影响。

In contrast, drug users with less education and wealth are more likely to be exposed to negative consequences of drug use. This is due in part to the fact that money itself can buy protection against the types of criminal involvement and disease that can affect poor drug users.

与此相对，受教育程度更低或者更贫穷的吸毒者则更易受到吸毒负面结果的影响。原因之一是金钱的保护可以让你远离犯罪与疾病的泥潭，而贫困的吸毒者没有这一层保护。

"The likely mechanism is openness to experience," White concludes, "and, I think, it's also this idea of having an educated view of risk as well." (Of course, American views about what consists of an "educated" perspective on drug risks have often clashed with those of the more relaxed position typically taken in Europe.)

“此现象出现最可能的原理，是对于经历的开放程度，”怀特总结说，“以及从受过教育的理性角度看待风险的观点。”（当然，美国关于毒品风险的“受过教育的理性的”观点与欧洲更放松更休闲的观点在内容上常常相互抵触。）

The study didn't look at the risk of addiction among those with high IQs because it wasn't able to measure the frequency of drug use in participants. However, earlier research has found a connection between high IQ and greater risk of alcohol abuse and dependence.

这项研究没有涉及高智商人群中药物成瘾的风险，因为不能测量受访者的药物使用频率。尽管如此，以前更早的研究已经证明了高智商与更大的酒精滥用与依赖性之间，存在某种联系。

That could potentially be linked to the boredom and social isolation experienced by many gifted children, the authors note. But since a link between IQ and drug use remains independent of psychological distress, that can't be all that's going on. "It rules out the argument that the only reason people take illegal drugs is to self medicate," says White.

这个结果可以潜在地与许多有天赋的孩子所经历过的精神空虚与社会孤寂相联系，作者写道。然而智商与药物使用之间的联系并没有纳入心理问题的影响，因此它不可能是导致吸毒的唯一原因。"有一点是毋庸置疑的，人们服用非法药物的唯一原因，是为了麻醉自己,"怀特说。