卷丹百合的花语:为什么我们总是吃太多？

在这里输入译文By Jonah Lehrer   November 7, 2011  |  3:39 pm  |  Categories: Frontal Cortex, Science Blogs 

“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.” 

“对我来说，人类有三种基本需求，即食物、健康和爱。这三种需求相互混合夹杂和纠缠，让我们无法抛开其余两种而直接思考其中的一种。”

- M.F.K. Fisher

-M.F.K. 费舍尔

Human beings are notoriously terrible at knowing when we’re no longer hungry. Instead of listening to our stomach – a very stretchy container – we rely on all sorts of external cues, from the circumference of the dinner plate to the dining habits of those around us. If the serving size is twice as large (and American serving sizes have grown 40 percent in the last 25 years), we’ll still polish it off. And then we’ll go have dessert.

当我们不在挨饿的时候，人类的知识就开始变得出了名的可怕。不用再听从胃这个非常有弹性的容器的命令-----我们的进食取决于各种外部的条件，从餐盘周围的环境到我们身边的饮食习惯。即便食物加一倍（实际上美国人的饮食分量从过去25年来增长的40个百分点），我们仍将擦亮餐盘继续吃甜点。

Consider a clever study done by Brian Wansink, a professor of marketing at Cornell. He used a bottomless bowl of soup – there was a secret tube that kept on refilling the bowl with soup from below – to demonstrate that how much people eat is largely dependent on how much you give them. The group with the bottomless bowl ended up consuming nearly 70 percent more than the group with normal bowls. What’s worse, nobody even noticed that they’d just slurped far more soup than normal.

康奈尔大学的营销教授布赖恩万辛克（Brian Wansink）做了一个聪明的研究，实验器材是一个无底的汤碗----碗底有一个秘密的管子，不停地将碗里的汤补满。通过这个方法可以知道人们摄入食物的多少和获得食物的多少究竟有什么相互关系。碗底有秘密试管的那个小组让实验得出了一个让人困惑的结果：接受实验者喝掉了比对照组多将近百分之七十的汤。更糟糕的是，实验组没有人发现他们喝的比正常情况下更多。

Or look at this study, done in 2006 by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania. One day, they left out a bowl of chocolate M&M’s in an upscale apartment building. Next to the bowl was a small scoop. The following day, they refilled the bowl with M&M’s but placed a much larger scoop beside it. The result would not surprise anyone who has ever finished a Big Gulp soda or a supersized serving of McDonald’s fries: when the scoop size was increased, people took 66 percent more M&M’s. Of course, they could have taken just as many candies on the first day; they simply would have had to take a few more scoops. But just as larger serving sizes cause us to eat more, the larger scoop made the residents more gluttonous.

或者我们来看看这个2006年心理学家在宾夕法尼亚大学做的实验：研究人员某日将一碗M&M巧克力留在一个高档公寓内，在碗的旁边有一个小勺。第二天他们重新盛满的这碗M&M巧克力，但是在旁边放了一个大得多的勺子。实验结果不会让在座任何一位喝完过大杯苏打或者消灭掉过麦当劳超大包薯条的人惊讶：当勺子从小号换成大号之后，碗中的M&M巧克力被多吃了百分之六十六。他们只是被迫用了大勺，但是依照给的更多吃的更多的原理，大勺带来了人们的饕餮大餐。

Serving size isn’t the only variable influencing how much we consume. As M.F.K. Fisher noted, eating is a social activity, intermingled with many of our deeper yearnings and instincts. And this leads me to a new paper by David Dubois, Derek Ruckner and Adam Galinsky, psychologists at HEC Paris and the Kellogg School of Management. The question they wanted to answer is why people opt for bigger serving sizes. If we know that we’re going to have a tough time not eating all those French fries, then why do we insist on ordering them? What drives us to supersize?

提供的食物量并不是影响我们摄入食品的唯一变量。M.F.K 费舍尔(M.F.K. Fisher)注意到，饮食实际上也是一个社会活动，它与我们更深的本能和渴望混在一起。讲到这一点，我要新起一个章，它是来自巴黎HEC商学院和凯洛格管理学院的心理学家门大卫·杜波依斯(David Dubois)、德里克·鲁克那(Derek Ruckner)和亚当·加林斯基(Adam Galinsky)的观点。他们要回答的问题是，为什么人们会选择更大分量的食物。问题是，如果我们已经知道自己将和这些分量惊人的法国薯条作斗争，为什么一开始我们还是要点这么多呢？是什么在暗中驱使我们大分量点餐？

The hypothesis of Galinsky, et. al. is that supersizing is a subtle marker of social status. Here are the researchers:

加林斯基(Glinsky)的假设是，大分量点餐是人们社会地位的微妙标志。以下是研究人员的说法：

The act of choosing a speci?c size within a set of hierarchically arranged options is one avenue by which individuals signal to others their relative rank in a social hierarchy. As a consequence, larger options would be selected by consumers, not merely out of a functional need for hunger but due to a desire to signal status.

“人们在有等级排列的食物选择中选取大分量食物的举动是人们向他人表明自己的社会等级的一个途径。由此可见，顾客选择大分量食物不是出于食欲需要，而是想要显示自己的社会地位。”

This isn’t such a strange conjecture. Think, for instance,of the alpha males in those David Attenborough specials on television –– the most powerful animal is the one who eats the most, getting access to the felled antelope before anyone else. Or think of all the cultural norms that associate larger products with increased status, from the screen size of televisions to the square footage of houses. In category after category, bigger isn’t just better – it’s also far more prestigious, a signal that we can afford to splurge on spare rooms we’ll never use.

这并不是一种荒诞的猜想。试想，例如电视上那种诸如大卫·阿滕伯勒 (David Attenborough) 类的阿尔法男性----最强大的动物是吃的最多的动物，能在别人之前捕获更多的羚羊。或者想想所有那些将消商品的“多、大”联系到“保持增长”上的社会文化------从电视机屏幕的尺寸到房屋的大小。一个又一个的分类中我们可以看出，更“大”不仅仅代表了更好，它也能增加更多声望，它代表我们有能力在住房面积上挥霍，哪怕很多平方我们都根本不会用到。

To test whether this same principle applies to food, the psychologists ran a number of simple experiments. In one study, the demonstrated that subjects perceived those with a larger coffee as having more status than someone who chose medium or small, even when the price was the same. (The effect also applied to pizzas and smoothies.) In a second experiment, subjects were randomly assigned to “power” or “powerless” conditions, in which they were told to recall an experience “in which you had power over another individual” or “another individual had power over you.” It turned out that those in the powerless conditions were twice as likely to choose the biggest size of smoothie (with more than double the calories) as those in the powerful or control conditions. (Those primed with power preferred the smallest size.) This same pattern held with bagels, even when prices were constant: those in the powerless condition chose bigger bagel pieces and consumed about 30 percent more calories than those in the power condition.

为了测试这个道理是也可以用在摄取食物上，心理学家们进行了一系列的简单实验。在某个试验中，受试者认为拿着大杯咖啡的人比拿着中杯或者小杯咖啡的人拥有更高的社会地位，哪怕这三杯咖啡的价格是相同的。（同样的结果也出现在用披萨或者冰沙做实验时。）在第二个实验中。受试者被随机贴上“有权利”和“没权利”的标签，然后让他们回忆“你比别人更有权利”和“别人比你更有权利”的经验。实验结果是，那些被贴上“没权利”标签的受试者选择最大杯冰沙（比小杯冰沙多一倍以上的卡路里）的概率比那些被贴上“有权利”的标签的受试者大了一倍。（那些“有权利”的受试者选择了最小杯。）用面包圈做实验的结果也一样，哪怕价格成为了考虑因素之一：那些在“没权利”情况下的受试者选择了最大的面包圈，并且摄入了比在“有权利”情况下的受试者多百分之三十的热量。

Needless to say, this paper captures a tragic dynamic behind overeating. It appears that one of the factors causing us to consume too much food is a lack of social status, as we try to elevate ourselves by supersizing meals. Unfortunately, this only leads to rampant weight gain which, as the researchers note, “jeopardizes future rank through the accompanying stigma of being overweight.” In other words, it’s a sad feedback loop of obesity, a downward spiral of bigger serving sizes that diminish the very status we’re trying to increase.

不用说，这一章揭示了暴饮暴食背后可怜的动力。事实证明，我们吃过多食物的原因之一是社会地位的地下，似乎我们想通过大餐来提升自己的地位。不幸的是，这种行为只带来了体重的飙升。正如研究人员所说的：“危害我们未来的社会地位，伴随着令人羞耻的肥胖。”换句话说，这是一个伴随着肥胖的负面循环，一个螺旋向下的模式。吃大餐降低了我们正在苦心营造试图增加的社会地位。

But there is hope for our expanding waistlines. When powerless participants were first told that smaller hors d’oeuvres were served at more prestigious events, the psychologists were able to reverse the effect. Although powerless participants initially consumed 30 more calories than others – they tried to compensate for their lack of status by eating more – learning about the prestige of small appetizers led them to eat 25 less calories than those primed with power. “Understanding and monitoring the size-to-status relationship of food options within an assortment is an important tool at the disposal of policy makers to effectively fight against overconsumption,” the scientists write.

不过这里也有我们日益肥大的腰身的福音。心理学家可以扭转试验结果，如果“无权利”的受试者被首先告知小份额餐只在更高档的场合食用。虽然“无权利”的受试者一开始进食了比别人多百分之三十的卡路里----因为他们希望通过吃的更多弥补自己不足的地位----知道了吃的更少反而更有地位时，他们吃的比“有权利”的受试者少了百分之二十五。“在多种情况下理解和监控食物分量----社会地位关系是决策者打肥胖治理这一仗的一个常重要的手段。”科学家如是写到。  

The larger point is that we don’t just eat to fill the void in our belly. Instead, we eat excessively to fill all sorts of empty spots, one of which is a chronic lack of status.

重要一点：我们进食不只是果腹。从更深层次来说，我们进食是为了各种内心渴求，其中一种就是满足长期不理想的社会地位。