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Psychology
心理学
Alone in the crowd
人群中的孤独
Loneliness is a contagious disease
孤独会传染
ON THE surface, Framingham, Massachusetts looks like any other American town. Unbeknown to most who pass through this serene place, however, it is a gold mine for medical research. Since 1948 three generations of residents in Framingham have participated in regular medical examinations originally intended to study the spread of heart disease. In the years since, researchers have also used Framingham to track obesity, smoking and even happiness over long periods of time. Now a new study that uses Framingham to analyse loneliness has found that it spreads very much like a communicable disease.
从表面上看，马萨诸塞州的弗雷明汉人和美国其它城镇人没有什么区别。然而这个宁静，不为人知的地方是对于医学研究来说，则是个金矿。自1948年，有三代弗雷明汉的居民参与到常规的健康体检中，最初的目的为了研究心脏病的传播。从那时候开始，研究人员在弗雷明汉对人们肥胖、吸烟、以及幸福感进行了长时间的跟踪调查。目前，一项新的研究通过对弗雷明汉的数据分析，表明孤独的传播方式极其像一种传染病。
Feeling lonely is more than just unpleasant for those who yearn to be surrounded by warm relationships—it is a health hazard. Numerous studies show that loneliness reduces fruit-fly lifespans, increases the chances of mice developing diabetes, and causes a host of adverse effects in people, including cardiovascular disease, obesity and weakening of the immune system. Simply being surrounded by others is no cure. In people, the mere perception of being isolated is more than enough to create the bad health effects. However, in spite of its significant impact, precious little is known about how loneliness moves through communities.
孤独感不仅仅令那些渴望与周围人建立良好关系的人产生不快，而且还会威胁他们的健康。众多的研究表明孤独感会减少果蝇的寿命，增加老鼠得糖尿病的几率，对人们健康造成一系列不利影响，其中包括心脑血管疾病，肥胖症以及减弱免疫系统。仅仅有人在身旁并不能起到治疗的作用。对人们来说，仅仅感到被孤立就足以产生对健康不利的影响。尽管孤独感有如此重大的影响 ，但是它是如何在人群中传播的——却不为人知。
a host of ：许多；大量 eg：Plants offer a host of health benefits 植物提供有关健康的许多好处。
more than enough ：绰绰有余
Keen to shed some light on the mystery, John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago and his colleagues turned to the Framingham data. They found that all participants in the study were routinely asked to list people who would probably know their whereabouts in the next two to four years. Most importantly, they were asked to describe their relationship with each person as friend, spouse, sibling, neighbour or colleague. The original purpose of such questions was to help the researchers behind the heart-disease project stay in touch with participants even when they moved out of Framingham. But the loneliness team immediately recognised them as a way to identify social interactions.
怀着对揭开谜团的热切渴望，芝加哥大学的卡西奥普和他的同事研究开始弗雷明汉的数据。他们发现，在以前的研究过程中有要求实验对象按照常规列出在未来两到四年可能知道他们行踪的人。最重要的是，让他们描述一下自己和这些朋友、爱人，兄弟姊妹，邻居或同事的关系。提出这些问题的初衷是为了帮助研究人员在心脏病研究的过程中可以和实验对象一直保持联系，即使他们离开弗雷明汉。孤独症研究小组很快就意识到：他们可以作为一种分辨社交活动的方法。
Between 1983 and 2001, even more useful information was collected when participants were regularly asked to state how many days a week they felt certain feelings. One of the options they were presented with was “I felt lonely”. The answers, when combined with the data on where participants were living and who their friends and family were, allowed Dr Cacioppo and his colleagues to analyse the formation and transmission of isolation.
在1983和2001年之间，研究人员要求实验对象说明自己感觉某种特定情感一周内有多少天。如此，他们采集了更多有关数据。其中一个选项是“我感到孤独“。最后的答案，连同实验对象在哪儿居住以及他们朋友和家人是谁的信息，使得卡西奥普博士和他的同事们能够分析出孤立感的形成与传播。
They report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that loneliness formed in clusters of people, and that once one person in a social network started expressing feelings of loneliness, others within the same network would start to feel the same way. The effects spread as far as three degrees of separation. Those who had immediate contact with lonely people were around 50% more likely than average to feel lonely themselves. In people who knew people who had direct contact with lonely people, the figure was 25%. Those with three degrees of separation showed roughly a 10% increase.
他们在《人格和社会心理学》杂志上发表的研究报告称：孤独感产生于人群当中，一旦一个人在社交圈中开始表现出孤独感，在此社交圈的其他人也会有同样的感受。这种影响会蔓延到3个不同的程度。和孤独症患者有直接接触的那些人，自己也感到孤独的几率比正常情况下要多出50%；知道身边的人接触过孤独症患者的那些人，几率则多出正常的25%。 三种程度的人群数量都表现出大约10%的增长率。
immediate contact ：直接接触 同（direct contact）
eg：N Korea had no immediate contact with United States.朝鲜和美国没有进行直接的接触。
The reason for the spread, the team argues, is because loneliness causes people to act towards others in a less generous and more negative fashion. As someone becomes lonely, he is more likely to interact with his friends negatively, and they are then more likely to interact with other friends negatively. If these interactions are repeated, the ties of friendships fray and people become lonelier and more isolated.
研究小组认为，造成孤独感传播的原因是：孤独感会使人在对待他人时缺少肚量，更加消极。一旦一个人具有孤独感，他很有可能在和朋友进行交往时表现得很消极，而这些朋友也很可能会消极地影响他们的朋友。如果这种相互影响重复进行，朋友之间的关系就会变得紧张，人们就会变得更加孤独，更加自闭。
The effects were more noticeable among friends than family, and stronger among women than men. The researchers argue that this is because the costs of abandoning relationships are lower for friends than they are for family members, and because women look to friends for emotional and social support more than men do. When they fail to receive it, they are more likely to become lonely.
这种影响在朋友间比在家人之间更为明显，女人之间比男人之间更明显。研究者认为这是由于舍弃一段友情的代价要比舍弃一段亲情的代价小。并且，相较于男人，女人在情感和社会上求助于朋友的次数要多得多。一旦他们无法接受什么，就很可能变得孤独。
Yet these findings are only the first step. The team of researchers is starting to look at other towns and cities, to see if there are any public policies or city-planning techniques that thwart the spread of loneliness. No solutions have been discovered so far, but through the process of studying other communities the researchers have discovered that when it comes to having clusters of lonely people, Framingham, unfortunately, is very much like any other town in America.
不过这些发现仅仅是研究的第一步。研究小组开始研究其他城镇的情况，看有没有一些公共政策或城市规划技术可以阻止孤独的传播。目前还没有发现解决这一问题的方法，但是，在研究其他社会群体的过程中，遗憾的是，研究者发现，每发现一群孤独症患者，就使得弗雷明汉的情况和美国其它城镇没什么两样。
补充：包孕法：
这种方法多用于英译汉。所谓包孕是指在把英语长句译成汉语时，把英语后置成分按照汉语的正常语序放在中心词之前，使修饰成分在汉语句中形成前置包孕。但修饰成分不宜过长，否则会形成拖沓或造成汉语句子成分在连接上的纠葛。
如：
（1）You are the representative of a country and of a continent to which China feels particularly close.
您是一位来自于使中国倍感亲切的国家和大洲的代表。
（2）What brings us together is that we have common interests which transcend those differences.
使我们走到一起的，是我们有超越这些分歧的共同利益。
