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Does Your Life Have Purpose? The Answer Could Affect How Long You Live.
你的生活有目标吗？ 答案可能会影响你的寿命。
Having a strong purpose in life may have not only mental benefits, but also physical ones.
在生活中拥有一个强烈的目标可能不仅有精神上的好处，也对身体有益。
A new study suggests that purposeful living is linked to decreased risk of early death in those older than age 50. The new results were published Thursday (May 23) in the journal JAMA Network Open.
一项新的研究表明，有人生目标的生活可以降低50岁以上人群的早逝风险。 新的研究结果发表在周四(5月23日)的JAMA Network Open杂志上。
A group of researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed data from nearly 7,000 people older than 50 who were enrolled in a national study that began in 1992 and who filled out a psychological questionnaire in 2006.
密歇根大学的一组研究人员分析了近7000名50岁以上人群的数据，这些人参加了1992年开始的一项全国性研究，并于2006年填写了一份心理问卷。
Participants were asked to rank how strongly they felt about statements such as "I enjoy making plans for the future and working to make them a reality" and "my daily activities often seem trivial and unimportant to me"; the people were then given a "life purpose score."
实验者被要求对诸如"我喜欢为未来制定计划并努力使其成为现实"和"我的日常活动对我来说往往是微不足道和不重要的"这样的陈述进行排名，然后给这些人打一个"人生目标分"
The researchers then compared these scores with mortality rates of the participants over the next five years. During that time, 776 of the participants died.
接着，研究人员将这些分数与未来五年参与者的死亡率进行比较。 在此期间，776名实验者死亡。
Participants with the lowest life-purpose scores were more than twice as likely to die during the follow-up period, compared with participants with the highest life-purpose scores, the study found. In particular, those with lower life-purpose scores were more likely to die from heart or blood conditions.
研究发现，在随访期间，生活目标分数最低的实验者死亡的概率是生活目标分数最高的参与者的两倍多。 尤其是那些生活目标得分较低的人更有可能死于心脏或血液疾病。
The findings held even after the researchers took into account certain factors that could affect people's sense of life purpose or their risk of death, such as whether the participants had depression.
即使研究人员考虑了某些可能影响人们生活目标感受或死亡风险的因素，比如参与者是否患有抑郁症。但是研究结果依然成立。
"There seems to be no downside to improving one's life purpose, and there may be benefits," said lead author Aliya Alimujiang, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. "Previous research has suggested that volunteering and meditation may improve psychological well-being."
密歇根大学公共卫生学院的博士生Aliya Alimujiang说：“改善一个人的生活目标似乎没有任何不利因素，只会有好处。” “之前的研究表明，志愿服务和冥想都可以改善心理健康。”
The next step for this research will be to determine if interventions designed to increase life purpose really work, and if increasing life purpose leads to good health outcomes such as improved quality of life, she added.
她补充说，这项研究的下一步将是确定旨在增强生活目标的干预措施是否真的有效，以及增强生活目标是否会带来诸如提高生活质量等好结果。
According to the researchers, there are several possible reasons why having a life purpose might extend life span.
根据研究人员的说法，人生目标会延长寿命是有原因的。
Past studies have shown that stronger well-being, including purposeful living, decreased the activation of genes that trigger inflammation in the body. Inflammation, in turn, has been previously linked with an increase in risk of early death, according to the study.
过去的研究表明，更强的幸福感，包括有目的的生活，会减少体内炎症基因的激活。反过来，炎症则会增加早逝的风险。
Yet another study found that a stronger purpose in life was linked to lower levels of the "stress hormone" cortisol and lower levels of inflammatory molecules in the body. But no studies have directly measured such molecules or biomarkers and related them to health outcomes or mortality.
然而，另一项研究发现，生活中强烈的目标与较低水平的"应激激素"皮质醇和较低水平的炎症分子有关。 但是没有研究直接测量这些分子或生物标志物，并将它们与健康结果或死亡率联系起来。
One limitation of the study is that the researchers couldn't exclude the possibility of "reverse causality" among participants with a chronic or life-threatening illness.
这项研究的一个局限性是，研究人员不能排除患有慢性或重大疾病的参与者之间存在"反向因果关系"的可能性。
In other words, the chronic or life-threatening illness could have been driving people to have a lower purpose in life.
换句话说，慢性或重大疾病可能已经驱使人们在生活中有一个较低的目标。
In a follow-up analysis, when the researchers excluded people who had a chronic or life-threatening illness, their results still held true, but there was a higher likelihood that these results could have been due to chance, the authors noted.
在后续分析中，当研究人员排除了患有慢性或重大疾病的人时，他们的结果仍然是正确的，但作者指出，这些结果更有可能是偶然的。
