TED演讲:36个问题让一个人爱上你

TED演讲：36个问题让一个人爱上你

演讲者参加了一个心理测试:与另一位被测者一起回答设定好的36个问题。

神奇的是，测试后他们两个竟然相爱了。既然这不是童话故事，那么让他

们在短时间内迅速相爱的原因是什么呢?

演讲者:Mandy Len Catron

Ipublished this article in the New York Times Modern Love column in

January of this year. "To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This." And the

article is about a psychological study designed to create romantic

love in the laboratory, and my own experience trying the study

mylf one night last summer.

今年1月份我将这篇文章发表在《纽约时报》“现代爱情”专栏。《想爱

上某人，你要这么做》这篇文章讲的是一项心理学研究，如何在实验室创

造出浪漫的爱情，我自己在去年一个夏夜也完成了这项试验。

So the procedure is fairly simple: two strangers take turns asking

each other 36 increasingly personal questions and then they stare

into each other's eyes without speaking for four here are

a couple of sample questions.

过程很简单:两个陌生人轮流问对方36个问题，问题越来越私人化，然后四

目相对，一言不发地对视4分钟。我选出了其中几个问题。

Number 12: If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one

quality or ability, what would it be?

Number 28: When did you last cry in front of another person? By

yourlf?

问题12:如果你明早醒来能获得一项品质或能力，你希望是什么?

问题28:你上一次当着别人的面哭是什么时候? (上一次)独自哭泣呢?

As you can e, they really do get more personal as they go along.

Number 30, I really like this one: Tell your partner what you like

about them; be very honest this time,saying things you might not

say to someone you just met.

如大家所见， 这些问题的确越来越私人化。

问题30，我很喜欢这一个:告诉对面的人你喜欢他(她)什么，要非常诚实，

说一些你也许不会对初次见面的人说的话。

So when I first came across this study a few years earlier, one detail

really stuck out to me, and that was the rumor that two of the

participants had gotten married six months later, and they'd invited

the entire lab to the I was of cour very skeptical

about this process of just manufacturing romantic love, but of

cour I was intrigued.

因此当我几年前偶然听说这个实验的时候，有一个细节真的打动了我，我

听到传言，说有两个参加实验的人在半年后结婚了，他俩邀请了整个实验

团队去参加婚礼。当然，我非常怀疑这种完全人造的浪漫爱情，但同时我

也很好奇。

And when I got the chance to try this study mylf, with someone I

knew but not particularly well, I wasn't expecting to fall in love. But

then we did, and --And I thought it made a good story, so I nt it to

the Modern Love column a few months later.

当我自己也有机会去完成这个实验时--和一个我认识但不是很熟的人--我

完全没想到我们会陷入爱河。但是我们真的陷进去了，而且--我认为这是一

个精彩的故事，所以几个月后，我将它发给了 “现代爱情”专栏。

Now, this was published in January, and now it is August, so I'm

guessing that some of you are probably wondering, are we still

together? And the reason I think you might be wondering this is

becau I have been asked this question again and again and again

for the past ven months. And this question is really what I want to

So the week before the article came out, I was very nervous. I had

been working on a book about love stories for the past few years, so

I had gotten ud to writing about my own experiences with

romantic love on my blog. But a blog post might get a couple

hundred views at the most, and tho were usually just my Facebook

friends, and I figured my article in the New York Times would

love life has made international news --and to realize that people

across the world are genuinely invested in the status of your new

relationship.

这篇文章上线是在一个周五的晚上，到周六的时候，我的博客访问量(暴涨)

成了这个样子。到周日的时候，《今日秀》和《早安美国》都给我打电话

了。一个月之内，这篇文章被点击超过800万次，所以，对我而言，我对

如此高的关注度毫无准备。鼓起勇气，如实写出自己的恋爱经历是一回事;

而发现自己的爱情故事成为国际新闻就是另一回事了。更别说全世界人民

都在关注你的新恋情进展了。

And when people called or emailed, which they did every day for

weeks, they always asked the same question first: are you guys still

together? In fact, as I was preparing this talk, I did a quick arch of

my email inbox for the phra "Are you still together?" and veral

messages popped up were from students and

journalists and friendly strangers like this one. I did radio interviews

and they asked. I even gave a talk, and one woman shouted up to

the stage, "Hey Mandy, where's your boyfriend?" And I promptly

turned bright red.

人们每天给我打电话，发邮件，持续了好几周，他们都会问同样的问题:你

陌生人，就像这一位。我参加电台访谈节目，他们也会问我。甚至有一次

我在做演讲，有一位女士大叫着跑上台， “嘿，曼迪，你的男朋友呢?” 我

立刻就脸红了。

Iunderstand that this is part of the deal. If you write about your

relationship in an international newspaper, you should expect

people to feel comfortable asking about it. But I just wasn't

prepared for the scope of the respon. The 36 questions em to

have taken on a life of their own. In fact, the New York Times

published a follow-up article for Valentine's Day, which featured

readers' experiences of trying the study themlves, with varying

degrees of success.

我能理解他们的反应。既然你在一家国际性的报纸上写出自己的爱情故事，

你就应该预料到大家会毫无顾忌地问这问那。但我只是没想到反响会如此

之大。这36个问题仿佛有了自己的生命力。实际上，《纽约时报》为情人

节又发表了 一篇后续文章，讲的是读者们自己进行实验的经历，他们的成

think I was afraid that we would become inadvertent icons for the

process of falling in love, a position I did not at all feel qualified for.

所以面对如此多的关注，我的第一反应 就是要保护我的恋爱关系。对于所

有要我俩共同接受采访的媒体，我都拒绝了。我不接受电视采访，我拒绝

提供两人的合照。我觉得我是害怕被贴上对待爱情太过随意的标签，我接

受不了这种评价。

And I get it: people didn't just want to know if the study worked,

they wanted to know if it really worked: that is, if it was capable of

producing love that would last, not just a fling, but real love,

但这个问题我没办法回答。因为我的感情也才开始几个月而已，而且我觉

得这个问题问得不对。知道我俩是否在一起能起什么作用呢?如果我们分手

了，是不是意味着做这36道题就没什么意义了呢?

Dr. Arthur Aron first wrote about the questions in this study here

in 1997, and here, the rearcher's goal was not to produce romantic

love. Instead, they wanted to foster interpersonal cloness among

college students, by using what Aron called "sustained, escalating,

reciprocal, personalistic lf-disclosure." Sounds romantic, doesn't it?

But the study did work.

这些问题最初是亚瑟·阿伦博士在1997年的这项研究中设计出来的，当时，

研究者的目的并不是要制造爱情。而是想增进大学生之间的人际关系，通

过阿伦所谓的 “持续的、不断深入的、 双向的、自我人格剖析”。听起

来真是浪漫啊，不是吗?

was referenced in this article, but unfortunately it was never

published.

但这项研究确实有效。参与者确实感觉比实验前更亲密了，随后的几项研

究同样使用了阿伦的快速交友模式，以此来在陌生人之间迅速地建立信任，

消除隔阂。他们将这种方法用在警察和社区成员之间，用在持不同政见的

人群之间。这个故事的初始版本，也就是我去年夏天完成的，将私人问题

和4分钟眼神交流结合在一起，在这篇文章里也提到了，但不幸的是这篇

文章从未被发表。

So a few months ago, I was giving a talk at a small liberal arts college,

and a student came up to me afterwards and he said, kind of shyly,

"So, I tried your study, and it didn't work." He emed a little

mystified by this. "You mean, you didn't fall in love with the person

you did it with?" I asked.

几个月前，我在一所小型文理学院做演讲，演讲结束后，一名男生过来找

我，他怯生生地说， “嗯，我试过你的方法了，但是不管用。” 他看起

来很迷茫的样子。 “你的意思是，你没有爱上跟你一起做实验的那个人?”

"But did you become better friends?" I asked. "Did you feel like you

got to really know each other after doing the study?" He nodded.

“但你们的关系是不是比以前更好了?”我又问。“你有没有觉得实验之后，

你俩对彼此的了解都有所加深?” 他点了点头。

"So, then it worked," I said.

“那么，这个实验就是管用的。”我说

Idon't think this is the answer he was looking for. In fact, I don't

think this is the answer that any of us are looking for when it comes

to love.

我知道这不是他想得到的答案。事实上，我认为这不是任何人想要得到的

我第一次完成这个实验的时候是29岁，当时我正在经历一场非常痛苦的分

手。这段感情是从我20岁时开始的，几乎贯穿了我成年后的所有岁月，他

是我第一个真正爱的人，我无法想象没有他的人生会是怎样。于是我求助

于科学。我研究了所有我能找到的关于爱情的科学资料，我觉得我当时是

想以此来疗伤。我不知道当时我有没有意识到这一点--我认为自己只是在为

写的书做研究--但事后回想，当时确实是想借此疗伤。

Ihoped that if I armed mylf with the knowledge of romantic love, I

might never have to feel as terrible and lonely as I did then. And all

this knowledge has been uful in some ways. I am more patient

with love. I am more relaxed. I am more confident about asking for

what I want. But I can also e mylf more clearly, and I can e that

what I want is sometimes more than can reasonably be asked

东西。我希望爱情是一种保障，并不仅仅是今天被爱，或者明天被爱，而

是被我爱的这个人永远地爱下去。也许大家关心我俩是不是还在一起真正

的原因在于 家都想看看这种保障是否真的存在。

So the story that the media told about the 36 questions was that

there might be a shortcut to falling in love. There might be a way to

somehow mitigate some of the risk involved, and this is a very

appealing story, becau falling in love feels amazing, but it's also

terrifying. The moment you admit to loving someone, you admit to

having a lot to lo, and it's true that the questions do provide a

mechanism for getting to know someone quickly, which is also a

解。但我也认为，当谈到爱情时，我们有时太过简单粗暴，简单到只想问

“你们是否还在一起?”，而这个问题只用是和否就可以回答。

So rather than that question, I would propo we ask some more

difficult questions, questions like:How do you decide who derves

your love and who does not? How do you stay in love when things

get difficult, and how do you know when to just cut and run? How

do you live with the doubt that inevitably creeps into every

relationship, or even harder, how do you live with your partner's

doubt? I don't necessarily know the answers to the questions, but

I think they're an important start at having a more thoughtful

conversation about what it means to love someone.

因此相对这个问题，我建议大家问一些更深的问题，比如:你如何确定谁值

得你爱?谁不值得?当遇到困难时你如何维系爱情，你如何判断何时该分手，

各走各的路?你如何处理每段感情都可能出现的信任问题，甚至比这更难一

点，你如何处理伴侣的不信任?我不一定知道这些问题的答案，但我认为，

当然，如果你们坚持想要知道我的爱情故事缩略版，我满足你们:一年前，

我和一个熟人进行了一次实验，看爱情能否被制造出来，结果我们相爱了，

现在也没有分开， 我非常开心。

But falling in love is not the same thing as staying in love. Falling in

love is the easy part. So at the end of my article, I wrote, "Love didn't

happen to us. We're in love becau we each made the choice to

be." And I cringe a little when I read that now, not becau it isn't

true, but becau at the time, I really hadn't considered everything

that was contained in that choice.

myth I don't quite believe in. And what I want, what perhaps I will

spend my life wanting, is for that myth to be true.

我没有考虑，有多少次我们本应该下定决心相爱，以及在不知道对方是否

选择我的前提下，未来我还需要下多少次决心。我希望通过36个问题的问

和答，通过选择一个如此慷慨、善良、风趣的人相爱，通过将我的选择在

全美最大的报纸上曝光， 已经足够我认定这个选择了。然而我所做的却是

将我的爱情变成了一个 我自己都不怎么相信的神话故事。我现在追求的，

也许我一辈子都会去追求的，就是让这个神话成真。

Iwant the happy ending implied by the title to my article, which is,

incidentally, the only part of the article that I didn't actually write.

我希望一个幸福的结局，就像我文章标题所暗示的，顺便说一句，整篇文

以下是那36个问题:

这些问题分为三组，按问题的深入程度依次递进，完成每组问题各需15分

钟左右。

第一组问题:

1. 假如可以选择世界上任何人，你希望邀请谁共进晚餐?

2. 你希望成名吗?在哪一方面?

3. 拨打电话前，你会先练习要说的话吗?为什么?

4. 对你来说，怎样才算是“完美”的一天?

5. 上一次唱歌给自己听是什么时候?唱歌给别人听又是什么时候呢?

6. 假如你能够活到90岁，并且你可以选择让你的心智或身体在后60年一

直停留在30岁，你会选择哪一个?

7. 关于未来你可能怎么死，你有自己的秘密预感吗?

8. 列举3个你和对方共同拥有的特质。

9. 你的人生中最感恩的事情是什么?

10. 假如可以改变你成长过程中的任何事，你希望有哪些改变?

11. 用4分钟的时间，尽可能详细地向对方讲述你的人生故事。

12. 假如明天早上起床后能获得任何一种能力或特质，你希望是什么?

第二组问题:

13. 假如有颗水晶球能告诉你关于自己、人生或未来的一切真相，你想知

道什么?

14. 有什么事想做很久了?还没去做的原因是?

15. 你人生最大的成就是什么?

16. 友情中你最重视哪一个部份?

17. 你最珍贵的回忆是什么?

18. 你最糟糕的回忆是什么?

19. 如果你知道自己将在一年内突然死去，你会改变自己目前的生活方式

吗?为什么?

20. 友情对你而言意味着什么?

21. 爱和感情在你生命里扮演什么样的角色?

22. 轮流分享你认为对方拥有的比较好的性格特点。各自提5点。

23. 你的家庭关系亲密温暖吗?你是否觉得自己的童年比大部分人快乐?

24. 你与母亲的关系如何?

第三组问题:

25. 说出3个含有“我们”并且符合实际情况的句子，比如“我们现在都

在这个房间里”。

26. 完成这个句子:“我希望可以跟某个人分享--”。

27. 如果你要成为对方的密友，有什么事是他或她需要知道的?

28. 告诉对方你喜欢他或她的什么地方(回答此题必须非常诚实，要说出你

可能不会对刚认识的人说的事)。

29. 和对方分享你人生中尴尬的时刻。

30. 上次在别人面前哭是什么时候?自己哭又是什么时候?

31. 告诉对方，你现在喜欢他或她什么地方。

32. 有什么事是绝对不能开玩笑的?

33. 如果你今天晚上就会死掉，而且无法与任何人联系，你最遗憾还没有

告诉别人什么事?为什么还没说呢?

34. 你的房子起火了，你所有的东西都在里面。在救出所爱的人和宠物后，

你还有时间可以安全地抢救出最后一件东西。你会拿什么?为什么?

35. 在你所有家人当中，谁的死对你的打击会最大?为什么?

36. 分享你人生中的一个问题，问对方遇到这样的问题会怎么做。同时也

请对方告诉你，在他或她看来，你对这个问题的感受是什么。

如果你单身，闲得无聊，也许可以在网上找个陌生人陪你做一下，不过面

对面一起做效果肯定更好。

爱情并不会从天而降，

我们相爱是因为我们选择相爱。