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Exposure to the unusual, the jarring, the culturally shocking may be beneficial for your cognitive¹ reasoning—and your waistline.

接触与众不同、不和谐文化方面的冲击可能会有益于认知推理——甚至你的腰围。

That’s according to a study in the journal Social Cognition.

该结论来自于杂志《社会认知》的一篇研究文章。

Using events we all have some understanding of—holidays, weddings and funerals — researchers ran eight experiments to see how people respond to normative cultural situations versus² culturally disfluent situations.

通过一些活动，我们都对——假期、婚礼、丧礼有了一些了解——研究者们进行了8次试验来研究人们对于标准的文化情境以及不熟悉的文化情境的反应。

A normative situation would be a bride wearing white on her wedding day. A disfluent one would be hanging Saint Patrick’s Day decorations on Christmas.

标准的情境应该是新娘在婚礼当天身穿白色的婚纱。而非标准的情境则是在圣诞节时挂上圣帕特里克节的装饰品。

The first two experiments took place during Fourth of July and Labor³ Day picnics. For the July Fourth party, white plates were randomly⁴ mixed into stacks of stars-and-stripes plates. On Labor Day, Halloween—adorned plates were mixed in with patriotic⁵ plates. Then guests selected food from a buffet⁶ line.

前两个试验的时间是美国独立纪念日以及劳动节。在独立纪念日聚会那天，白色的盘子随机混到成堆的星条旗盘子当中。而在劳动节那天，在爱国类的盘子则混杂着饰有万圣节花样的盘子。然后客人们从自助餐上挑选食物。

The result? On Labor Day, guests put less food on the Halloween-themed than on the patriotic plates. And on the Fourth of July, they put less food on plain white plates than on stars-and-stripes plates.

结果?在劳动节上，与爱国类的盘子相比，人们用万圣节主题类的盘子放的食物则比较少;而在美国独立纪念日上，人们用星条旗盘子盛放的食物则多于白色的盘子的食物。

In other parts of this study researchers found that people who have been exposed to culturally-disfluent situations performed better on cognitive reasoning tests and were less likely to succumb⁷ to impulse purchases and food consumption. That situation was compared to when events met their expectations—such as seeing hearts on Valentine’s Day.

在该项研究的其他几项实验中，研究者们发现，经历过非标准文化情境的人们在认知推理测试方面表现较好，不可能受到冲动购物以及食品消费的诱惑。研究者们将该种情境与事件满足人们期望的情境进行比较——例如，在情人节看到心。

Encountering the expected allowed subjects to behave more mindlessly. So, researchers reason that cultural fluency⁸ preserves associative reasoning while cultural disfluency shifts to systematic⁹ reasoning. These small tests reinforce the idea that routine makes the brain dull—while the unexpected keeps it fired up.

面对预期的情境会让受试者表现的更加盲目。所以，研究者们推理文化流畅性维持的是联动推理，而文化非流畅性则转向系统推理。这些小测试强化了该思想单调让大脑愚笨——而意外则会活跃大脑。