【英语语言学习】我们变得富有的同时是否变得更加小气

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.

 

And I'm Robert Siegel. Most of us like to think of ourselves as generous people. We volunteer, donate our time and open our wallets for charity, but perhaps we aren't as big-hearted as we think. Consider how much you give and compare it to how much you earn. NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam reports on research that suggests a paradoxical connection between those numbers.

 

SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE²: Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology³ at the University of California at Berkeley. His own life gives him a window into a paradox¹ he studies in his experiments.

 

DACHER KELTNER: I grew up, you know, I guess from age 10 to 17, what you would call a pretty poor neighborhood out in the country of California.

 

VEDANTAM: Keltner saw what he would later study in psychology reflected in the lives of the people he was living with.

 

KELTNER: I saw open doors and barbecues in the backyard and kids playing all night and also the tougher side of husbands out of work and drinking too much and, you know, the health issues that go with impoverished⁴ circumstances.

 

VEDANTAM: As Keltner moved to Berkeley and carved out a busy professional life, his material concerns went away but something else happened. Those open doors and endless backyard parties? They started to disappear from his life, too. Keltner felt something inside him change, something about the way he relates to others.

 

KELTNER: I saw it personally. I feel it in myself, that somehow when I am thinking hard about making more money and, you know, rising in wealth and enjoying materialistic⁵ benefits, I do feel personally that I'm not as responsive to the needs of others.

 

VEDANTAM: Keltner will be the first to say his individual experience is only an anecdote⁶, but Keltner, the scientist, would tell you that his data shows exactly the same thing. He's conducted dozens of experiments where he tests the generosity⁷ of individuals.

 

KELTNER: In just about every way you can study it, our lower-class individuals volunteer more, they give more of their resources, they're more generous.

 

VEDANTAM: This is the paradox. People who have more money ought to be able to give more away, but they don't. Now, you're probably thinking, hang on, that can't be true. Surely the rich give away more than the poor. Think about wealthy philanthropists who give away millions. The answer is, yes, in absolute terms, the rich do give more.

 

But Keltner thinks that's not the best way to measure generosity. A thousand dollars for a billionaire doesn't mean the same thing as $100 for somebody on the poverty line. Keltner cites a study conducted by Independent Sector⁸, a network of nonprofit groups, that measured how much people give depending on how much they have.

 

KELTNER: The poor, say with family incomes below $30,000, $25,000, are giving about 4.2 percent of their wealth away, whereas the wealthy are giving away 2.7 percent.

 

VEDANTAM: Keltner's work on the paradox of generosity dovetails with new research from UCLA. Patricia Greenfield has looked at the words we use as a window into our attitudes toward one another. She recently analyzed⁹ the contents of more than a million books published in the United States between 1800 and 2000. She used a new Google tool called the Ngram Viewer that allows rapid analysis of large numbers of books.

 

Greenfield found there was a change over those two centuries as America grew wealthier. Some words became more common in books, some became less common.

 

PATRICIA GREENFIELD: The frequency of the word get went up, and the frequency of the word give went down.

 

VEDANTAM: There were changes in the words Americans used to describe themselves.

 

GREENFIELD: Words that would show an individualistic orientation¹⁰ became more frequent. So, examples of those words were individual, self, unique.

 

VEDANTAM: And the frequency of other words Americans used about themselves declined.

 

GREENFIELD: Words that would represent a more communal¹¹ or more family orientation went down in frequency. Some examples of those words are give, obliged, belong.

 

VEDANTAM: Keltner and Greenfield, working independently, have both concluded that the poor tend to value social connections because social connections are integral to survival when you can't make your way on your own. Greenfield has followed generations of families in Mexico as they have become wealthier. She finds rural communities had strong social networks.

 

GREENFIELD: The wife may make the clothes for the whole family. The husband grows food and builds the shelter for the whole family. Therefore, giving, social obligation, belonging to a family are very important.

 

VEDANTAM: But slowly, as the communities became wealthier, people needed one another less, and so they made fewer connections. Autonomy and freedom took the place of responsibility and obligation. Neither Keltner nor Greenfield are offering a screed¹² against wealth. As America has become richer, lots of good things have happened. Disease has declined. Education has improved. Women and minorities have gotten more equal treatment. But it came at a price.

 

KELTNER: As we rise in wealth, along with that rise in wealth comes ideas of individuality and self-expression and autonomy and freedom and loneliness.

 

VEDANTAM: Keltner says being wealthy does not inevitably¹³ mean isolation¹⁴. But it probably does mean that the bonds of connection that came easily to us 200 years ago might now need to be carefully and deliberately¹⁵ cultivated. Shankar Vedantam, NPR News.

1 paradox   

n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物)

参考例句：

• The story contains many levels of paradox.这个故事存在多重悖论。
• The paradox is that Japan does need serious education reform.矛盾的地方是日本确实需要教育改革。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

4 impoverished   

adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化

参考例句：

• the impoverished areas of the city 这个城市的贫民区
• They were impoverished by a prolonged spell of unemployment. 他们因长期失业而一贫如洗。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 materialistic   

a.唯物主义的，物质享乐主义的

参考例句：

• She made him both soft and materialistic. 她把他变成女性化而又实际化。
• Materialistic dialectics is an important part of constituting Marxism. 唯物辩证法是马克思主义的重要组成部分。

6 anecdote   

n.轶事，趣闻，短故事

参考例句：

• He departed from the text to tell an anecdote.他偏离课文讲起了一则轶事。
• It had never been more than a family anecdote.那不过是个家庭趣谈罢了。

7 generosity   

n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为

参考例句：

• We should match their generosity with our own.我们应该像他们一样慷慨大方。
• We adore them for their generosity.我们钦佩他们的慷慨。

8 sector   

n.部门，部分；防御地段，防区；扇形

参考例句：

• The export sector will aid the economic recovery. 出口产业将促进经济复苏。
• The enemy have attacked the British sector.敌人已进攻英国防区。

9 analyzed   

v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析

参考例句：

• The doctors analyzed the blood sample for anemia. 医生们分析了贫血的血样。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The young man did not analyze the process of his captivation and enrapturement, for love to him was a mystery and could not be analyzed. 这年轻人没有分析自己蛊惑著迷的过程，因为对他来说，爱是个不可分析的迷。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 orientation   

n.方向，目标；熟悉，适应，情况介绍

参考例句：

• Children need some orientation when they go to school.小孩子上学时需要适应。
• The traveller found his orientation with the aid of a good map.旅行者借助一幅好地图得知自己的方向。

11 communal   

adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的

参考例句：

• There was a communal toilet on the landing for the four flats.在楼梯平台上有一处公共卫生间供4套公寓使用。
• The toilets and other communal facilities were in a shocking state.厕所及其他公共设施的状况极其糟糕。

12 screed   

n.长篇大论

参考例句：

• The screed tired the audience.那篇冗长的演说使听众厌烦了。
• The pro-whaling screed was approved by a much thinner margin:33 votes to 32.关于捕鲸的冗长决议是以33票对32票的微弱差数通过的。

13 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

14 isolation   

n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离

参考例句：

• The millionaire lived in complete isolation from the outside world.这位富翁过着与世隔绝的生活。
• He retired and lived in relative isolation.他退休后，生活比较孤寂。

15 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。