我們的親密友誼如何幫助我們茁壯成長

我們的親密友誼如何幫助我們茁壯成長

Lydia Denworth wants you to make more time for your friends.

莉迪亞·登沃斯希望你多花點時間和朋友在一起。

We don't fully appreciate our friendships, says the science writer and author of the new book Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond.

這位科學作家、新書《友誼:生命基本紐帶的進化、生物學和非凡力量》的作者說，我們沒有充分認識到我們的友誼。

If we did, we'd take cultivating those intimate bonds as seriously as working out or eating well. Because, she writes, a new field of science is revealing that social connections play a vital role in our health.

如果我們真的這么做了，我們就會像重視鍛煉和健康飲食一樣重視親密關系的培養(yǎng)。她寫道，因為一個新的科學領域正在揭示，社會關系在我們的健康中扮演著重要的角色。

On average, people have only four very close relationships, Denworth finds, and very few people can sustain more than six. But the effect of these few core relationships extends beyond our social lives, influencing our health on the cellular level — from our immune system to our cardiovascular system.

登沃斯發(fā)現(xiàn)，平均而言，人們只有四段非常親密的關系，很少有人能維持六段以上的關系。但是，這幾個核心關系的影響超出了我們的社交生活，在細胞水平上影響我們的健康--從我們的免疫系統(tǒng)到我們的心血管系統(tǒng)。

Denworth spoke with NPR about the science of friendship and its underestimated value to kids and adults and even for other species like sheep and fish. (Although she's frequently asked about human-animal friendships, Denworth sticks to bonds within one species in the book.)

登沃斯在接受美國國家公共電臺采訪時談到了友誼的科學，以及它對兒童和成人、甚至對羊和魚等其他物種的低估價值。(雖然她經(jīng)常被問及人類與動物之間的友誼，但在書中，登沃斯堅持認為人類與動物之間存在某種聯(lián)系。)

What is most misunderstood about friendships?

關于友誼，人們最容易誤解的是什么?

Very few people understand that your social relationships can actually change your health. They can change your cardiovascular system, your immune system, how you sleep, your cognitive health. How could this thing that exists entirely outside the body affect whether you're likely to catch a virus? And yet that's exactly what we now know that social connection does.

很少有人明白你的社會關系實際上可以改變你的健康。它們可以改變你的心血管系統(tǒng)，你的免疫系統(tǒng)，你的睡眠方式，你的認知健康。這種完全存在于身體之外的東西如何影響你是否有可能感染病毒?然而，這正是我們現(xiàn)在知道的社會關系的作用。

We thought of loneliness as this difficult emotion, but just an emotion. And we think of friends as this lovely thing — but it is actually a matter of life and death. And there's this evolutionary drive to connect. People think all the time about competition and survival of the fittest, but really it's survival of the friendliest.

我們認為孤獨是一種困難的情緒，但只是一種情緒。我們認為朋友是一件可愛的事情，但實際上這是生死攸關的問題。這是一種相互聯(lián)系的進化動力。人們無時無刻不在想著競爭和優(yōu)勝劣汰，但實際上這是友善的優(yōu)勝劣汰。

Is friendship just something humans do, or do we see it in other species?

友誼只是人類才會做的事，還是我們在其他物種身上也能看到呢?

What has been surprising to evolutionary biologists is just how much friendship exists across species. They have found something that looks like friendship in dolphins, and elephants, and horses, and zebras, and hyenas and all kinds of species. Even fish — their brains respond to familiar fish versus strange fish in ways that look a lot like what goes on in our brains.

令進化生物學家驚訝的是，不同物種之間存在著如此多的友誼。他們在海豚、大象、馬、斑馬、鬣狗和各種物種身上發(fā)現(xiàn)了一些看起來像友誼的東西。即使是魚-它們的大腦對熟悉的魚和陌生的魚的反應方式看起來很像我們大腦中發(fā)生的事情。

Understanding that tells you there's this much larger story than just human culture. And that's what people thought friendship was: a product of human culture and language. But now we understand that it is universal.

理解這一點告訴你，這不僅僅是人類文化的故事。這就是人們所認為的友誼：是人類文化和語言的產(chǎn)物。但現(xiàn)在我們明白，它是普遍存在的。

Are bonds with friends different from bonds with romantic or sexual partners? Or bonds with family?

與朋友的關系和與戀人或性伙伴或家人的關系有什么不同嗎?

I don't actually think that it's all that unique. We generally think of friends as people we don't have sex with and to whom we're not related. But the truth is that in this new science and in fact the way we live our lives, those lines are blurred.

我其實并不認為這都是獨一無二的。我們通常認為朋友是與我們沒有性關系的人，也是與我們沒有血緣關系的人。但事實是，在這門新的科學中，實際上在我們的生活方式中，這些界限是模糊的。

I think of friendship now as a template for all your relationships, because if you think about the sort of basic definition of friendship — it makes you feel good, it's positive, a long-lasting stable relationship, and it has some cooperation and reciprocity to it — that's what you want to be striving for in your closest relationships.

我現(xiàn)在認為友誼是你們所有關系的模板，因為如果你思考一下友誼的基本定義，即它讓你感覺良好，它是積極的，它是一段持久的穩(wěn)定的關系，它會合作和互惠，這就是你想在你最親密的關系中努力追求的。