幸福生活的七大秘诀
秘诀1：很多幸福用钱是买不到的 Money buys you little happine One of the most infamous findings in happine research is that money doesn’t buy a lot of happine – or at least not as much as we think it should.According to the economist Richard Easterlin, part of the reason for this is that we care a great deal more about what other people earn than what we do ourselves. 幸福研究领域的最著名发现之一是，很多幸福是金钱买不来的，或者至少不像我们想象的那么多。经济学家理查德•伊斯特林(Richard Easterlin)表示，部分原因在于，我们对于别人收入的关心程度，要远远超出对我们自己收入的关心。
For those whose most basic needs are already met, money buys additional happine only if it can lead to higher status in society, which is hard when everyone else is also getting richer over time.Since people’s comparison group varies from place to place, those living in more affluent areas of London, for example, would probably need to earn at least £200k a year to ensure that they are staying well ahead of most other Londoners – and even that might not be enough.
对于那些最基本需求已得到满足的人而言，只有当金钱可以带来更高的社会地位时，才会意味着更多幸福。要做到这一点很难，因为其他人也逐渐变得更为富有。不同地区的人们的对比群组不同，举例而言，那些生活在伦敦较富裕地区的人，每年或许得挣至少20万英镑，才能确保自己的处境远远强于多数其他伦敦人——即使是这样的收入或许都不够。
Moreover, according to the Princeton University psychologist Daniel Kahneman, the weak relationship between happine and income can also be explained, in part, by the evidence that richer people tend to spend more time engaging in activities aociated with no greater happine, on average, but with slightly higher tension and stre – such as work, childcare and shopping.By contrast, people with lower incomes tend to spend more time engaging in happine-rich experiences such as socialising with friends and other paive leisure activities such as resting and watching TV. 此外，普林斯顿大学(Princeton University)心理学家丹尼尔•卡纳曼(Daniel Kahneman)表示，之所以说幸福与收入的关系较为松散，一定程度上是因为有证据表明，一般而言，更富有的人往往用更多时间从事不会带来更大幸福感的活动，这些活动的紧张及压力程度略高——例如工作、育儿和购物。相比之下，收入较低的人往往把更多时间花在幸福感十足的事情上，例如与朋友社交，以及休息和看电视等其它被动的娱乐活动。
However, when these high- and low-income earners are prompted to think about the impact of income on their happine, both tend to focus more on the conventional poibilities of money when evaluating its effects.This leads to the conclusion that life must be significantly happier for the rich than for the poor. 然而，当有人提醒这些高收入者和低收入者考虑收入对幸福的影响时，他们在评估时往往更多地关注金钱的传统潜在价值。由此得出了以下结论：富人的生活肯定远比穷人幸福。
The truth is quite the opposite: poorer people can – and often do – lead significantly happier lives than the rich. 实际情况恰恰相反：穷人能够——而且确实经常——比富人生活得更加幸福。
秘诀2：朋友比法拉利价更高 Friends are worth more than a new
Ferrari How much money is enough to make us happy? Because the effect of income on our happine depends largely on how much money our colleagues, neighbours and friends earn, it’s difficult to say.Yet it’s easier to say how much extra money is required, on average, for a socially isolated person to be just as happy as a socially active person – no more, no le. 有多少钱才能让我们感到幸福？这很难说，因为收入对幸福的影响，很大程度上取决于我们的同事、邻居和朋友们的收入。不过，一般而言，要说出需要多少钱，才能让一个离群索居的人和社交积极的人同样幸福——既不多也不少——则要容易一些。
The calculation of prices of various non-marketable goods such as the joy of friendship or marriage, first put forward in the early 1990s by the University of Warwick economist Andrew Oswald, is based on a very simple idea.Imagine that, on average, money makes people happy.Imagine also that people who see their friends every day are significantly happier than those who live in isolation.In principle, then, it’s poible to calculate how much extra income would have to be given to someone to compensate exactly for the lack of social life. 对于各种不可买卖的物品（比如友谊或婚姻带来的乐趣），其价格的计算基于一个非常简单的理念，它是由华威大学(University of Warwick)经济学家安德鲁•奥斯瓦德(Andrew Oswald)上世纪90年代初率先提出的。想象一下，一般来说，金钱会让人幸福。再想象一下，那些每天都能看到朋友的人，要比那些离群索居的人幸福得多。那么，原则上讲，我们有可能计算出还需要多少额外收入，才能恰好弥补社交生活匮乏给某人造成的损失。
In Britain, for example, a pay rise of £1,000 is aociated with an increase in happine of approximately 0.0007 points on a self-reported seven-point happine scale.Seeing friends more often, on the other hand, is aociated with an increase in happine of approximately 0.161 points.What this implies is that swapping a sociable life for an isolated one requires a pay rise of approximately 0.161/0.0007 – roughly £230,000 a year.That’s a little more than a new, gleaming Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. 例如，在英国，根据一种自行报告的7点幸福标准，收入增加1000英镑，将令幸福感上升大约0.0007点。另一方面，更频繁地会朋友，将令幸福感提升约0.161点。这意味着，用喜好交际的生活换取离群索居的生活，需要收入增加大约 0.161/0.0007英镑，即每年23万英镑左右，略高于一辆熠熠生辉的法拉利新款612 Scaglietti。
秘诀3：中奖不会立刻让人幸福 Winning the lottery won’t make you
instantly happy
One of the most surprising findings in recent research shows that a lottery win of £1,000 or more won’t immediately make you happy.Instead, it takes two years before winners enjoy their money.This is in stark contrast to the effect of earned incomes on happine: an increase in salary often leads to some immediate improvement (again, not as much as one would think) in a person’s happine.But why does the joy from a lottery win take two years to arrive? One hypothesis is that, while traditional economic theories typically aume that a pound is a pound is a pound, the reality is that one pound won is not the same as one pound earned.
近期研究中最惊人的发现之一显示：中奖赢得1000英镑（或更多的钱）不会立刻让你感到幸福。相反，中奖者需要2年的时间，才能开始享受自己的奖金。这与劳动所得对幸福感的影响形成了鲜明对比：加薪往往会给一个人的幸福感带来一些立竿见影的改善（同样，其效果并不像人们想象的那么明显）。但为什么要用2年时间才能感觉到中奖的喜悦呢？一种假设是，虽然传统经济理论通常认为只要是钱，就没什么两样，但事实上，中奖赢得的1英镑与挣到的1英镑有所不同。
From new research on ―lagged deservingne‖ among lottery winners that I undertook with economists Andrew Oswald and Rainer Winkelmann, earned income is regarded as money that is intrinsically deserved.Lottery income isn’t.The winner doesn’t immediately think that she is fully deserving of the money because winning the lottery creates a form of unwanted cognitive dionance – the proce aociated with holding two contradictory ideas in one’s head.The winner thinks: ―I’m happy about the money, but I’m not sure whether I’m really entitled to it.‖ Through time, however, the lottery winner can persuade herself that she deserves the money.Empirically speaking, this slow erosion of cognitive dionance takes approximately two years to complete.Interestingly, we also found in our study that people weigh differently the various incomes that accrue to them: gift income and inheritance income are viewed in a very different way to wage income and lottery income.
我与经济学家安德鲁•奥斯瓦尔德(Andrew Oswald)和雷纳•温克尔曼(Rainer Winkelmann)在彩票中奖者中，对―滞后应得感‖进行了新的研究。研究发现，挣得的收入被认为是本质上应得的，中奖得到的钱则不是。中奖者不会立刻认为这些钱是自己完全应得的，因为中奖会造成一种不必要的认知偏差——一个人头脑中存在两种矛盾想法的过程。中奖者认为：―这钱让我开心，但我不确信自己是否真的有权使用它们‖。然而，随着时间的流逝，中奖者可以说服自己，让自己认为这钱是自己应得的。凭经验而论，认知偏差的逐步消失大约需要2年时间。有趣的是，我们在研究中还发现，在人们的心目中，通过不同方式获得的收入份量不同：人们对获赠和继承收入的看法，与对工资与中奖收入的看法截然不同。
A pound is not just a pound. 钱和钱也不是完全一样的。
秘诀4：失业也无妨 Losing your job makes you unhappy – but le
so when others have too Losing your job is one of life’s most miserable experiences – more so than getting a divorce.One reason for this is obvious: unemployment removes a constant stream of income.Even so, the unemployed also report substantially lower levels of happine relative to those who are employed but have the same income.The psychic cost of unemployment can in part be explained by the social stigma and lo of self-esteem job lo entails. 失业是人生中最悲惨的经历之一，比离婚更甚。这有一个显而易见的原因：失业后会丧失稳定的收入来源。尽管如此，与有工作、但收入相同的人相比，失业者所报告的幸福度也明显更低。失业的精神成本，一定程度上可以归因于丢掉工作所造成的社会耻辱感和对自尊心的伤害。
There is a flipside to this, though.While unemployment lowers well-being for both the unemployed and the employed (perhaps by creating expectations of job lo), its effect on those already unemployed is notably reduced when a lot of other people – colleagues, neighbours, people living in the same region or even in the same household – are also unemployed. 不过，这个问题还有另外一面。虽然失业者和就业者的福祉都会因失业而降低——后者可能是因为这造成了失业的预期——但当其他很多人（比如同事、邻居、居住在同一地区的人甚至家庭成员）也失去工作时，失业现象对失业者的影响就会显著降低。 The reason is simple, argues the economist Andrew Clark of the Paris School of Economics.Where being unemployed is the norm, the impact on your reputation caused by job lo is leened.In other words, it feels relatively OK to be unemployed when a lot of others are also unemployed. 巴黎经济学院(Paris School of Economics)的经济学家安德鲁•克拉克(Andrew Clark)认为，理由十分简单。当失业成为司空见惯的事情，丢掉工作对于声誉的损害就会降低。换言之，如果其他很多人也失去工作，自己失业时的感觉就会相对―好‖一些。
In fact, the well-being gap between the employed and the unemployed actually ceases to exist if the unemployment rate is high enough.Average happine is typically lower in high-unemployment areas relative to low-unemployment areas.Yet, in the UK this happine gap disappears completely when the average regional unemployment rate tops 20 per cent.Bad things don’t seem so bad when you’re not alone in experiencing them. 实际上，如果失业率达到足够高的水平，就业和失业之间的福祉差异就不复存在。一般而言，高失业率地区的平均幸福度，要低于低失业率的地区。然而，在英国，如果一个地区的平均失业率超过20%，则幸福度上的差异就会彻底消失。如果不是独自承受，那么坏事也不会显得太坏。
秘诀5：想幸福？找个胖朋友吧！ Fat friends make you happier than
thin ones New evidence in economics and epidemiology seems to suggest that we care about other people’s weight as much as we do our own.It’s always more desirable to be slim – perhaps because it offers a better chance of finding a person to date or marry, or even faster job promotion.However, when the people we normally compare ourselves with become fatter, the cost of putting on weight for many of us reduces.Put simply, when other people around me become fatter, I don’t have to compete so much with them to stay slim.
经济学和流行病学方面的新证据似乎表明，我们对他人体重的关注丝毫不亚于对自己体重的关注。人们总是更希望苗条一些——或许是因为这样更容易找到约会或结婚的对象，甚至能更快地升迁。然而，对于我们许多人而言，如果我们常常拿来和自己做对比的人变胖了，我们自己体重增加的成本就会降低。简言之，如果我身边的人变胖了，那么我不用太费劲就能比他们苗条。
According to research conducted by economists David G.Blanchflower, Andrew Oswald and Bert Van Landeghem, people with weight problems – those with a body ma index (BMI) of 30 or over – are significantly unhappier than people within a healthy weight range (BMI 18.5–25).However, the overweight tend to report higher levels of happine when other people of the same age and gender are as heavy or heavier than they are.The same also goes for individuals who live in the same household: our own weight doesn’t bother us as much, that is, when our partner is also putting on weight. 经济学家戴维•G•布兰奇弗劳尔(David G.Blanchflower)、安德鲁•奥斯瓦德(Andrew Oswald)和贝尔特•范兰德赫姆(Bert Van Landeghem)进行的一项研究显示，与体重在健康范围内的人（BMI体重指数在18.5至25之间）相比，存在体重问题的人（BMI指数在30或以上）明显更不快乐。然而，当看到其他同性别的同龄人与自己一样重，甚至更重时，肥胖人群的幸福感往往会更强烈。这也适用于同一家庭内的不同个体：当伴侣的体重也在增加时，自己的体重就不那么烦人了。
This positive relationship between our happine and other people’s weight provides a good psychological explanation for the current obesity epidemic in the west.It’s psychologically easier for us to accept being overweight when everyone else is also overweight – auming, of course, that most of us enjoy food a lot more than dieting. 我们的幸福感与他人体重之间的这种正相关关系，为当前西方肥胖症的流行提供了一个合理的心理学解释。当其他所有人都超重时，我们在心理上就更容易接受自己变胖的事实——当然，前提是我们当中大部分人对食物的热爱要远远大于节食。
秘诀6：离婚让人幸福？ Divorce can make you happy At any given point in time, those who are divorced tend to report, on average, significantly lower levels of happine than people who are married.While this result is probably unsurprising to many people, such cro-sectional comparisons between two groups of individuals at the same point in time can often lead to severely misleading conclusions – in this case, that divorce makes people unhappy. 研究发现，平均而言，在任何一个指定时间点，离婚人士报告的幸福感往往比已婚人士低得多。尽管这种结果可能在许多人的意料之中，但在同一时间点对两组个体进行的此类代表性抽样比较，经常会导致严重误导性的结论——就本例而言，就是离婚让人们不幸福。
For one thing, the choice to diolve a marriage is a rare decision for any individual to take, and one that’s unlikely to have been made entirely on a whim.One could even argue that divorce must make people happy given that one would only go through with it if the benefits of doing so outweighed the costs.This leads to an important question: what happens to people’s happine in the periods before and after divorce?
首先，任何人都不会轻易做出离婚决定，它不太可能是出于一时冲动。人们甚至可以辩称，离婚必定让人们感到幸福，因为人们只有在离婚的益处超过成本时才会离婚。这就引出一个重要的问题：离婚前后那段时期，人们的幸福感会发生什么样的变化？
According to the psychologist Ed Diener, the worst moment for men is the year preceding the divorce.By contrast, the worst moment for women is two years before the divorce, with their happine on the verge of bouncing back the year preceding the split.This pattern probably reflects the fact that the majority of divorces are initiated by the wife. 根据心理学家埃德•迪耶内(Ed Diener)的说法，对男人来说，最糟糕的时期是离婚前一年；而对女人来说，最糟糕时期是离婚前两年，在离婚前一年，她们的幸福感即将反弹。这种规律可能反映出绝大多数离婚是妻子主动的事实。
After a divorce, it then takes approximately two years for men and three years for women for the effect of the break-up on happine to become positive and stay positive.In other words, it seems that divorcing couples often become significantly happier with their lives by breaking up. 离婚后，男人将需要将近两年，女人需要三年时间，才能让离婚对幸福感的影响变得积极，并保持积极。也就是说，离婚夫妇往往因为分手而变得更加幸福。
秘诀7：幸福可以传染？ Happine is contagious There are many benefits to being happy.Happier people tend to be healthier, live longer and earn more.They also tend to volunteer more, be better at relationships and smile more of what psychologists call ―Duchenne‖ or genuine smiles.Le well understood is why happine is contagious. 幸福有许多好处。更幸福的人往往更健康、更长寿、挣得更多。他们通常也会从事更多的志愿工作、更善于处理人际关系、发出更多心理学家所说的―杜兴微笑‖(Duchenne smile)，即真诚的微笑。让人不太理解的是，为什么幸福可以传染。 According to James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis, authors of the international bestseller Connected, people surrounded by many happy friends, family members and neighbours who are central to their social network become significantly happier in the future.More specifically, they say we will become 25 per cent happier with our life if a friend who lives within a mile of us becomes significantly happier with his or her life. 全球畅销书Connected的作者詹姆斯•福勒(James Fowler)和尼古拉斯•克里斯塔基斯(Nicholas Christakis)发现，如果你身边那些人际网络中重要的朋友、家人与邻居，有许多都很幸福，那么你将来也会幸福很多。他们表示，更准确地说，如果居住在离你1英里内的一个朋友生活幸福感得到显著提升，你的生活幸福感就会增加25%。
Similar effects are seen in co-resident spouses (8 per cent happier); siblings who live within a mile of each other (14 per cent); and next-door neighbours (34 per cent).What this implies is that the magnitude of happine spread seems to depend more on frequent social contact (due to physical proximity) than on deep social connections.Alas, for some reason this doesn’t translate to the workplace.
存在同样效应的还有同居配偶（幸福感提升8%）、居住在1英里之内的兄弟姐妹（14%）和邻居（34%）。这意味着，幸福传播的强度似乎更多有赖于社会交往的频繁度（与地域邻近相关），而不是社会关系的深度。哎呀，可惜出于某种原因，这并不适用于工作场合。
So, why is happine contagious? One reason may be that happy people share their good fortune with their friends and family (for example, by being pragmatically helpful or financially generous).Another reason could be that happy people tend to change their behaviour for the better by being nicer or le hostile to those close to them.Or it could just be that positive emotions are highly contagious. 那么，为什么幸福能够传染？一个原因或许是，幸福的人会与亲朋好友分享好运气（例如，提供实际的帮助，或在经济上慷慨解囊）。另一个原因可能是，幸福的人往往会改善自己的行为，会对周围的人更加友好，或不那么有敌意。又或许只是因为正面情绪具有高度传染性。
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