2023考研英語閱讀傳遞快樂的使者

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2023考研英語閱讀傳遞快樂的使者

　　Transporter of delight

　　傳遞快樂的使者

　　Happiness is in your DNA; and different races mayhave different propensities for it

　　基因決定幸福;而不同種族的幸福傾向不盡相同

　　Born smiling?

　　天生會笑?

　　THE idea that the human personality is a blank slate, to be written upon only by experience,prevailed for most of the second half of the 20th century. Over the past two decades, however,that notion has been undermined. Studies comparing identical with non-identical twins havehelped to establish the heritability of many aspects of behaviour, and examination of DNA hasuncovered some of the genes responsible. Recent work on both these fronts suggests thathappiness is highly heritable.

　　人的性格有如一張白紙，唯有經歷才能在上面揮毫潑墨這個觀點幾乎在整個二十世紀下半葉都十分流行。然而近二十年來，此觀點的說服力已逐漸減弱。同卵及異卵雙胞胎的對比研究為證明行為的許多方面的遺傳性帶來了許多幫助，DNA檢查也發現了與此相關的部分基因。最近，對這兩個前沿問題的研究表明幸福感在很大程度上是遺傳的。

　　As any human being knows, many factors govern whether people are happy or unhappy.External circumstances are important: employed people are happier than unemployed ones andbetter-off people than poor ones. Age has a role, too: the young and the old are happier thanthe middle-aged. But personality is the single biggest determinant: extroverts are happierthan introverts, and confident people happier than anxious ones.

　　眾所周知，決定一個人幸福與否的因素有很多。外部環境就十分重要：就業人群比失業人士更幸福，富裕階層比家境貧寒的人更幸福。年齡也是一個因素：年輕人與老年人比中年人更幸福。但是，性格是唯一一個最大的決定性因素：性格外向的人比性格內向的人更幸福，自信的人比性格焦慮的人更幸福。

　　That personality, along with intelligence, is at least partly heritable is becoming increasinglyclear; so, presumably, the tendency to be happy or miserable is, to some extent, passed onthrough DNA. To try to establish just what that extent is, a group of scientists from UniversityCollege, London; Harvard Medical School; the University of California, San Diego; and theUniversity of Zurich examined over 1,000 pairs of twins from a huge study on the health ofAmerican adolescents. In Genes, Economics and Happiness, a working paper from theUniversity of Zurichs Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, they conclude that about athird of the variation in peoples happiness is heritable. That is along the lines of, though alittle lower than, previous estimates on the subject.

　　性格與智力至少在某種程度上是遺傳的，這個觀點正變得越來越明確;所以，在某種程度上，一個人感到幸福還是悲傷的傾向可能是由基因傳遞的。為了確定基因到底在多大程度上決定幸福，來自倫敦大學學院、哈佛大學醫學院、圣地亞哥的加利福尼亞大學及蘇黎世大學的一組科學家在一個針對美國青少年的大型健康研究中對1000對雙胞胎進行了測試。在蘇黎世大學經濟學實證研究院的一篇工作論文《基因、經濟學與快樂》中，這些科學家們提出了以下結論：人的幸福感約有三分之一是遺傳的。這個結論與之前的估計相一致，只是在程度上稍微低了一點。

　　But while twin studies are useful for establishing the extent to which a characteristic isheritable, they do not finger the particular genes at work. One of the researchers, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, of University College, London, and the London School of Economics, hastried to do just that, by picking a popular suspectthe gene that encodes the serotonin-transporter protein, a molecule that shuffles a brain messenger called serotonin through cellmembranesand examining how variants of that gene affect levels of happiness.

　　雖然關于雙胞胎的研究有助于確定一個性格特征在多大程度上能被遺傳，但是這項研究并未指出到底是哪個基因起到了遺傳作用。倫敦大學學院及倫敦經濟學院的一位研究人員簡-以內馬利德內弗已選出一個被認為最有可能起作用的基因，即編碼血清素轉運體蛋白質的基因，并嘗試檢驗這個基因的各種變異對幸福感的影響有多大。

　　Serotonin is involved in mood regulation. Serotonin transporters are crucial to this job. Theserotonin-transporter gene comes in two functional variantslong and short. The long oneproduces more transporter-protein molecules than the short one. People have two versions of each gene, one from each parent. So some have two short alleles, somehave two long ones, and the rest have one of each.

　　血清素與情緒調節有關，而血清素轉運體在其中的作用至關重要。從功能角度上區分，血清素轉運提基因有兩種變體：長型和短型，長型能比短型制造出更多的轉運體蛋白質分子。人類擁有分別來自父親與母親的兩個血清素轉運體基因，每個基因有兩種版本。所以，有些人擁有兩個短型等位基因，有些人擁有兩個長型等位基因，剩下的則長型短型各一個。

　　The adolescents in Dr De Neves study were asked to grade themselves from very satisfied tovery dissatisfied. Dr De Neve found that those with one long allele were 8% more likely thanthose with none to describe themselves as very satisfied; those with two long alleles were 17%more likely.

　　德?內弗博士在研究中要求青少年在非常滿意到非常不滿之間對自己作出評價。德?內弗博士發現，擁有一個長型基因的人對自身評價非常滿意的比例比沒有長型基因的人多8%;而擁有兩個長型基因的人則多17%。

　　Which is interesting. Where the story could become controversial is when the ethnic origins ofthe volunteers are taken into account. All were Americans, but they were asked to classifythemselves by race as well. On average, the Asian Americans in the sample had 0.69 longgenes, the black Americans had 1.47 and the white Americans had 1.12.

　　以上現象相當有趣。而研究有爭議之處在于，志愿者的種族也被考慮了進去。所有志愿者都是美國人，但他們同樣被要求區分自己屬于哪個種族。在樣本中，平均而言，亞裔美國人擁有0.69個長型基因，黑人美國人擁有1.47個，白人美國人有1.2個。

　　That result sits comfortably with other studies showing that, on average, Asian countries reportlower levels of happiness than their GDP per head would suggest. African countries, however,are all over the place, happinesswise. But that is not surprising, either. Africa is the mostgenetically diverse continent, because that is where humanity evolved . Black Americans, mostly the descendants of slaves carried away froma few places in west Africa, cannot possibly be representative of the whole continent.

　　毫無疑問，以上結果與另一些研究的結果相符。這些研究表明，亞洲國家人民的平均幸福程度比其人均GDP所預示的要低。然而，在非洲，不論哪國的人民都感到很幸福。不過這也并不出乎意料。非洲是基因最多樣化的大洲，因為那里是人類進化的地方。美國黑人則大多是被人從非洲西部某些地區帶來的奴隸的后代，因此他們不可能代表整個大洲。

　　That some populations have more of the long version of the serotonin-transporter gene hasbeen noticed before, though the association has previously been made at a national, ratherthan a racial, level. In a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, published in 2009, JoanChiao and Katherine Blizinsky of Northwestern University, in Illinois, found a positivecorrelation between higher levels of the short version of the gene and mood disorders and with collectivist political systems. Their hypothesis is thatcultures prone to anxiety tend towards systems that emphasise social harmony and awayfrom ones that emphasise individuals independence of each other.

　　之前也有人注意到一些人擁有更多的長型血清素轉運體基因，不過研究角度是國家而非種族。伊利諾斯州西北大學的約翰?喬和凱瑟林?Blizinsky于2009年在英國皇家學院學報發表了一篇論文，他們在文中指出，擁有短型基因及情緒障礙癥與實行集體主義的政治制度呈正相關關系。他們的假設是：有焦慮傾向的文化趨于實行強調社會和諧的制度，而遠離強調個人獨立的制度。