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The study: Giles Story attached electrodes that would deliver electric shocks to the hands of 35 subjects, inflicting minor pain that ranged from a slight buzz to something that felt like a strong insect bite. The subjects got to choose between receiving milder shocks after an interval as long as 15 minutes or stronger shocks more immediately. Most subjects opted to receive the more-intense stimuli right away rather than experience the dread of waiting for less intense ones.
研究：在一项实验中，贾尔斯·斯托里给35名参与者手上通上电极，制造出一种安全的电击体验，程度从轻微的嗡嗡声到略强的类似昆虫叮咬。参与者可以选择程度轻微的，但要先等上15分钟；或较强的，可以立刻开始的那种。绝大多数人选择了立即接受较强的体验，而不是在恐惧中等待，哪怕是程度较为轻微的。
The challenge:Is the expectation of pain worse than the actual pain itself? Should we meet the unpleasant head-on, and just get it over with?
挑战：等待痛苦是否比痛苦本身更可怕？对此我们是否应该直接面对，不要拖延？
Story: A full 70% of the time our subjects opted to receive more-painful shocks right away rather than wait for less painful shocks in the near future. We infer from this that dread—the anticipation of negative outcomes—is a powerful force. But how powerful? We were trying to measure dread. And we think these findings show that dread is so painful that people will pay a significant price, in the form of more physical pain, to avoid it.
斯托里：大多数情况下，参与者都会选择立即接受较强的电击，而不愿稍加等待接受较轻微的。我们由此推论，恐惧——对不愉快事情的等待——具有强大的力量。这种力量究竟有多大？这正是我们试图量化的。实验结果表明，恐惧真的很痛苦，人们不惜通过承受更大的身体疼痛来避开它。
HBR: First things first. You’re jolting people with electricity? What kind of twisted lab do you run?
[Laughs.]
I assure you this is very controlled and quite benign—we don’t jolt people. We used mildly painful electric shocks, on the back of the hand. And everyone who participates obviously agrees to it. It’s actually a common technique in research that looks at how to treat chronic pain.
HBR：什么！？电击活人？你的实验室也太变态了吧？
[大笑]我向你保证，实验受到严格监控，手段非常温和。我们并没有电“击”活人，只是使用轻微电流，针对手背一个部位，制造轻微痛感。每位参与者都是自愿的。实际上这是针对慢性疼痛治疗研究的一种常用手法。
HBR：And was the amount of pain subjects chose much higher than what they would have gotten by deferring it?
Yes. People chose up to a third to half again as much pain. On a typical 0-to-10 scale, the people with the most dread were choosing a shock that would be rated a 6 right away rather than waiting for a 4 later.
HBR：需要等一会儿的电击较为轻微，但他们却主动选择立即接受较强的？
是的。人们会选择多承受三分之一甚至一半的痛感来避免这种等待。按0-10的级别来衡量，恐惧感最强的人会选择立刻接受6级电击，也不愿等待稍后的4级。
HBR：So dread feels more painful than a level 6 shock? That seems alarming.
Not quite. The idea is that dread plus the eventual shock equals more than a 6. The strange part is that opting for higher amounts of pain right away goes against the widely accepted theory of temporal discounting—which says we place lower value on future outcomes. In positive situations, this plays out as a desire to have $10 today rather than wait for $12 a week from now.
HBR：也就是说，恐惧比6级电击更让人无法忍受？这太不可思议了。
不是。是说恐惧加上电击最终造成的痛苦超过了6级电击所带来的痛苦。奇怪的是，选择立刻接受更痛的电击这种做法与广为接受的“时间贴现”（temporal discounting）理论相抵触。时间贴现是指我们对事件的价值量估计随着时间的流逝而下降的心理现象（行为选择理论的一个重要组成部分——译者注）。在现实情况下，它体现为人们宁可今天获得10美元，也不愿等待一周后获得12美元。
According to that theory, if I’m discounting the value of a level 4 shock that happens later, there’s no way I’d choose a level 6 shock now. But most people do choose the bigger shock. Why? We believe it’s because they factor dread into their temporal discounting calculus. They’re not weighing a 4 shock versus a 6 shock. They’re weighing a 4 shock, plus five or so minutes of anticipating it, against a 6 shock that’s over in a few seconds.
根据这一理论，人们应该会选择稍后的4级电击，而不是立刻的6级电击，因为未来4级的价值量估计被打了折扣。但大多数人却选择了立刻的6级，为什么？我们认为是恐惧起了作用。影响人们选择的不是电击4级和6级，而是电击4级加5分钟等待时间和电击6级无需等待。
HBR：But what if we said you could come back in a week to receive the shock? There must be some point at which we don’t dread future pain more than present pain.
We tested for this in a follow-up study in which, instead of administering shocks, we asked people whether they would choose to schedule a hypothetical painful dentist appointment sooner or later. We saw the same pattern. Now, in the first study we’d made the pain inevitable. In the real world you’d have all kinds of mechanisms for avoiding the painful situation—you could skip the appointment or schedule it and just cancel later. We believe people often procrastinate in the hope that maybe painful events will just go away altogether. But if an event is inevitable, the pattern of wanting to get it over with seems to hold.
HBR：如果跟他们说一周后再回来接受电击呢？肯定有一个临界点能让人觉得当下的痛苦和未来的痛苦没有区别。
我们在一个后续实验里对此做了测试，这次不是使用电击，而是让实验对象就去看牙医的时间（可早可晚）做出安排，就诊可能会特别痛苦，而且不能选择不去。因为在现实生活中，人们会通过要么不做预约要么预约了不去就诊，来避免这种痛苦。有了这一附加条件后，我们从这个实验中得出了与电击测试相同的选择模式。造成这种选择行为的原因是，如果可以选择不去，人们会心存侥幸心理，觉得往后推迟可能最后就不用做了，但如果事情非做不可，人们还是会选择尽快了结，而不是拖延。
HBR：If dread is so bad, won’t anyone who postpones the appointment by five months build up an unmanageable amount of it?
Well, we certainly find that dread builds up the longer the wait—but not in a linear way, as you might imagine. A short wait increases dread a lot, but prolonging the wait further has less of an impact. It looks to us as if people’s dread is much worse on the day before the appointment than when it’s a week away. It rises exponentially as an event nears.
HBR：如果等待如此可怕，那选择5个月后见牙医的人岂不是会恐惧到难以承受？
恐惧感会随着时间和等待加剧，这是肯定的，但并非如你想象的呈直线上升。等待时间越短，恐惧感越强，时间久了影响就变小了。就诊前一天的恐惧感远远大于就诊前一周。随着时间临近，恐惧感会呈几何式增长。
HBR：Exponential dread sounds deeply miserable.
Yes. As you get closer, the dread grows faster. By the way, we suspect the reverse is also true. The opposite of dread in psychology is called “savoring”—the anticipation of a positive outcome. And it appears that we may enjoy that more than the actual positive outcome itself.
HBR：几何式增长听上去太可怕了。
是的，越是事到临头，恐惧感越强。顺便提一下，我们怀疑相反的感受也是如此。心理学中，恐惧的反面是“渴求”——对美好事情的期待。比起美好事情，我们可能更钟情的是对其“渴求”的过程。
HBR：That’s the Christmas afternoon effect.
Precisely.
HBR：I’ve been dreading asking this next question.
The sooner you ask, the sooner the pain will be gone.
HBR：也就是周五下午人们的感受。
没错。
HBR：我一直不敢问下一个问题。
越早问，你的痛苦就越早结束。
HBR：I remember studies from the 1960s in which researchers yoked dogs together in pairs and shocked them and discovered “learned helplessness.” The dogs just gave up resisting the shocks and whimpered, even if they weren’t shocked but their yoked partners were. Will enough dread lead to that kind of helplessness?
It very well may. We don’t have data yet, but there may be connections between the accumulation of dread and depression. Depressed people see everything as having a negative outcome. So you can imagine they’re constantly filled with dread. That’s very hard to deal with.
HBR：我记得20世纪60年代的一项研究，研究人员把两条狗拴在一起，进行电击实验，最后两条狗都放弃了抗争，发出求救，即使是在自己没被电击只是同伴被电击的情况下。由此得出了“习得性无助”现象（指人或动物接连不断地受到挫折,便会感到自己对于一切都无能为力,丧失信心,陷入一种无助的心理状态——译者注）。如果恐惧达到一定程度，是否会导致这种无助？
很有可能。尽管我们还没有相关数据来证明这一点，但不断加重的恐惧感与抑郁之间是可能存在着某种关联的。抑郁的人看待任何事情都很消极。如果他们的恐惧感持续加重，你可以想象会发生什么，他们会不知如何是好。
HBR：Have you measured the physiological markers related to dread?
No, but others have. Gregory Berns and his colleagues measured brain activity and found that people with higher anticipatory responses were more likely to choose to get pain out of the way.
HBR：你是否测量过与恐惧相关的生理指标？
没有，但有人做过。格雷戈里·伯恩斯（Gregory Berns）与他的同事测量过脑活动，发现那些对预期反应较强的人会选择早点结束这种痛苦，而不是拖延时间。
HBR：Your study dealt with physical pain. Does this phenomenon carry over to the dread of emotional pain—say, the anticipation of a bad performance review?
There’s no data yet, but I’m sure the dynamics are similar. The dread experienced would probably be akin to the dread in the dentist study, where the pain was months away and subjects weren’t sure what it would feel like. People may try procrastination and avoidance here too, but our results suggest that as the review becomes inevitable, they’ll choose to get it over with—perhaps even move the date of the review up—rather than wait and endure that exponential dread curve. Looking at that would be a wonderful study!
HBR：你的研究是针对生理痛苦的，是否也可以用来解释情绪恐惧，比如对工作绩效差评的担忧？
目前还没有相关数据，但我肯定其中的变化是类似的。这种恐惧感可能和牙医实验的恐惧感很像。牙医实验中的疼痛在几个月后才到来，实验对象对具体感受不甚了解。人们也许还会选择拖延或者逃避。但我们的研究显示，如果业绩评估无法避免，他们会希望越早知道越好，而不是选择等待并忍受不断增强的恐惧感。这方面的研究很值得做一下。
HBR：Can anything be done to mitigate dread?
Yes, we’ve shown that in our study. When we described a shock level as a decrease from a higher level, people dreaded that shock less. We can also rig situations to reduce dread somewhat. Take a flu shot. You’re called in and sit in a chair watching the nurse prepare the needle, thinking all the while of the upcoming pain. Another way to go would be to have the needles prepped before you walk in—and have the nurse stick you right away. A worker might make self-affirmations to offset the dread of a performance review, or the boss might say, “It’s not going to be that bad.”
HBR：Unless, of course, it is. Then you might as well get it over with.
It’ll hurt less that way.
HBR：有什么方法能缓解这种恐惧吗？
有的，我们的研究中也提到了。当我们告诉参与者电击力度不是那么强时，人们对此的恐惧感会降低一些。我们也可以通过对现实情况稍作改变来削弱这种恐惧感。以流感疫苗为例，如果你被叫进去，坐在椅子上看着护士准备注射器，想到注射的疼痛你会害怕起来。但如果你被叫进去时，一切都准备好了，护士直接给你注射，你的恐惧感恐怕就不会那么强了。雇员可以通过自我肯定来消除对工作业绩差评的恐惧。老板也可以通过说“不会那么差的”来降低员工的恐惧感。
HBR：除非真是那么差。那么越早知道越好。
是的。
贾尔斯·斯托里（Giles Story）|文
贾尔斯·斯托里是伦敦帝国理工学院和伦敦大学学院行为经济学的临床研究员。
斯科特·贝里纳托（Scott Berinato） | 采访
牛文静 | 译 康欣叶 | 校
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发表于 2018-12-16 13:23:10