Cultural Goofs Gear Up Gray Matter

打乱习俗利于维持头脑清醒

People exposed to incongruent situations, such as Halloween-themed plates at a Labor Day picnic, performed better on cognitive reasoning tests and were less likely to make impulse purchases or overeat

在与认知不协调的环境下，如在劳动节聚餐中使用万圣节风格的碟子，人们在认知推理能力测试的成绩更好，并产生更少的购买与暴食的欲望。

撰文/播音 Erika Beras

翻译 M

审校 邰伦玥

Exposure to the unusual, the jarring, the culturally shocking may be beneficial for your cognitive reasoning—and your waistline.

身处在不寻常、不和谐或是与习俗冲突的环境下，可能对你的认知推理甚至是身材有所帮助。

That’s according to a study in the journal Social Cognition. [James A. Mourey, Ben C. P. Lam and Daphna Oyserman, Consequences of Cultural Fluency]

（这是）根据《社会认知》（Social Cognition）杂志上的一项研究。[James A. Mourey, Ben C. P. Lam and Daphna Oyserman, Consequences of Cultural Fluency]

Using events we all have some understanding of—holidays, weddings and funerals—researchers ran eight experiments to see how people respond to normative cultural situations versus culturally disfluent situations.

研究人员组织了八个实验，以观察人们如何面对合符习俗以及违反习俗的情况。这些实验基于一些我们普遍熟悉的场合，包括节日、婚礼与葬礼。

A normative situation would be a bride wearing white on her wedding day. A disfluent one would be hanging Saint Patrick’s Day decorations on Christmas.

合乎习俗的一种情形比如新娘在她的婚礼上穿白色的婚纱。违反习俗的情形比如在圣诞节使用圣帕特里克节的装饰。

The first two experiments took place during Fourth of July and Labor Day picnics. For the July Fourth party, white plates were randomly mixed into stacks of stars-and-stripes plates. On Labor Day, Halloween-adorned plates were mixed in with patriotic plates.  Then guests selected food from a buffet line.

前两个实验在7月4日美国国庆节和劳动节开展。在国庆派对上，所使用的餐盘为随机派放的白色餐盘和星条旗装饰的餐盘。在劳动节，所使用的餐盘为随机派放的万圣节风格的餐盘和爱国装饰的餐盘。宾客们在自助餐区选取食物。

The result? On Labor Day, guests put less food on the Halloween-themed than on the patriotic plates. And on the Fourth of July, they put less food on plain white plates than on stars-and-stripes plates. 

结果是：在劳动节派对，使用万圣节风格盘子的宾客拿取了更少的食物；而在国庆派对上，使用白色餐盘的宾客拿取了更少的食物。

In other parts of this study researchers found that people who have been exposed to culturally-disfluent situations performed better on cognitive reasoning tests and were less likely to succumb to impulse purchases and food consumption. That situation was compared to when events met their expectations—such as seeing hearts on Valentine’s Day.

在另一部分的研究中，对比起合乎人们期望的情况——比如在情人节看到爱心图案，研究人员发现：当身处于违反习俗的情形，人们的认知推理测试的表现更佳，并更能抵挡住购买欲或是进食欲。

Encountering the expected allowed subjects to behave more mindlessly.  So, researchers reason that cultural fluency preserves associative reasoning while cultural disfluency shifts to systematic reasoning. These small tests reinforce the idea that routine makes the brain dull—while the unexpected keeps it fired up.

当看到与预期相同的事物时，研究对象的行为变得更加盲目。因此研究人员把这种现象归因于人们在合乎习俗的情况下倾向于联想推理，而违反习俗的情况下更偏向系统推理。这些测试证明了常规使大脑迟钝，而超出预期的事情则能让其一直保持清醒。