一项研究将个人性格特征和财产情况结合起来分析,结果显示,“好好先生”往往存款更低、负债累累而且面临较高的破产危机——克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔报道。
Are you an agreeable person—you know, a nice guy? If so, a logical follow-up might be: how are your finances? And here's why: "Agreeable peoplehave lower savings, they have higher debt, and they're also more likely to go bankrupt or default on their loans."
你是一个难以说不的人吗——或者说,一个好人吗?如果是这样,一个顺理成章的后续问题可能是:你的财务状况如何?如此发问的原因在于:“好好先生”往往储蓄更少、债务更高、也更容易破产或拖欠贷款。
Sandra Matz is a computational social scientist at the Columbia Business School in New York City. Using a combination of questionnaires and bank data, she and her colleague Joe Gladstone found that people who score as more agreeable on personality tests have a better chance of ending up in dire financial straits—especially if they are low-income to begin with.
桑德拉·马茨是纽约市哥伦比亚商学院的计算社会科学家。通过将调查问卷和银行数据相结合,她和她的同事乔·格莱斯顿发现,在性格测试中得分越高的人,越有可能陷入可怕的财务困境——尤其是如果他们一开始的收入就很低。
The researchers also combined personality data on millions of people in the U.S. and the U.K. with regional data on how many people were unable to pay their debts. And they found, again, that the nicer a county or local area's people on average, the worse their finances.
研究人员还将美国和英国数百万人的性格数据与当地无法偿还债务的数据相结合,他们再次发现,一个区县或地方居民的平均性格得分越高,他们的经济状况就越差。
Matz thinks a factor could be that agreeable people just don't care much about money. Maybe they pick up the tab more often, or loan money when they can't afford to. They're generous to a fault.
马茨认为,其中一个因素可能是随和的人不太在乎钱。也许他们会更频繁地付账,或者在自己无法负担的时候借钱。他们过分慷慨了。
So how do you get them to wise up?
"One way we could reframe this is saying, don't care about money just for yourself, but care about it for your family, care about it for the people you love. Because if you mismanage your money it's not just going to affect you, but it’s also going to affect all the people you care about, and that you love deeply."
Which might translate agreeable people's superpower—caring about other people—into better financial sense. The results are in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. [Sandra C. Matz and Joe J. Gladstone, Nice Guys Finish Last: When and Why Agreeableness Is Associated With Economic Hardship]
那么,怎样才能让他们聪明一点呢?
“我们可以用另一种方式重新组织这句话,不要只是为了自己才关心财务,而是要为了你的家人和你爱的人。”因为如果你对财务管理不善,那不仅会影响到自己,还会影响到所有你关心的人,以及你深爱的人。
这可能会把“好好先生”关心他人的超能力转化成为更好的财务意识。
这项研究结果发表于《个性与社会心理学杂志》(the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)。[Sandra C. Matz and Joe J. Gladstone, Nice Guys Finish Last: When and Why Agreeableness Is Associated With Economic Hardship]
If Matz does succeed in teaching nice people to be more stingy, who then will pick up the tab? "Then it's a matter of negotiating, then it should be more equally distributed. So if the agreeable person says I can't pay all the time, I only want to do that once in a while, but I also want you to give something back, because that's what makes a relationship a relationship, and not a one way street."
Which might mean agreeable people need to get a little more comfortable having disagreeable conversations.
如果马茨成功地教会好人变得小气一些,那么谁来买单呢?“这是一个需要商量的问题,之后应该更公平地分配。”所以,如果“好好先生”说我不能一直付钱,我只是有时想买单,但同时我也想从你那里得到一些回报,因为这才是在真正维持一段关系,而不是单向付出。
这意味着“好好先生”可能要在进行不愉快的谈话时变得更自在一些。
—克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔
翻译:Neo
校对:杨青