壓力也有美好的一面
Stress can make us better human beings. But it also it can also hamper our judgement. That's the conclusion of an experiment conducted by scientists at the University of Vienna. The study, published in the journal Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, looked at what happens in the brain when people who are highly stressed try to empathise with others.
壓力會讓我們變得更優秀，但也會妨礙我們的判斷。維也納大學的科學家進行了一個實驗，並得出了上述結論。該研究發表在《社會認知和情感神經科學》（Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience）期刊上，研究了當高度緊張的人們試着同情他人時，他們的大腦會發生什麼。It found that they showed increased empathy towards others and wanted to help them more, but that stress skewed their judgement.
研究發現：他們對別人表現出更多的同情心，更想要幫助他們，但這種壓力卻影響了他們的判斷。A group of 80 male participants were asked to undertake some difficult problem-solving against the clock while receiving negative feedback (to enhance the feelings of stress).
研究員要求80位受試者在解決一些比較困難問題的同時接收一些消極的反饋（以增加他們的壓力感）。
They were then asked to empathise with others by looking at photographs of a painful medical procedure and vividly imagining the pain of that patient. For some of the photos, they were told that the patients had undergone anaesthesia before the operation. This allowed the researchers to identify whether the group could separate their own reaction to the pictures from the actual feelings of the patient - in other words, whether they could show empathy.
然後研究員給受試者看非常痛苦的醫療過程，並讓他們生動地想象病人的痛苦，對病人產生同情。在看某些照片的時候，受試者被告知在手術前，患者被打了麻醉。這能讓研究員判別受試者小組能不能將自己對圖片的反應與患者的實際感受區分開--換句話說，他們能不能表現出同情心。The researchers then tested the relationship between empathy and pro-social behaviour (helping others). The group played a game where they had to share a sum of money, as much or as little as they wanted, with a stranger.
然後研究員測試了同情心和親社會行爲（幫助他人）之間的關係。測試小組玩了一個遊戲：他們必須與陌生人共享一筆錢，可以給多也可以給少。THE RESULTS
結果As they were doing this task, brain scans revealed their brain activity and stress levels. The researchers focused especially on the changes in the so-called "empathy network" - the part of the brain that controls empathy.
他們做任務的時候，大腦掃描圖揭示了他們的大腦活動和壓力水平。研究員尤其關注所謂的"同情網絡"的變化--大腦控制同情心態的部分。
The brain scans showed that as the participants became more stressed, they also showed more empathy. And the more strongly their brains reacted to another person's pain, the more money they chose to give to a stranger.
大腦掃描圖顯示：隨着受試者壓力水平的提升，他們的同情心也逐漸升高。而且，他們的大腦對陌生人的痛苦作出的反應越強烈，他們給的錢就越多。However, the participants showed the same level of brain activity even when they knew the patients undergoing the operations hadn't felt any pain because of anaesthesia. This led the researchers to conclude that when we are in stressful situations, we can't always analyse another person's feelings accurately. Put another way, if someone is crying for joy, we might still think they are upset, due to a lack of judgement and our own overridingly stressed perspective.
然而，當受試者得知患者打了麻醉藥之後感受不到手術帶來的任何痛苦時，他們呈現了相同水平的大腦活動。因此，研究員得出結論：當我們處於壓力之下，我們並不能總是準確地分析出他人的感受。換言之。如果某人是喜極而泣，我們仍可能認爲他們非常傷心，這是因爲在極度的壓力之下，我們會缺乏判斷。
