科学美国人60秒 SSS 好人的钱包更空（在线收听）

This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。

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 people have lower savings, they have higher debt, and they're also more likely to go bankrupt or default on their loans."

你是随和的人吗——也就是说，你是好人吗？如果是，那合乎逻辑的后续问题可能是：你的财务状况怎么样？原因是：“随和的人往往储蓄较少，债务较高，而且他们也更可能破产或拖欠贷款。”

Sandra Matz is a computational social scientist at the Columbia Business School in New York City. And 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.

纽约市哥伦比亚商学院的计算社会科学家桑德拉·马茨说到。结合调查问卷和银行数据，她和同事乔·格拉德斯通发现，性格测试中随和指数越高的人，越可能在最后陷入可怕的财务困境，尤其是一开始收入就低的人。

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无法偿还债务的地区数据相结合。他们再次发现，平均来说一个县或地区的民众性格越随和，他们的财务状况就越糟糕。

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，其中一个原因可能是“老好人”不太在乎钱。可能他们经常替人付账，或在买不起时就选择借钱。他们过于慷慨了。

So how do you get them to wise up?

那要怎样才能让他们觉醒呢？

"So 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."

“我们可以改变这种情况的一种方法是告诉他们，在意钱并不只是为了自己，而是为了家人，为了你爱的人。因为如果你对自己的钱管理不善，那不仅会影响到你自己，还会影响到所有你在乎的人和你深爱的人。”

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.

这可能会将“老好人”关心他人的超能力转变为更好的财务意识。这项研究发表在《人格与社会心理学》期刊上。

So 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, right? 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."

如果马茨成功地教好人变得小气，那以后谁来付账呢？“这就涉及到谈判了，对吗？应该更公平地均摊账单。如果‘老好人’说我不能总是付账，我只想偶尔买单，但我也希望你们能回请，因为这才是一段关系的正确模式，不只是单方面付出。”

Which might mean agreeable people need to get a little more comfortable having disagreeable conversations.

这可能意味着友善的人在进行不友善的对话时需要更放松一些。

Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。