Everyone knows someone who bargains extraordinarily well. According to a new study in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, skilled negotiators are using extra brainpower to do so.

每个人都认识那些特会讨价还价的人。美国国家科学学会一项最新研究表明，善于洽谈的人所需使用的脑力比一般人更多。

Researchers created a game in which players were given the true value of an object on a scale of 1 to 10. The players used this information to make a bid to the seller of the object, who did not know the true value.

研究人员设计了一个游戏，参与者会得到一个实际价值为1-10区间内物品（实际价值对参与者已知），并利用这项信息向卖家出价，但游戏的过程中，卖家不知道该物品的实际价值。

The buyers fell into three groups. One group consisted of players who were honest in their price suggestions, making low bids directly related to the true value. A second group, called “conservatives,” made bids only weakly related to the true price. The last and most interesting group, known as “strategic deceivers,” bid higher when the true price was low, and then when the true price was high, they bid low, and collected large gains.

买者（即已知该物品价值的参与者）共有三类人。第一类人是直肠子，他们实价实买，完全按照已知的真实价值进行报价。第二类人被称作是“保守派”，他们会对报价进行适当的压价，但幅度不大。而最后一组最有趣，他们可以算是“策略骗子”，他们在价低的时候报高价，而在价高的时候又报低价，从中赚取大笔利益。

“They are making sure they even it out so they stay believable, and they make the most money because of it,” said Read Montague, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine and one of the study’s authors.

贝勒医学院神经科学家、该调查发起者之一的里德·蒙塔奇说：“他们得确保把报价两头拉平，以保持自身的可信度，这样一来就可以大赚一笔。”

Dr. Montague and his colleagues ran functional M.R.I.’s on the subjects as they played and found that the strategic deceivers had unique brain activity in regions connected to complex decision-making, goal maintenance and understanding another person’s belief system. Though the game was abstract, there are real-life advantages to being a strategic deceiver.

蒙塔奇博士和他的同事们对于那些“策略骗子”进行了脑部核磁共振，结果发现他们在与三大功能部分连接的大脑分区活动方式很特别，这三个功能分别是：复杂决策、目标维持和理解他人价值体系。虽然这个游戏比较抽象，但是在现实生活中做一个“策略骗子”确实有其独特的优势。

“It’s used to bargain in a marketplace or in a store but also to recruit someone for a job, or to negotiate a higher salary,” Dr. Montague said.

他还说：“这种能力可以让你在市场讨价还价时更加得心应手，而且在你要招聘或者商谈更高薪水时，也是好处多多。”