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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.
压力会让我们变得更优秀，但也会妨碍我们的判断。维也纳大学的科学家进行了一个实验，并得出了上述结论。该研究发表在《社会认知和情感神经科学》（Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience）期刊上，研究了当高度紧张的人们试着同情他人时，他们的大脑会发生什么。
It found that they showed increased empathy towards others and wanted to help them more, but that stress skewed their judgement.
研究发现：他们对别人表现出更多的同情心，更想要帮助他们，但这种压力却影响了他们的判断。
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).
研究员要求80位受试者在解决一些比较困难问题的同时接收一些消极的反馈（以增加他们的压力感）。
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.
然后研究员给受试者看非常痛苦的医疗过程，并让他们生动地想象病人的痛苦，对病人产生同情。在看某些照片的时候，受试者被告知在手术前，患者被打了麻醉。这能让研究员判别受试者小组能不能将自己对图片的反应与患者的实际感受区分开--换句话说，他们能不能表现出同情心。
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.
然后研究员测试了同情心和亲社会行为（帮助他人）之间的关系。测试小组玩了一个游戏：他们必须与陌生人共享一笔钱，可以给多也可以给少。
THE RESULTS
结果
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.
他们做任务的时候，大脑扫描图揭示了他们的大脑活动和压力水平。研究员尤其关注所谓的"同情网络"的变化--大脑控制同情心态的部分。
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.
大脑扫描图显示：随着受试者压力水平的提升，他们的同情心也逐渐升高。而且，他们的大脑对陌生人的痛苦作出的反应越强烈，他们给的钱就越多。
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，当受试者得知患者打了麻醉药之后感受不到手术带来的任何痛苦时，他们呈现了相同水平的大脑活动。因此，研究员得出结论：当我们处于压力之下，我们并不能总是准确地分析出他人的感受。换言之。如果某人是喜极而泣，我们仍可能认为他们非常伤心，这是因为在极度的压力之下，我们会缺乏判断。
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