容易的決定是一種心理的怠惰嗎？心理學家把這種傾向容易的選擇稱作cognitive fluency，我姑且把它譯為「認知流暢性」。但是一般人通常認為真理總是淺顯易懂，睿智的言語也總是言簡意賅。這兩種想法就是導致錯誤與失敗終究無可避免的背景心態嗎？
人類歷史上最大的兩次核能電廠災害分別發生在當時最強的兩個國家，美國的三哩島與蘇聯的車諾比，調查結果都是人為疏失。所以無論何能專家怎麼說核能是安全的，還是無可避免的發生人為疏失。無論是多嚴謹的科學或作業，因為「認知流暢性」的關係，錯誤與失敗似乎是注定的！？人類所有的努力就像薛西弗斯(Sisyphus)一樣不停地把巨石推上山頂去，推上山頂去後巨石又會滾下來，然後又再推上去嗎？難怪會有人類從歷史上學到的教訓就是：「人類永遠不會從歷史中學得教訓」的這種說法。
「認知流暢性」的相反還有「不流暢性」，操弄「不流暢性」可以提高人們的專注力，這或許才是我們應該要注意與努力發展的。
This column will change your life:
Is the easy option simply mental laziness?
If something is easy to think about, we're more likely to think it preferable
Oliver Burkeman: easy option
It's a truism of devastating obviousness that we tend to prefer the easy option over the difficult one. Terrible choices of almost any size – from not going to the dentist to causing the sub-prime mortgage crisis – can usually be traced back to the fact that doing things differently would have taken more effort. Sure, there may be other, subtler explanations for humanity's reliable tendency towards wrongness and fiasco, but I can't be bothered to think of any. Like everyone else, I'm taking the easy option, thereby providing evidence in support of my point. Thus I win.
truism a statement that is clearly true and does not therefore add anything interesting or important to a discussion 不言而喻的道理；自明之理；老生常談
devastating adj. 1. causing a lot of damage and destruction 破壞性極大的；毀滅性的 2. extremely shocking to a person 令人震驚的；駭人的 3. impressive and powerful 給人印象深刻的；令人欽佩的；強有力的
Even if it's a truism, though, it's only relatively recently that psychologists have come to grasp how deeply this
preference for ease ferrets into our brains, manifesting itself not just as a liking for physical sloth, but for mental laziness, too. They call this
"cognitive fluency": the idea that if something is easy to think about, we're far more likely to think it preferable, more important or true. One study suggests that people think of recipes, or lists of tasks, as easier if they're printed in a clearer font. Another suggests that hostility towards immigrants may be partially explained because it's more taxing to conceive of, say, a person from Algeria who lives in France than a French person living in France.
The well-known "availability bias" makes us more afraid of threats we can vividly picture, no matter how unlikely. (Did you know you're 30 times more likely to be killed by a falling piece of aircraft than in a shark attack?) An academic study of the anonymous confessions site grouphug.us concluded that people became more candid when a more legible redesign was introduced. And companies with easier-to-pronounce names, the Boston Globe reported recently in a roundup of cognitive fluency research, fare better on the stock market.
ferret n. a small fierce animal with a long thin body, kept for chasing rabbits from their holes, killing rats, etc. 雪貂
ferret somebody/something↔out (informal) to discover information or to find somebody/something by searching thoroughly, asking a lot of questions, etc. 搜索出；搜尋出；查獲
sloth n. 1. a S American animal that lives in trees and moves very slowly 樹懶（南美洲熱帶動物，行動緩慢） 2. the bad habit of being lazy and unwilling to work 懶散；怠惰
cognitive adj. connected with mental processes of understanding 認知的；感知的；認識的
taxing adj. needing a great amount of physical or mental effort 繁重的；費力的；傷腦筋的
conceive v.1. to form an idea, a plan, etc. in your mind; to imagine something 想出（主意、計劃等）；想像；構想；設想 ~ (of) sth (as sth) formal 2. when a woman conceives or conceives a child, she becomes pregnant 懷孕；懷胎
candid adj. saying what you think openly and honestly; not hiding your thoughts 坦率的；坦誠的；直言不諱的
legible adj. of written or printed words 手寫或印刷文字 clear enough to read 清晰可讀的；清楚的
This makes good evolutionary sense, of course: our brains have developed to conserve our energies for when we need them to survive. This may be why it's so hard to feel motivated to go jogging: exercise for its own sake would have been insane in a world in which you got all the workouts you needed just feeding yourself and escaping wild animals. A fondness for the familiar, similarly, is eminently understandable. As the late psychologist Robert Zajonc liked to say, "If it's familiar, it hasn't eaten you yet."
There's an upside to this tendency to idleness, though: cognitive fluency's opposite,
"disfluency", prompts us to think things through more carefully, and can be harnessed to prompt focused thought. Those same font researchers found that printing something in a difficult typeface caused people really to engage with the content; far more gave the correct answer to the question "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?" (Answer: none.) The novelist Colum McCann prints off his drafts in eight-point Times New Roman, in order to peer at his words with fresh eyes and a more rigorous mind.
eminent adj. of people 人 famous and respected, especially in a particular profession （尤指在某專業中）卓越的，著名的，顯赫的And yet I can't help feeling dispirited. It's agonising enough to consider the great opportunities we miss in life as a result of crippling fear, or lack of talent, or appalling bad luck. How much worse is it to think of all the roads not taken because just thinking about them in the first place took a little more effort? The only solution, presumably, is to be constantly on the alert for lazy thinking. Which is, in itself, mentally tiring. Yes. It's awkward.
oliver.burkeman@guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/feb/20/change-your-life-easy-option
The story was taken from the website of The Guardian at above-mentioned URL. The copyright remains with its original owner. The Guardian is not involved with, nor endorses the production of this blog.
文章定位：
