We Enjoy Things For Reasons Other Than Enjoyment四级考号

我们喜欢某些事物是出于理性而非快乐

Enjoyment is a weird thing because it's so subjective-for every person who loves a given food, song, or movie, there's another person who adamantly hates it. You'd think that the reason we enjoy things is because it feels good in some way, but scientists have conclusively proven that that's only half the story.

快乐是一件很奇怪的事，因为它太主观了-每个人都有自己的喜好，一个人喜欢的食物，歌曲和电影，另一个人却打死也不会喜欢。你会认为，我们喜欢某些事物是因为在某种程度上，我们会感到愉悦，但是科学家已经完全证实这只是事实的一半。

For example, people can be fooled into thinking they love a certain food or wine just by telling them it's really expensive. The same can be said for objects-people will instinctively choose an expensive product over a cheaper one purely because of the price. Enjoyment is barely even a factor. In marketing, this is known as the "Chivas Regal effect," named for the scotch of the same name which saw sales explode after they simply raised the price of their product.

比如，只要告诉人们某种食物或酒非常昂贵，他们就会上当，认为自己真的喜欢这种食物或酒。对于物品，这也同样适用-天性使然，人们会选择昂贵的而不是便宜的产品，这纯粹是由于价格的缘故。快乐甚至仅仅是一个因素。在营销中，这被称为"芝华士效应，"是根据同名威士忌酒来命名的-仅仅在该公司提高其产品价格之后，销售量就激增了。

To further illustrate the point, there's a famous experiment where wine experts were fooled into thinking a cheap bottle of wine was an exceptional vintage just by switching the labels. Their enjoyment of the product wasn't based on some deeply held love and appreciation of wine-it was based entirely on the fact that they were told it was good wine. Which, to be honest, is much easier.

为了进一步证明这一点，还有一个很著名的实验。在这个实验中，葡萄酒的标签被换掉，品酒专家就信以为真，将这种便宜的葡萄酒当作了一种顶级的葡萄酒。他们自这种产品而得的快乐并不是源于对酒根深蒂固的爱与欣赏-而是完全基于这样一个事实：有人告诉他们这种葡萄酒很好。坦白地讲，这要容易得多。

(责任编辑：田学江)