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Better Memory Begets¹ Boredom²

记忆力太好的……坏处？

Summer’s here and it won’t be long before school-aged kids across America start complaining that they’re tired…of riding their bikes, playing at the park, swimming in the pool…and all the other awesome³ activities their parents hoped would keep them entertained for the next 10 weeks.

夏天来了，不久美国的学龄儿童们就要开始抱怨骑自行车、在公园玩耍、在游泳池里游泳……以及其他所有父母希望能在接下来的10周让他们愉快玩耍的超棒的活动，实在让他们感觉太累了……

\Well, if it’s any consolation⁴, such rapid-onset boredom could indicate that the kids have amazing powers of recall. Because a new study shows that the better your short-term memory, the faster you feel sated and decide you’ve had enough. The findings appear in the Journal of Consumer Research.

好吧，如果这么说一种安慰的话——这种快速的无聊感可以表明孩子们拥有惊人的记忆力。因为一项新的研究表明，你的短期记忆越好，你就越快感到满足，越快觉得自己受够了。这项研究结果发表在《消费者研究》杂志上。

“Though satiation can be physical, like when you feel full after eating too much, we were interested in the psychological side of satiation. Like when you’re just tired of something.”

“虽然满足可以是生理的，比如当你吃太多的时候感到饱了，但我们对满足的心理方面很感兴趣。比如当你厌倦了某件事的时候。”

Noelle Nelson, assistant professor of marketing⁵ and consumer behavior at the University of Kansas School of Business. She and her colleague Joseph Redden at the University of Minnesota tried to think outside the lunch box.

诺艾尔·纳尔逊——堪萨斯大学商学院营销学和消费者行为学的助理教授。她和她的同事明尼苏达大学的约瑟夫·雷登试图跳出惯性思维去思考。

“Something that was interesting to me is that some people get tired of things at very different rates. When you think about pop songs on the radio, some people must still be enjoying them and requesting them even after hearing them a lot. But a lot of other people are really sick of those same songs.”

“我感兴趣的是，人们对事物感到厌倦的频率是那么的不同。当提到广播中的流行歌曲时，有些人一定还很欣赏它们，甚至在听过很多遍之后仍然想要再听。但也有其他很多人，已经对同样的歌感到厌倦了。”

The difference, the researchers posited⁶, might have to do with memories of past consumption. For example, studies show that people push away from the dinner table sooner when they’re asked to describe in detail what they ate earlier for lunch.

研究人员认为，这种差异可能与过去消费的记忆有关。例如，研究表明，当晚餐时人们被要求详细描述他们午餐时吃的东西时，他们会更快地离开餐桌。

So the researchers tested the memory capacity of undergraduates. The students then viewed a repeating series of three classic paintings…like The Starry⁷ Night, American Gothic, and The Scream…or listened and re-listened to a series of three pop songs…or three pieces of classical music. Throughout the test, the participants were intermittently⁸ asked to rate their experience on a scale of zero to ten.

因此，研究人员测试了本科生的记忆力。学生们观看了一系列重复的三个经典画作……比如《星空》、《美国哥特式》、《尖叫》……或者一遍又一遍地听三首流行歌曲……或者三个古典音乐。在整个测试过程中，参与者被间歇性地要求以0到10的比例来评价他们的经验。

And the better a participant scored in the memory test, the faster they got bored.

在记忆测试中得分越高的参与者，他们感到厌烦的时间就越短。

“We found that people with larger capacities remembered more about the music or art, which led to them getting tired of the music or art more quickly. So remembering more details actually made the participants feel like they’d experienced the music or art more often.”

“我们发现，能力越高的人对音乐或画作的记忆也就越多，这也导致他们更快地对音乐或画作感到厌倦。因此，记住的细节越多，实际上会让参与者感觉他们更多地体验过这些音乐或画作。”

The findings suggest that marketers could manipulate our desire for their products by figuring out ways to distract us and keep us from fully⁹ remembering our experiences. We could also trick ourselves into eating less junk food by immersing ourselves in the memory of a previous snack.

研究结果表明，营销人员可以通过找出分散我们注意力的方法，让我们不要完全记住自己的经历，来控制我们对产品的需求。我们还可以通过沉浸在之前吃零食的记忆中的方法，来欺骗自己达到少吃垃圾食品的目的。

As for kids easily bored, just tell ‘em to fuggedaboutit—it might help them have more fun.

至于对于很容易感到无聊的孩子，只要告诉他们“忘了它吧”就可以了——这可能会让他们获得更多的乐趣。