60秒：只想放空思维发个呆？

 [听力全文]

How often have you longed to have time to just sit quietly and think? Well, be careful what you wish for. Because a study shows that many people find such interludes incredibly unpleasant. So uncomfortable, in fact, that they would rather zap themselves with electricity than be left alone with their thoughts. The shocking results appear in the journal Science. [Timothy D. Wilson et al, Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind]

In the experiment, participants were asked to sit alone in a room for up to 15 minutes…with no cell phone, no reading material, no music—so, nothing to entertain them, save their own rambling thoughts. Afterward, most subjects reported that they found it difficult to concentrate and that they did not enjoy the experience. 

Then, to assess just how much subjects disliked doing nothing, the researchers repeated the experiment. Only this time they gave volunteers the added option of occasionally giving themselves a mild electric jolt. Two thirds of the men in the study—and one quarter of the women—chose to take advantage of the shock option at least once during their time out.

The results suggest that if there’s anything worse than losing your mind, it’s getting caught alone with it.

—Karen Hopkin

 [重难点词汇、短语]

interlude: n. 插曲；穿插；v. 插入；使中断

zap: v. 猛击，震击；杀死，摧毁

jolt: v.使颠簸，使摇动；使震惊，使觉醒；n. 颠簸，摇晃；一阵强烈的感情（如震惊） 

 [参考译文]

你是否经常渴望有时间坐下来静静地思考？劝你还是谨慎为之，因为研究表明很多人都觉得这种“抽空思考”非常烦人。事实上，他们难受到宁愿电击自己也不愿独自呆着进行思考。这个令人震惊的结果发表在《》（Science）上。

在实验中，研究人员要求参与者在一个房间里独自坐15分钟：没有手机，没有阅读材料，也没有音乐，也就是除了自己自由的思绪之外，没有任何其他东西可供消遣。15分钟结束后，大多数参与者都表示他们很难集中注意力，也并不喜欢这次经历。

然后，为了评估有多少参与者并不喜欢无所事事，研究人员重复了这个实验，只是这次他们给了参与者一项额外的选择：偶尔给自己一次轻微的电击。实验中，三分之二的男性和四分之一的女性选择了至少一次电击。

这项研究结果表明，如果有什么比失去理智更糟糕的话，那就是独自面对它。

翻译 汐远