There’s an apparent paradox in modern life: Society as a whole is getting smarter, yet we aren’t any closer to figuring out how to all get along.
现代生活里有一个明显的矛盾：整体社会正变得更智慧，然而我们却仍然不知道如何相处融洽。
“How is it possible that we have just as many, if not more, conflicts as before?” asks social psychologist Igor Grossmann at the University of Waterloo in Canada.
“我们的冲突怎么会跟以前一样多，而没有减少呢？”加拿大滑铁卢大学的社会心理学家伊戈.格罗斯曼问道。
The answer is that raw intelligence doesn’t reduce conflict, he asserts.Wisdom does.
原因在于总体更聪明并不能减少冲突，他说，要更有智慧才可以。
Such wisdom—in effect, the ability to take the perspectives of others into account and aim for compromise—comes much more naturally to those who grow up poor or working class, according to a new study by Grossman and colleagues.
这种智慧—实际上，能够为他人着想并能够妥协的能力—对那些在贫穷或者劳动阶层成长起来的人们要来得更自然，这来自格罗斯曼和同事的最新研究。
“This work represents the cutting edge in wisdom research,” says Eranda Jayawickreme, a social psychologist at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
“这项研究代表了智慧研究的前沿，”北卡罗莱纳州温斯顿塞勒姆的维克森林大学社会心理学家艾兰达.捷亚威克姆说。
To conduct the study, Grossmann and his graduate student Justin Brienza embarked on a two-part experiment.
为了进行研究，格罗斯曼和他的研究生贾斯丁.布伦扎开展了一个分为两部分的实验。
First, they asked 2145 people throughout the United States to take an online survey.
首先他们邀请全美国的2145个人进行了线上问卷调查。
Participants were asked to remember a recent conflict they had with someone, such as an argument with a spouse or a fight with a friend.
参与者需要回忆起最近一次与人起冲突，比如跟配偶吵架或者与朋友打架。
They then answered 20 questions applicable to that or any conflict, including: “Did you ever consider a third-party perspective?” “How much did you try to understand the other person’s viewpoint?” and “Did you consider that you might be wrong?”
然后他们回答了20个跟那次或者任何冲突相关的问题，包括：“你有没有站在第三方考虑过？”“你有多努力去试图理解别人的观点？”“你有考虑过你可能是错的吗？”
Grossmann and Brienza crunched the data and assigned the participants both a “wise reasoning” score based on the conflict answers and a “social class” score, then plotted the two scores against one another.
格罗斯曼和布伦扎分析了数据，然后根据对冲突问题的回答给每个参与者打出“明智”分，另外再打一个“社会阶层”分，然后用其中一个对另一个做曲线图。
They found that people with the lowest social class scores—those with less income, less education, and more worries about money—scored about twice as high on the wise reasoning scale as those in the highest social class.
他们发现那些社会阶层分最低—那些收入更少，教育程度更低，更担心钱—的人们的明智分是那些最高社会阶层的人们的两倍高。
The income and education levels ranged from working class to upper middle class; neither the very wealthy nor the very poor were well represented in the study.
收入和教育水平包括了从工人阶层到上流中产阶层，这次研究既没有针对很富裕也没有针对很贫穷的阶层。
In the second part of the experiment, the duo recruited 200 people in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan, to take a standard IQ test and read three letters to the Dear Abby advice column.
在实验第二部里，他们两人在密歇根州安阿伯市召集了200人来参加智商测试，并给亲爱的艾比建议专栏读三封信。
One letter, for example, asked about choosing sides in an argument between mutual friends.
其中一封，举个例子，问到在彼此朋友的争论中站在哪一方。
Each participant then discussed with an interviewer how they thought the situations outlined in the letters would play out.
每个参与者都与采访者讨论他们人们心中所给的情景最后会结果如何。
A panel of judges scored their responses according to various measures of wise reasoning.
一个专家组会根据明智度的多种考量对他们的回答进行打分。
In the example above, thinking about how an outsider might view the conflict would earn points toward wisdom, whereas relying only on one’s own perspective would not.
在刚刚所具的例子中，从外人的角度思考这次冲突可以得到明智分，而只从自己的观点出发则不能得分。
As with the first part of the experiment, those in lower social classes consistently had higher wise-reasoning scores than those in higher social classes, the researchers reported today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B
跟第一部分的实验一样，那些更低社会阶层的人们往往比更高阶层的人们明智分高很多，研究者们今天在《皇家学会报告》B刊上汇报说。
.IQ scores, however, weren’t associated one way or another with wise reasoning.
然而，智商得分跟明智分没有什么关系。
The findings make sense, Jayawickreme says, as people who grow up in a working-class environment have to rely on shared, communal resources more than people in the middle class, and therefore hone social techniques that smooth out conflicts with their peers.
这个结果是很有道理的，捷亚威克姆说，因为从劳动阶层环境中成长起来的人们币中产阶级的人更多需要分享和集体资源，因此打磨出了与他们周围的人缓解冲突的技能。
Those in the middle class, in contrast, tend to focus on education, which improves their IQ scores, but they don’t put nearly as much effort into conflict resolution skills, Grossmann says.
那些中产阶级的人们则相反，倾向于关注教育，来提高他们的智商分数，但他们并不会把同样的努力放在解决冲突的技巧上，格罗斯曼说。
Eventually, Grossman wants to expand his study of wisdom to people at the extremes of social class.
最后，格罗斯曼想要把他对人们的智慧的研究扩大了社会两极的阶层。
“I would not be surprised if the result is even more pronounced in the extremely wealthy, but we don’t have the data to speak to it yet,” he says. “I would love to interview Donald Trump.”
“如果结果在财富两极阶层的人们还要更明显，我一点都不会觉得奇怪，只是我们还没有数据来支持，”他说，“我想要采访一下唐纳德.特朗普。”
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