Moral sincerity 道德真诚  

The use of self-deception to enhance self-image has now been observed in many other contexts. 
利用自欺欺人来提升自我形象的做法现在已在许多其他情况下被观察到。

For instance, Uri Gneezy, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, has recently shown it can help us to justify potential conflicts of interest in our work. 
例如，加利福尼亚大学圣迭戈分校经济学教授乌里-格尼兹（Uri Gneezy）最近的研究表明，它可以帮助我们证明工作中潜在利益冲突的合理性。

In a 2020 study, Gneezy asked participants to take on the roles of investment advisors or clients. The advisors were given two different opportunities to consider – each of which came with different risks and different payoffs. They were also told that they would receive a commission if the client opted for one of the two investments. 
在 2020 年的一项研究中，格尼兹要求参与者扮演投资顾问或客户的角色。他们给顾问提供了两种不同的投资机会，每种机会都有不同的风险和回报。他们还被告知，如果客户选择这两种投资中的一种，他们将获得佣金。

In one set of trials, the advisors were told about this potential reward at the very start of the experiment, before they started considering the different options. While they were ostensibly picking the best choice for the client, they were much more likely to go with the choice that was favourable to themselves. 
在一组实验中，顾问们在实验一开始，开始考虑不同的选择之前，就被告知了这种潜在的奖励。虽然他们表面上是在为客户选择最佳方案，但他们更倾向于选择对自己有利的方案。

In the rest of the trials, however, the advisors were only told of this potential reward after they had been given some time to weigh up the pros and cons of each. This time few chose to let the reward influence their decision; they remained honest to their goal of giving the best advice to the client. 
然而，在其余的试验中，顾问们只有在经过一段时间权衡利弊之后，才会被告知这种潜在的奖励。这一次，几乎没有人选择让奖励影响他们的决定；他们仍然诚实地坚持自己的目标，即为客户提供最佳建议。

To Gneezy, the fact that the knowledge of the personal benefits only influenced the participants’ decision in the first scenario suggests that their self-deception was unconscious; it changed the way they were calculating the benefits and risks without them being aware of the bias, so that they could feel that they were still acting in the clients’ interest. In the second scenario, it would have required a complete change of mind, which would have been harder to justify to themselves. “They just couldn’t convince themselves that they would be acting ethically,” he says.
在格尼兹看来，在第一种情况下，对个人利益的了解只影响了参与者的决定，这说明他们的自欺是无意识的；自欺改变了他们计算利益和风险的方式，而他们却没有意识到这种偏差，这样他们就会觉得自己的行为仍然符合客户的利益。在第二种情况下，他们需要彻底改变想法，这就更难自圆其说了。"他说："他们无法说服自己，他们的行为符合职业道德。

In this way, self-deception is a way of protecting our sense of morality, says Gneezy. “It means that we can continue to see ourselves as good people,” he says – even when our actions would suggest otherwise. 
格尼兹说，通过这种方式，自我欺骗是保护我们道德感的一种方式。他说，"这意味着我们可以继续把自己视为好人"--即使我们的行为表明我们不是好人。

This form of self-deception might be most obviously relevant to financial advisors, but Gneezy thinks it could also be important for private healthcare. Despite having good intentions, a doctor could unconsciously deceive themselves into thinking the more expensive treatment was best for the patient – without even recognising their self-deception, he says. 
这种形式的自我欺骗可能与财务顾问最明显相关，但格尼兹认为它对私人医疗保健也很重要。他说，尽管医生的出发点是好的，但他们可能会不自觉地欺骗自己，认为更昂贵的治疗方法对病人来说是最好的，而他们甚至没有意识到自己的自欺欺人。

Persuading ourselves, persuading others
说服自己，说服他人  

Perhaps the most surprising consequence of self-deception concerns our conversations with others. 
自欺欺人最令人惊讶的后果可能是我们与他人的对话。

According to this theory, self-deception allows us to be more confident in what we are saying, which makes us more persuasive. If you are trying to sell a dodgy product, for instance, you will make a better case if you genuinely believe it is a high-quality bargain – even if there is evidence to suggest otherwise. 
根据这一理论，自我欺骗使我们对自己所说的话更有信心，从而使我们更有说服力。例如，如果你想推销一种劣质产品，如果你真的相信它是一种高品质的廉价产品，即使有证据表明并非如此，你也会说得更有说服力。

This hypothesis was first proposed decades ago, and a recent paper by Peter Schwardmann, an assistant professor of behavioural economics at Carnegie Mellon University, US, provides some strong evidence for this idea. 
这一假说最早是在几十年前提出的，美国卡内基梅隆大学行为经济学助理教授彼得-施瓦德曼（Peter Schwardmann）最近发表的一篇论文为这一观点提供了一些有力的证据。

Like Chance’s study, Schwardmann’s first experiments began with an IQ test. The participants weren’t given the results, but after the test was finished, they had to privately rate how well they thought they’d done. They then took a test of persuasion: they had to stand before a jury of mock employers and convince the panel of their intellectual prowess – with a potential 15 euro ($16, £12.80) reward if the judges believed that they were among the smartest in the group. 
与钱斯的研究一样，施瓦德曼的首次实验也是从智商测试开始的。参与者没有得到测试结果，但在测试结束后，他们必须私下评价自己的表现。然后，他们接受说服测试：他们必须站在模拟雇主组成的陪审团面前，说服陪审团相信他们的智力水平--如果评委认为他们是小组中最聪明的，他们就有可能获得 15 欧元（16 美元，12.8 英镑）的奖励。

Some people were told about the persuasion task before they rated their confidence in their performance, while others were told afterwards. In line with the hypothesis, Schwardmann found that this changed their ratings of their abilities: the prior knowledge that they would have to convince others resulted in greater overconfidence in their abilities, compared to those who had not yet been told. The need to persuade others had primed them to think that they were smarter than they really were. 
一些人在对自己的表现进行信心评级之前就被告知了说服任务，而另一些人则在之后才被告知。与假设相符，施瓦德曼发现这改变了他们对自己能力的评价：与那些尚未被告知的人相比，事先知道自己必须说服他人会导致他们对自己的能力更加过度自信。说服他人的需要促使他们认为自己比实际情况更聪明。

He describes this as a kind of “reflex”. Importantly, Schwardmann’s experiments showed that the self-deception paid off; unfounded overconfidence did indeed increase people’s ability to persuade the mock employers.
他把这描述为一种 "条件反射"。重要的是，施瓦德曼的实验表明，自我欺骗得到了回报；毫无根据的过度自信确实提高了人们说服模拟雇主的能力。

Picking sides 选边站  

Schwardmann has now observed a similar process in debating tournaments. At these events, the participants are given a topic and then randomly assigned a point of view to argue – before being given 15 minutes to prepare their arguments. During the debate, they are then judged on how well they present their case. 
现在，施瓦德曼在辩论比赛中也观察到了类似的过程。在这些比赛中，参赛者会得到一个题目，然后随机分配一个观点进行辩论--在此之前，他们有 15 分钟的时间准备自己的论点。在辩论过程中，他们将根据自己的论点陈述情况接受评判。

Schwardmann tested the participants’ personal beliefs about the topics before they had been assigned their position, after they had started formulating their arguments, and after the debate itself. In line with the idea that self-deception evolved to help us persuade others, he found that people’s personal opinions substantially changed after they had been told which side of the debate they would need to argue. “Their private beliefs moved towards the side that they’d been given just 15 minutes beforehand – to align with their persuasion goals,” says Schwardmann. 
施瓦德曼测试了参与者在被指定立场之前、开始拟定论点之后以及辩论结束之后对议题的个人看法。与 "自我欺骗是为了帮助我们说服他人而进化 "这一观点一致，他发现，当人们被告知需要在辩论中争论哪一方时，他们的个人观点发生了很大变化。"施瓦德曼说："他们的个人信念转向了15分钟前就被告知的一方--与他们的说服目标一致。

After the debate, the participants were also given the chance to allocate small sums of money to charity – selected from a long list of potential organisations. Schwardmann found they were much more willing to choose organisations that aligned with the position of their argument – even though it had initially been chosen at random. 
辩论结束后，参与者还有机会从一长串潜在组织名单中挑选出一小笔钱捐给慈善机构。施瓦德曼发现，他们更愿意选择与他们的论点立场一致的组织--尽管最初是随机选择的。

Many of our opinions may have been formed in this way. In politics, it could be that a campaigner who is asked to canvas on a particular point really comes to persuade him- or herself that it is the only way of viewing the point – not because they have carefully appraised the facts, but simply because they were asked to make the argument. Indeed, Schwardmann suspects this process may lie behind much of the political polarisation we see today. 
我们的许多观点可能就是这样形成的。在政治领域，竞选者被要求就某一特定观点进行宣传时，可能真的会说服自己这是看待这一观点的唯一方式--这并不是因为他们仔细评估了事实，而仅仅是因为他们被要求进行论证。事实上，施瓦德曼怀疑，我们今天所看到的政治两极分化现象的背后可能就是这一过程。

Delusions of grandeur 妄自尊大  

In all these ways, our brains can fool us into believing things that are not true. Self-deception allows us to inflate our opinion of our own abilities, so that we believe we are smarter than everyone around us. It means that we overlook the repercussions of our actions for other people, so that we believe that we are generally acting in a moral way. And by deceiving ourselves about the veracity of our beliefs, we show greater conviction in our opinions – which can, in turn, help us to persuade others. 
在所有这些方面，我们的大脑都会欺骗我们，让我们相信一些不真实的事情。自欺让我们夸大自己的能力，从而相信自己比周围的人都聪明。这意味着，我们会忽视自己的行为对他人造成的影响，从而相信自己的行为通常是合乎道德的。通过在信念的真实性上欺骗自己，我们会对自己的观点表现出更大的信念--这反过来又会帮助我们说服他人。

We can’t ever know what was truly going through the minds of Holmes, Sorokin or Hayut and other fraudsters – but it is easy to speculate how some of these mechanisms may have been at play. At the very least, these con artists seem to have had abnormally high opinions of their own abilities and their right to get what they want – and they happily shrugged off the potential ethical implications of what they were doing. 
我们永远无法知道福尔摩斯、索罗金、哈尤特和其他骗子的真实想法，但我们很容易推测出其中一些机制是如何发挥作用的。至少，这些骗子似乎对自己的能力和得到想要的东西的权利有着异乎寻常的高评价--他们乐此不疲地推卸他们所做的事情可能带来的道德影响。

Holmes, in particular, seems to have believed in her product, and attempted to justify her use of misleading data. Despite all evidence to the contrary, she still declared at her trial that "the big medical device companies like Siemens could easily reproduce what we had done”. Hayut, meanwhile, still claims he is “the biggest gentleman”, who had done nothing wrong. 
尤其是霍尔姆斯，她似乎对自己的产品深信不疑，并试图为自己使用误导性数据辩解。尽管有各种相反的证据，她在庭审中仍然宣称 "像西门子这样的大型医疗器械公司可以轻而易举地复制我们所做的一切"。与此同时，哈尤特仍声称自己是 "最大的绅士"，没有做错任何事。

Schwardmann agrees it may be possible for some fraudsters to inhabit incredibly elaborate lies. He points out that some even show a kind of righteous anger when they are being questioned, which might be hard to fake. “Maybe that’s a sign that they really buy into their own lie,” he says. 
施瓦德曼也认为，一些骗子有可能编造出令人难以置信的谎言。他指出，有些人甚至会在受到质疑时表现出一种义愤填膺的情绪，这可能很难伪造。"他说："也许这是一种迹象，表明他们真的相信自己的谎言。

Tellingly, a desire for social status seems to increase people’s tendency for self-deception. When people feel threatened by others, for example, they are more likely to inflate their perceptions of their own abilities. It may be that the bigger the stakes, the greater the lies we are able to tell ourselves. 
值得注意的是，对社会地位的渴望似乎会增加人们自我欺骗的倾向。例如，当人们感到受到他人威胁时，就更有可能夸大自己的能力。可能是赌注越大，我们对自己撒的谎就越大。

Most of the time, our self-deception may be benign – allowing us to feel just a bit more confident in ourselves than is justified. But it’s always worth being aware of these tendencies – especially if we’re making potentially life-changing decisions. You don’t want to deceive yourself about the risks of cutting corners in your current job, or the likelihood of success from an adventurous career move, for example. 
大多数时候，我们的自欺欺人可能是良性的--让我们对自己的自信稍稍超过了合理的范围。但是，这些倾向始终值得我们警惕--尤其是当我们要做出可能改变人生的决定时。例如，你不会想欺骗自己在当前工作中偷工减料的风险，也不会想欺骗自己冒险事业成功的可能性。

One good way of puncturing all kinds of bias is to “consider the opposite” of your conclusions. The technique is as straightforward as it sounds: you try to find all the reasons that your belief may be wrong, as if you were interrogating yourself. Multiple studies have shown that this leads us to think more analytically about a situation. In laboratory tests, this systematic reasoning proves to be much more effective than simply telling people to “think rationally”. 
戳穿各种偏见的一个好方法就是 "考虑 "与你的结论相反的东西。这个技巧听起来很简单：你要试着找出所有你的信念可能是错误的理由，就像你在审问自己一样。多项研究表明，这会让我们对某种情况进行更多的分析思考。在实验室测试中，这种系统推理被证明比简单地告诉人们 "理性思考 "更有效。

This is only possible if you can accept your flaws, of course. The first step is acknowledging the problem. Perhaps you think that you don’t need this advice; self-deception only afflicts others, while you are perfectly honest with yourself. If so, that may be your greatest delusion of all.
当然，只有当你能够接受自己的缺点时，才有可能做到这一点。第一步是承认问题。也许你认为自己不需要这些建议；自欺欺人只会折磨别人，而你对自己是完全诚实的。如果是这样，那可能是你最大的错觉。

David Robson is a science writer and author of The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life, published by Canongate (UK) and Henry Holt (USA) in early 2022. He is @d_a_robson on Twitter.
大卫-罗布森（David Robson）是一位科普作家，著有《期望效应：你的心态如何改变你的生活》（The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life）一书，该书将于2022年初由英国Canongate出版社和美国Henry Holt出版社出版。他在 Twitter 上的用户名是 @d_a_robson。

By the middle of the century, however, psychotherapists such as Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck had started to look for alternative ways of guiding people through their distress. Rather than trying to unearth hidden psychological conflict, they focused on people’s conscious thought processes, by targeting the maladaptive thinking patterns or “cognitive distortions” that could be leading to distress. 
然而，到了本世纪中叶，阿尔伯特-埃利斯和亚伦-贝克等心理治疗师开始寻找其他方法来引导人们摆脱困境。他们不再试图挖掘隐藏的心理冲突，而是将注意力集中在人们有意识的思维过程上，针对可能导致痛苦的不适应思维模式或 "认知扭曲 "进行治疗。

Right from the outset, catastrophising was identified as a potentially important cognitive distortion – with Beck writing about its potential role in phobias. Someone with a fear of flying, for example, might interpret a slight rattle in the cabin as a sign of a technical fault. If they were less prone to catastrophising, they might notice that the cabin crew looked unalarmed, but a catastrophiser would assume that the staff simply weren’t paying attention – and as the unnerving sound continued, they would start imagining the awful ways they might die. 
从一开始，灾难化就被认为是一种潜在的重要认知扭曲--贝克在文章中提到了它在恐惧症中的潜在作用。例如，有飞行恐惧症的人可能会把机舱内的轻微响声解释为技术故障的信号。如果他们不那么容易产生灾难化倾向，他们可能会注意到机舱工作人员看起来没有受到惊吓，但灾难化倾向者会认为机舱工作人员根本没有注意到--随着令人不安的声音持续不断，他们会开始想象自己可能会以何种可怕的方式死去。

Continued research shows that catastrophic thinking is a serious contributor to many other anxiety disorders. At work, for instance, a perfectionist with catastrophising tendencies might agonise over the smallest mistake. “They might engage in catastrophic thinking such as ‘I’m going to get fired’ and ‘If I get fired, I won’t be able to handle it’,” explains Keelan. At some point, the person’s fears may reach a point where they are simply no longer able to function in their role. For someone with health anxiety, meanwhile, catastrophising may lead someone to self-diagnose any slight change in their body as a sign of cancer. 
持续的研究表明，灾难性思维是许多其他焦虑症的严重诱因。例如，在工作中，有灾难化倾向的完美主义者可能会为最小的错误而苦恼。"基兰解释说："他们可能会产生灾难性思维，如'我会被解雇'和'如果我被解雇了，我将无法承受'。Keelan 解释说，"在某些时候，患者的恐惧可能会达到他们根本无法再胜任其角色的地步。同时，对于患有健康焦虑症的人来说，灾难化可能会导致他们将身体的任何细微变化都自我诊断为癌症的征兆。

In some cases, people may start to catastrophise the bodily sensations that accompany anxiety. If they are nervous about giving a presentation, for example, they think that their pounding heart is a sign that they are going to have a heart attack. The result is a spiral of negative thinking that can lead to a full-blown panic attack. “The catastrophic misinterpretation of the bodily signals [fuels] anxiety and fear, which then makes it more likely that you’ll interpret the situation catastrophically,” says Barnabas Ohst, a psychotherapist in Freiburg, Germany, and a co-author of a recent meta-analysis examining the role of catastrophic thinking in panic disorder. 
在某些情况下，人们会开始把焦虑带来的身体感觉灾难化。例如，如果他们因为要做演讲而紧张，他们就会认为心跳加速是心脏病发作的征兆。其结果是负面思维的螺旋式上升，可能导致全面的恐慌发作。"德国弗莱堡的心理治疗师巴纳巴斯-奥斯特（Barnabas Ohst）说："对身体信号的灾难性误读[助长]了焦虑和恐惧，从而使你更有可能对情况做出灾难性的解释。

Over the past few years, research has shown that catastrophic thinking can render us more vulnerable to many other mental illnesses – including post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and even certain kinds of psychoses. 
过去几年的研究表明，灾难性思维会让我们更容易患上许多其他精神疾病，包括创伤后应激障碍和强迫症，甚至某些类型的精神病。

Catastrophic thinking can even exacerbate feelings of physical pain. In this case, the thoughts may concern how long the discomfort is going to last – “it’s never going to go away” – or its cause. You might assume that a terrible headache means you have brain cancer, for example. Experiments show this kind of thinking only amplifies pain signalling in the brain, so that the distress is more intense and takes longer to pass. As the pain scientists Beth Darnall, at Stanford University, and Luana Colloca, at the University of Maryland, wrote in a recent paper, this negative mindset is “like picking up the can of gasoline and pouring it on a fire”.
灾难性思维甚至会加剧身体的疼痛感。在这种情况下，这种想法可能会涉及不适感会持续多久--"永远不会消失"--或其原因。例如，你可能会认为头痛得厉害意味着你得了脑癌。实验表明，这种想法只会放大大脑中的疼痛信号，使痛苦更加强烈，需要更长的时间才能缓解。斯坦福大学的疼痛学家贝丝-达诺尔和马里兰大学的卢安娜-科洛卡在最近的一篇论文中写道，这种消极的思维方式 "就像拿起汽油桶往火上浇"。

Emotional contagion 情绪传染  

Many factors can explain why some people experience catastrophic thinking more than others. 
很多因素可以解释为什么有些人比其他人更容易产生灾难性思维。

Personality traits such as neuroticism – which are partly genetic – may explain some of the differences. We may also have learnt our thinking style from family members. If you always saw your parents considering the worst possible outcome of any event, you may naturally view any difficult situation through the same lens. Our current context will also play a role. High baseline feelings of stress and insecurity will mean that much smaller triggers could tip you into that spiral of negative thinking. 
神经质等人格特征--部分是遗传因素--可以解释部分差异。我们的思维方式也可能是从家庭成员那里学来的。如果你总是看到父母考虑任何事件可能出现的最坏结果，那么你可能会自然而然地以同样的视角看待任何困境。我们当前的环境也会起到一定的作用。高基线的压力感和不安全感意味着更小的触发因素也会让你陷入消极思考的漩涡。

If you have found that your own thoughts have started to take a downward turn in the last year or two, this may not be a coincidence: there is some evidence that world news events may exacerbate our catastrophising. 
如果你发现自己的思想在过去一两年里开始走下坡路，这可能不是巧合：有证据表明，世界新闻事件可能会加剧我们的灾难化倾向。

Sometimes, you may catastrophise about the events themselves – such as the war in Ukraine, the emergence of another Covid-19 variant, or the collapse of the economy. At other times, the link may be less obvious, with the doom and gloom of the news cycle adding a general level of anxiety that leads you to worry more about your personal problems – even if they seem completely divorced from geopolitics. 
有时，你可能会对事件本身产生灾难性的担忧--比如乌克兰战争、另一种科威德-19变种的出现或经济崩溃。在其他时候，这种联系可能不那么明显，新闻周期中的厄运和阴霾会增加普遍的焦虑程度，导致您更加担心个人问题--即使这些问题似乎与地缘政治完全无关。

One study, from the University of Sussex, UK, asked independent judges to rate various TV news items for their emotional qualities – whether they were positive or negative, pleasant or unpleasant, calm or exciting – and then showed a selection of these clips to a group of 30 participants. 
英国苏塞克斯大学的一项研究要求独立评委对各种电视新闻的情绪特质进行评分--是积极的还是消极的、愉快的还是不愉快的、平静的还是令人兴奋的--然后向一组 30 名参与者展示了这些片段的精选内容。

Before and after they watched the clips, these participants completed questionnaires about their top three worries in their lives, and at the very end, they also took part in an interview, discussing one of their personal preoccupations. As expected, the participants who had watched the negative news items were considerably more anxious at the end of the clip, and – crucially – were more likely to show catastrophic thinking when discussing their personal problems, compared with those who had seen neutral or positive films. 
在观看短片之前和之后，这些参与者填写了关于他们生活中最担心的三个问题的调查问卷，最后，他们还参加了一个访谈，讨论了他们的一个个人困扰。不出所料，与看过中性或正面影片的人相比，看过负面新闻的人在影片结束时会更加焦虑，更重要的是，他们在讨论个人问题时更有可能表现出灾难性思维。

This was a relatively small study. But further experiments confirm that news consumption has a lingering influence on our mood, which could, in turn, send our thinking down a darker path.
这是一项相对较小的研究。但进一步的实验证实，新闻消费会对我们的情绪产生挥之不去的影响，进而使我们的思维走向黑暗。

Breaking the cycle 打破循环  

Whatever the source of your catastrophising, cognitive behavioural therapists like Keelan say that it is possible to break the negative thought cycles. 
基兰等认知行为治疗师表示，无论你的灾难化根源是什么，都有可能打破消极的思维循环。

Awareness is essential, so the first step should be to pause your thinking and recognise when your mind is going down a psychological black hole. You might notice that you are feeling anxious about an interview, for example. If your next thought is “I’m going to flunk it”, however, you could question the basis for this automatic assumption. What reasons do you have to think you will automatically fail? And how else might you be able to interpret the situation based on the evidence at hand?
意识是至关重要的，所以第一步应该是暂停思考，识别自己的大脑何时进入了心理黑洞。例如，你可能会发现自己对面试感到焦虑。但是，如果你的下一个想法是 "我一定会不及格的"，你可以质疑这种自动假设的依据。你有什么理由认为自己会自动失败？根据手头的证据，你还能如何解释这种情况？

If you try to take the viewpoint of an objective observer, you could recognise that failure is a possibility, rather than a certainty – and that there are proactive steps you could take to improve your chances of performing at your best. 
如果你试着从一个客观的观察者的角度出发，你就会认识到失败是一种可能，而不是一种必然--你可以采取一些积极的措施来提高你发挥最佳水平的机会。

You should be particularly conscious of unhelpful generalisations and over-exaggeration – thoughts like “I’m a failure and I’ll never get a job”. In this scenario, you might try to consider the fact that everyone has bad interviews occasionally – it does not mean they are all hopeless failures. And should you fail, you can learn from this experience to improve your performance in the next one. 
你应该特别注意无益的概括和过度夸张--比如 "我是个失败者，我永远找不到工作 "这样的想法。在这种情况下，你可以试着考虑这样一个事实：每个人偶尔都会遇到糟糕的面试--这并不意味着他们都是无可救药的失败者。如果你失败了，你可以从这次经历中吸取教训，改进你在下一次面试中的表现。

To consider another example, imagine that you have serious anxiety about catching Covid-19, which is now occupying all your waking thoughts. While it is rational to recognise the risk of infection, you may quickly jump to the conclusion that you are infected whenever you feel a slight tickle in your throat, and then start panicking about your ability to cope if you do get ill. 
再举一个例子，假设你对感染 Covid-19 感到非常焦虑，这种焦虑占据了你所有的清醒思维。虽然认识到感染的风险是理性的，但每当你感到喉咙有点痒时，你就会很快得出自己被感染了的结论，然后开始恐慌自己一旦生病的应对能力。

In such cases, you can encourage yourself to suspend judgement until you develop symptoms – that slight tickle in your throat may just be a false alarm. You could also remind yourself that your vaccination will significantly reduce the risk of severe symptoms, and think about the ways you might ease your recovery, if you do get sick – by calling on a friend to do your shopping while you are ill, for example. 
在这种情况下，您可以鼓励自己在出现症状之前暂缓判断--喉咙的轻微发痒可能只是虚惊一场。您还可以提醒自己，接种疫苗将大大降低出现严重症状的风险，并想想如果您真的生病了，有什么方法可以让您轻松康复--例如，在您生病期间叫朋友帮您购物。

The aim, in each case, is to develop a more balanced view of the situation based on the evidence at hand. “Using these tools regularly typically results in the person reducing the intensity of their anxiety to manageable levels compared with the levels based on catastrophic thinking,” says Keelan. 
在每种情况下，目的都是根据手头的证据，对情况形成一种更平衡的看法。"基兰说："与基于灾难性思维的焦虑水平相比，定期使用这些工具通常会使患者将焦虑强度降低到可控水平。

Unpicking your thoughts in this way may be hard initially, but it should get easier with practice. You could start keeping a tally of how often you have been ready to jump to the worst conclusion, when the ultimate outcome turned out to be far brighter than you had started to imagine. In this way, you’ll see just how often catastrophising had been creating unnecessary worries. Remembering this fact could provide further reassurance the next time that you feel tempted to descend into doom-filled thoughts. 
用这种方法来消除你的想法最初可能很难，但通过练习应该会变得更容易。你可以开始统计自己有多少次准备跳到最坏的结论，而最终的结果却比你开始想象的要光明得多。这样，你就会发现灾难化的想法是多么经常地在制造不必要的担忧。记住这个事实，下次当你受到诱惑而陷入充满厄运的想法时，就能得到进一步的安慰。

None of this requires mindless Pollyanna-ish optimism – but a simple recognition of all the possible outcomes. Disaster is not necessarily sitting around every corner. 
这一切都不需要无谓的波利安娜式的乐观主义--而只需要简单地认识到所有可能的结果。灾难不一定就在每个角落。

David Robson is a science writer and author of The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life, published by Canongate (UK) and Henry Holt (USA) in early 2022. He is @d_a_robson on Twitter.
大卫-罗布森（David Robson）是一位科普作家，著有《期望效应：你的心态如何改变你的生活》（The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life）一书，该书将于2022年初由英国Canongate出版社和美国Henry Holt出版社出版。他在 Twitter 上的用户名是 @d_a_robson。