维持长久的友谊，秘密是什么？

维持长久的友谊，秘密是什么？

本文节选自：The New York Times（纽约时报）

作者：David Brooks

原文标题：The Secrets of Lasting Friendships

Dunbar argues that it’s a matter of cognitive capacity. The average human mind can

maintain about 150 stable relationships at any given moment. These 150 friends are the

people you invite to your big events — the people you feel comfortably altruistic toward.

邓巴认为这是认知能力的问题。一般人的大脑在任何一个时间段内都可以维持约 150 段稳

定关系。这 150 个朋友是你邀请他们参加你的大事件的人——他们是你感到可以舒服地无

私帮助的人。

He also argues that most people have a circle of roughly 15 closer friends. These are your

everyday social companions — the people you go to dinner and the movies with. Within that

group there’s your most intimate circle, with roughly five friends. These are the people who

are willing to give you unstinting emotional, physical and financial help in your time of need.

他还认为，大多数人会有一个约为 15 个人的亲密朋友圈。这些是你日常社交的伙伴——是

陪你一起吃饭、看电影的人。在这个群体中有你最亲密的朋友圈，大约有 5 个朋友。这些人

愿意在你需要的时候给予你情感、身体和经济上的无私帮助。

Dunbar argues that the closeness of a friendship is influenced by how many things you have

in common. “You are twice as likely to share genes with a friend as you are with any random

person from your local neighborhood,” he writes. People tend to befriend those who have

similar musical tastes, political opinions, professions, worldviews and senses of humor. You

meet a new person. You invest time in getting to know this person, and you figure out which

friendship circle you are going to slot him or her into.

邓巴认为友谊的亲密度受到你们共同点数量的影响。他写道：“你与朋友基因具有相似性的

可能性是你与附近随机遇到的陌生人的两倍。”人们倾向于和那些拥有相似音乐品味、政治

观点、职业、世界观和幽默感的人交朋友。你遇到了一个新的人。你花时间了解这个人，你

想要搞清楚把他/她划入哪个朋友圈中。

Time is one crucial element in friendship. Jeffrey Hall, an expert in the psychology of

friendship, studied 112 University of Kansas first years and found that it took about 45 hours

of presence in another person’s company to move from acquaintance to friend. To move

from casual friend to meaningful friend took another 50 hours over a three-month period,

and to move into the inner close friend circle took another 100 hours.

时间是友谊的一个关键因素。友谊心理学专家杰弗里·霍尔对堪萨斯大学的 112 名大一新生

进行了研究，发现两个人从泛泛之交变成朋友大约需要 45 个小时。从普通朋友变成对彼此

有意义的朋友需要再花 50 个小时，三个月的时间，而要进入对方亲密的朋友圈需要再花 100

个小时。

People generally devote a lot more time to their inner circles than to their outer circles.

Dunbar found that over the course of a month, people devote about eight and a half hours

to each of their five closest friends, and they devote a bit more than two hours a month

(basically a dinner or a lunch) to the next 10 who complete their 15-person circle. They

devote, on average, less than 20 minutes a month to the other 135 people in their larger

friend circle.

与不那么亲密的朋友圈相比，人们通常会把更多的时间放在亲密圈子中。邓巴发现，在一个

月的时间里，人们一个月内会大约花费八个半小时的时间与自己最亲密的五个朋友相处，他

们每个月花两个多小时（基本上是共进一个晚餐或午餐）和次亲密的 10 个朋友在一起，这

10 个人在（次亲密的）15 人朋友圈中。在更大的朋友圈的 135 个人中，他们平均每个月花

费的时间不到 20 分钟。