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文章导读

进化生物学家指出，共同冒险能利用“错误归因的唤醒”（misattribution of arousal）增强感情。然而，现代人面临“亲密危机”，全球四分之一者孤独。约会应用（dating apps）与人类进化背景错配，导致选择过载且兼容性评估失真；值得注意的是，应用上女性右滑率仅5%（男性50%），易滋生扭曲观念。由此可见，作者建议理性使用应用（如视频聊天、给予二次机会），并强调现实社交的重要性，真实互动才是寻爱关键。

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双语正文

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The caveman’s guide to romance

If you want an exciting first date this Valentine’s Day, forget dinner and a screening of “Wuthering Heights”. Try zip-lining instead. This is the advice of Justin Garcia, an evolutionary biologist and head of the Kinsey Institute, one of the world’s best-known centres of research into sex. A day of climbing hills to throw yourself off cliffs lets you “walk and talk while experiencing something novel and thrilling together”. Thus, you will get to know each other better. And because of a psychological principle known as “misattribution of arousal”, your companion may start to associate you with thrilling feelings. “Yes, this is how sexologists approach first dates,” says Dr Garcia.

Many species reproduce sexually. Homo sapiens is the only one to write books worrying about how the process is changing. Humankind is facing an “intimacycrisis”, argues Dr Garcia in “The Intimate Animal”. Globally, one person in four is lonely. Without strong relationships, people live less cheerfully and die earlier. A survey in America found that 98% of people believe good, intimate relationships are a key element of a satisfied life.

Part of the problem is the mismatch between the world in which our brains evolved and the one in which people now search for love, contends Dr Garcia. In his telling, the two greatest changes to human courtship in the past 4m years were the invention of farming 12,000 years ago and the spread of the internet in the 1990s. Agriculture led to the accumulation of wealth, which in turn led to marital norms designed to preserve capital for a family or clan. The internet also transformed how people find partners.

Whereas our hunter-gatherer ancestors would pick a mate out of a small selection of people they already knew (for hunter-gatherer bands consisted of only a few dozen people), modern singles face a seemingly endless choice of strangers on their smartphones. To cope with such dizzying numbers, they apply filters for everything from minimum height to “must like bird-watching” and “must not be a lawyer”.

Yet the must-have traits that people demand in dating filters are woeful predictors of compatibility. Humans evolved to evaluate potential mates face-to-face, taking into account hard-to-describe qualities such as smell, touch and chemistry. A soft-lit photo and a list of arbitrary traits are no substitute. Small wonder that our caveman brains feel flummoxed. In one survey Dr Garcia conducted, he found that nearly half of single Americans thought that technology had made it harder to form real connections, and that younger adults were most likely to feel this way.

Paul Eastwick, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, goes further. In “Bonded by Evolution”, he concedes that dating apps have created new opportunities for people with niche preferences, limited social networks or who are too shy to initiate contact in person. However, they can be a huge waste of time—a typical user spends 90 minutes a day gawping and swiping. Lacking the old-fashioned safeguard of someone in the village warning you that so-and-so is a creep, the apps have an “abundance of creeps”. Half the women who use them report being harassed. And people who scroll through hundreds of options online may head into real-world dates with the attitude that they are “the consumer who deserves to be impressed”. If so, they will “find it hard to open up to someone”, Dr Eastwick writes.

难句拆解

同位语从句 · 时间状语从句 · 非限制性定语从句 · 定语从句 · 对比状语从句

💬 It starts with the accurate observation that, when picking mates, women have evolved to be choosier than men, as is the case in several other species where the female must invest a large amount of time and energy in each pregnancy, whereas the male invests only a little.

🧩 句子结构

It starts with the accurate observationthat, when picking mates, women have evolved to be choosier than men, as is the case in several other specieswhere the female must invest a large amount of time and energy in each pregnancy, whereas the male invests only a little.

👉 主谓宾+同位语从句复合结构

It ➔ starts with ➔ observation (that...)

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翻译练习

It starts with the accurate observation that, when picking mates, women have evolved to be choosier than men, as is the case in several other species where the female must invest a large amount of time and energy in each pregnancy, whereas the male invests only a little.

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写作技巧

因果分析

💬 Thus, you will get to know each other better. And because of a psychological principle known as “misattribution of arousal”, your companion may start to associate you with thrilling feelings.

🧩 And because of a [心理学原理或普遍认知] known as “[具体名称]”, [某人/某物] may start to [动词] [对象] with [某种感受或特质]。

💡 该句型用于解释某个现象或行为背后的深层原因，特别是当这个原因是一个已被普遍接受的原理、理论或概念时。它能够提升论证的深度和说服力，将个人观点与更广泛的知识体系联系起来。

🔄 同义替换

• known as → referred to as / termed as (这些词都表示“被称为”，但'referred to as'更侧重于指代，'termed as'更侧重于命名或术语化，可根据语境选择使用)

• associate with → link to / connect with (这组词都表示“联系起来”，'link to'和'connect with'在日常和学术语境中均可使用，更强调事物间的关联性)

• thrilling feelings → exhilarating sensations / stimulating emotions (这组词表示“激动人心的感受”，'exhilarating sensations'更强调令人振奋的体验，'stimulating emotions'则侧重于激发情感)

🚀 升级表达

• This phenomenon can be attributed to a well-established psychological principle, namely “misattribution of arousal”, which posits that individuals tend to interpret physiological responses based on contextual cues.

• （这一现象可归因于一个公认的心理学原理，即“唤醒误归因”，它认为个体倾向于根据情境线索来解释生理反应。—— 'attribute to' 更加正式，'posits that' 提升了理论阐述的严谨性）

✍️ 写作应用

• 【雅思作文】 社会现象分析And because of a social phenomenon known as “herd mentality”, consumers may start to follow purchasing trends without critical evaluation. 由于一种被称为“从众心理”的社会现象，消费者可能会开始盲目追随购买趋势而缺乏批判性评估。

• 【考研英语作文】 教育问题探讨And because of an educational theory known as “scaffolding”, teachers may start to provide temporary support to help students master new skills. 由于一种被称为“支架式教学”的教育理论，教师可能会开始提供临时支持以帮助学生掌握新技能。

• 【职场写作】 团队管理And because of a management principle known as “the Hawthorne effect”, employees may start to perform better when they feel observed and valued. 由于一种被称为“霍桑效应”的管理原则，员工在感到被关注和重视时可能会开始表现得更好。

• 【学术写作】 心理学研究And because of a cognitive mechanism known as “selective attention”, individuals may start to focus on specific stimuli while ignoring others. 由于一种被称为“选择性注意”的认知机制，个体可能会开始专注于特定的刺激而忽略其他。

• 【日常交流】 人际关系And because of a common belief known as “the halo effect”, people may start to attribute positive qualities to someone based on a single positive trait. 由于一种被称为“光环效应”的普遍信念，人们可能会根据一个单一的积极特质而开始将积极的品质归因于某人。

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上期文章

告别情人节，相约闺蜜节｜CNN

上期翻译练习

英译汉 To love yourself more truly and deeply, it helps to try to unpack all those layers of social conditioning that were piled on us over a lifetime, and which strip away our ability to just love ourselves for who we are, without the judgment and doubt and self-consciousness.

参考译文

若想更真挚、更深厚地爱自己，我们需要剥离那一层层经年累月堆叠在身上的社会枷锁。正是这些枷锁，让我们在审视、怀疑与羞赧中，逐渐丧失了那份抛开成见、仅仅因为‘我是我’而爱自己的本能。

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