Top tips and takeaways for having great conversations
聊得开心的秘诀和要点
Courtesy of Gail Heyman
Gail Heyman提供
•Deeper conversations can enrich our lives and the lives of others, and people can learn strategies to have more of them.
更深入的对话可以丰富我们和他人的生活，人们可以学习更多的策略。
•Be in the moment with people. Actively listen to understand rather than to judge or plan what you will say. But make an effort to do this without being a perfectionist about it. Accept that you and the people you know will sometimes be distracted and not do a very good job at it.
和他人在一起时。积极地倾听理解，而不是判断或计划你要说什么。不要太过执着做一个完美主义者。接受自己和他人会由分心，不能很好地完成工作的时候。
•If you have a special event, prepare in advance for ways to promote connection. This can involve picking out questions to talk about, stories to share, or special activities. It can also involve preventing things from going wrong — for example by talking to people ahead of time about what can be done to make sure everyone feels like they are on the same team.
如果你有特别的活动，提前准备好促进互动的方式。这可能包括挑选一些可以讨论的问题，一些可以分享的故事，或者一些特别的活动。同时，还需要包括预防潜在问题发生——例如，提前与人们讨论如何做才能确保每个人都觉得自己参与其中。
If all of your conversations are fulfilling and none are ever fraught, you can stop reading now — this story isn’t for you. If you’re like the rest of us and sometimes find yourself wishing you could have better conversations, however, then you’re in the right place.
如果你所有的对话都是令人满意的，没有令人担忧的，那么你现在可以停止阅读了——这篇文章并不适合你。如果你和我们一样，希望能有更好的对话，那么，你来对地方了。
We can improve the way we talk with each other, says UC San Diego psychology professor Gail Heyman. Some people may be better conversationalists to begin with, but Heyman would like to discourage you from “spending much time thinking about ‘natural differences’ in this or other aspects of life,” she said, “because then you start going in unproductive directions like feeling superior or inferior to others. It’s better to focus on things you have control over, and there is a lot you can do to get better at conversations.”
加州大学圣地亚哥分校(UC San Diego)心理学教授Gail Heyman说，我们可以改善彼此交谈的方式。有些人可能一开始就更善于交际，但Heyman不建议你“花太多时间去思考生活方方面面的‘自然差异’，”她说，“因为那样你就会开始朝无益的方向走，比如觉得自己比别人优越或低人一等。”最好把注意力放在你能控制的事情上，你可以做很多事情来提高谈话的质量。”
Heyman specializes in social cognition — or people’s thought processes as they navigate the social world. An award-winning teacher and accomplished researcher, she has studied how kids learn to lie and cheat and has, among other things, experimented with reducing racial bias. She is also interested in cultural influences on cognition and how people build interpersonal trust.
Heyman专门研究社会认知，即人们穿行在社会中的思维过程。作为一名屡获殊荣的教师和卓有成就的研究人员，她研究了孩子们是如何学会撒谎和欺骗的，此外，她还尝试减少种族偏见。她还对文化对认知的影响以及人们如何建立人际信任感兴趣。
Together with her husband and one of her three children, Heyman developed a free app called “Beyond Small Talk” (for both iOS and Android). The app — inspired by an insightful conversation with a colleague she’d worked with for years and thought she knew through-and-through (but didn’t) — offers concrete starting points for conversations, so you can get to know the people in your life better.
Heyman与丈夫及其孩子（三个孩子中的一个）一起开发了一款名为“超越闲聊”(Beyond Small Talk)的免费应用程序(适用于iOS和安卓系统)。这款应用的灵感来自于一次她与共事多年的同事间富有洞察力的谈话，她认为自己完全了解对方(但其实并不了解)。这款应用为交谈提供了具体的起点，因此你可以更好地了解你生活中的人们。
Based on research that went into the app, as well as on ongoing exploration since, Heyman also has some general tips for talking to others better.
基于对这款应用的研究，以及从那以后不断的探索，Heyman也有一些与他人更好交谈的通用技巧。
Oh and, before you go and get intimidated, thinking you’re in the presence of a master: Does Heyman herself always have great conversations? “Absolutely not,” she said. “I am an introvert, and I sometimes feel like hiding in a corner rather than trying to make conversation. Also, like a lot of people, I often feel stressed and pulled in many different directions, and as a result I can be quite distracted when I talk to people.
哦，还有，在你觉得自己面对的是一位大师而感到胆怯之前：Heyman本人是否总能很好地交谈?“绝对不行，”她说。“我是一个内向的人，相比试图与人交谈，有时我觉得自己是躲在角落里。而且，和很多人一样，我经常感到压力，并被拉向不同的方向，因此当我和别人说话时，我可能会很分心。
“However, I am a curious person and I’m always trying to figure out what I can learn from the people I meet. Also, I don’t care very much if someone has a negative reaction to me, and that really helps.”
“然而，我是一个充满好奇心的人，我总是试图弄清楚我能从我遇到的人身上学到什么。而且，我不太在乎别人是否对我有负面反应，这真的很有帮助。”
First, some definitions.
一，定义
What makes a conversation a “good conversation”?
是什么让一场谈话成为一场“好的谈话”?
Chat, talk, heart-to-heart — conversations come in many shapes and sizes. There is no one type that’s best for every occasion and every group.
聊天、交流、推心置腹——交谈有很多种形式和规模。没有一种类型是适合所有场合和群体的。
“Something can be considered a good conversation if it does what the people involved want it to do,” Heyman said. “People have a wide variety of goals in conversations, and in some cases the goals are strategic, such as convincing someone to agree with you or getting them to realize that you exist. These kinds of conversations are important, but they don’t interest me all that “如果某件事符合当事人的意愿，就可以被认为是一次很好的谈话。”Heyman说:“人们在谈话中有各种各样的目标，在某些情况下，这些目标是战略性的，比如说服某人同意你的观点，或者让他们意识到你的存在。这类对话很重要，但我对它们并不那么感兴趣。
“I am interested,” she said, “in conversations in which people gain new insights about each other, themselves or the world — the kind of conversations college students often have when they are living in the dorms and staying up much later than they should. I loved these conversations, and still remember some of them and the insights I gained. After college, I noticed that the people around me rarely had those kinds of conversations, and I missed that.”
“我感兴趣的是，”她说，“在谈话中，人们对彼此、对自己、对世界有了新的认识——这种谈话是大学生们住在宿舍里、比正常时间晚睡时经常进行的。我喜欢这些谈话，至今仍记得其中的一些内容和我从中获得的感悟。大学毕业后，我发现我周围的人很少有这样的谈话，我很怀念这种感觉。”
A “good conversation” here, then, is one that promotes understanding.
因此，这里的“良好对话”是促进理解的对话。
Good conversations are good for you
好的谈话对你有好处
Heyman’s interest in deeper conversations stems not only from thinking that “they are inherently interesting, but also because they can build trust and strengthen relationships.” Research also suggests that these conversations can have benefits for people’s health and wellbeing. Several different lines of work point to the conclusion that good conversations are good for you.
Heyman对更深入的对话感兴趣，不仅是因为他认为“这些对话本身就很有趣，还因为它们可以建立信任，加强关系。”研究还表明，这些谈话对人们的健康和幸福有好处。几条不同的工作路线表明，好的谈话对你有好处。
In one study, for example, researchers recorded people’s conversations for four days and coded them. “They found that people who spent less time alone and more time with others had better life satisfaction and that more meaningful conversations (rather than small talk) were also associated with higher wellbeing,” Heyman said.
例如，在一项研究中，研究人员记录了人们四天内的谈话，并对其进行编码。Heyman说:“他们发现，独处时间少、与他人相处时间多的人对生活的满意度更高，而更有意义的谈话(并非闲聊)也与更高的幸福感有关。”
“Also, we know that, increasingly, personal conversations are a path to closer relationships,” she said, “and there is a lot of research showing that close relationships predict happiness.”
“而且，我们知道，越来越多的私人谈话是通往亲密关系的途径，”她说，“有很多研究表明，亲密的关系预示着幸福。”
While loneliness is associated with inflammatory biomarkers and impaired immune function, strong and supportive social ties are associated with a whole host of positive health effects, she said.
她说，虽然孤独感与炎症生物标志物及免疫功能受损有关，但强大和支持性的社会关系与一系列积极的健康影响有关。
Seeding deeper conversations — at the holiday table and beyond
播下更深层次的对话——在节日的餐桌上或其他场合
One way Heyman likes to promote good conversations is to seed them. This is similar to what she does to start a discussion in class, asking people to come prepared to discuss a specific memory, for example.
Heyman 促进良好谈话的方式是播下种子。这与她在课堂上一开始讨论时的做法类似，比如让人们准备好讨论某个特定的记忆。
“When we have conversations, they are based on what ideas get activated in our brains, and what gets activated tends to be a very limited subset of things — often driven by what’s been on our mind recently, what is going on in front of us, and what others are saying or doing,” Heyman said. “This can mean that we often get into conversational ruts, where we keep talking about the same stuff and might not even know some fundamental things about the people we’ve known for a long time.”
“当我们交谈时,他们是基于我们大脑中被激活的想法,而被激活的往往是一个非常有限的子集——通常被我们近期的想法，我们将面临的事，和其他人的言行影响,”Heyman说。“这可能意味着我们经常陷入对话的陷阱，我们一直谈论同样的事情，却可能连我们认识很久的人的一些基本情况都不清楚。”
External prompts can help you get out of these conversational ruts:
外部提示可以帮助你摆脱这些对话陷阱:
•Heyman recommends checking out “Great Questions” on the StoryCorps website. You could also pick out questions from her app, “Beyond Small Talk.” Samples there include “What’s one problem you used to have?” and “What’s one thing that happened to you this year that you didn’t expect?”
•Heyman建议在StoryCorps网站上查看“好问题（Great Questions）”。你也可以从她的应用程序“(Beyond Small Talk”中挑选问题。比如“你以前有什么问题?”以及“今年发生在你身上的一件你没有预料到的事情是什么?”
•Objects can be good too. Consider asking people to bring something to talk about—it could be a favorite picture or an object. Or it could be an object or a picture that represents something meaningful that happened over the past year.
•物品也可以。考虑让人们带点什么来聊一聊——可以是一张喜欢的照片或一样东西。或者它可以是一个物体或一张图片，代表过去一年发生的有意义的事情。
•Intentionally exposing people to shared experiences also works. “Think of how book clubs can let people discuss values based on a shared experience in a nonthreatening way,” Heyman said. “I encourage people to get creative in trying out new activities that promote learning and everyone feeling included. If the activity is fun or funny, that is an added bonus.”
•有意让人们谈论共同经历也是一种有效方法。Heyman说:“想想读书俱乐部是如何让人们以一种不具威胁性的方式讨论基于共同经历的价值观的。我鼓励人们在尝试新活动时要有创意，这样可以促进学习，让每个人都有参与感。如果这个活动恰好很有趣，那就是额外的收获。”
One pitfall of deeper conversations, of course, is that they can tap into deep-seated conflicts. “There is no way to avoid this completely,” Heyman said, “but risks can be minimized by thinking about issues that have come up before and considering other people’s anxieties.”
当然，更深层次对话的一个陷阱是，它们可能触及深层次的冲突。“没有办法完全避免这种情况，”Heyman说，“但是，通过考虑以前出现过的问题并考虑其他人的焦虑，风险可以降到最低。”
So you hit a minefield — what now?
你遇到了雷区，现在怎么办?
In Heyman’s words:
Heyman的话:
“It is obviously better to try to prevent it before it happens. Sometimes they are quite predictable, like if every time you get together for Thanksgiving you end up having the same argument. If this is you, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. It sometimes works to simply acknowledge the problem and ask the people who are involved what they think can be done to help.
“显然，最好在事情发生之前就预防它。有时候这些事情是可以预测的，比如每次你们在一起过感恩节的时候，你们都会有同样的争吵。如果是这样，就没有放之四海而皆准的策略。有时有效的方法是，简单地承认问题存在，并询问相关人员如何解决问题。
“Some people use more heavy-handed strategies. Someone I know actually handed all of her Thanksgiving guests a list of forbidden and recommended topics. The recommended list was funny, and I suspect that helped make it work, but the strategy can backfire if people feel that others are trying to shut them up, or seem to care more about stirring up drama than getting along.
“有些人使用更严厉的策略。我认识的一个人给了她所有的感恩节客人一张禁忌和推荐话题的清单。推荐的清单很有趣，我怀疑这起到了作用，但如果人们觉得别人在试图让他们闭嘴，或者似乎更在意挑起事端而不是好好相处，这个策略可能会适得其反。
“If you do hit a minefield, it is often best for everyone to step away for a little while before deciding how to proceed. When everyone really wants to get along, it may require little more than a genuine apology or making fun of yourself.
“如果你真的遇到了雷区，通常最好是每个人都先离开一段时间，然后再决定如何继续。”当每个人都想好好相处的时候，除了一个真诚的道歉或自嘲外，你可能不需要什么。
“But people need to recognize when they are in bad cycles. Sometimes there is just no easy solution.”
“但人们需要认识到自己何时处于糟糕的周期。有时没有简单的解决办法。”
Listen
倾听
Listen, listen and listen some more. Really tune in and try to understand what others are saying.
听，听，再听。认真倾听，试着去理解别人在说什么。
“When people think about being a good conversationalist, they focus on the talking part, and not the listening part,” Heyman said. “We often think of listening as a passive process, but it doesn’t have to be. Active listening involves giving your undivided attention to people. This helps people feel understood and cared about, and it can build trust and strengthen relationships.”
Heyman说:“当人们想成为一个好的谈话者时，他们关注的是说的部分，而不是听的部分。“我们通常认为倾听是一个被动的过程，但其实不必如此。积极倾听是指全神贯注于他人之言。这有助于人们感到被理解和关心，并能建立信任并加强关系。”
But don’t kid yourself into thinking this is going to be easy. It’s not, it’s hard. Put away the electronics if you can and focus on what’s being said (not how it relates to you, or what you want to say next).
但不要自欺欺人地认为这很容易。这并不简单。如果可以的话，把电子产品放在一边，把注意力集中在对方说的话上(而不是它与你的关系，或者你接下来想说什么)。
Two key thoughts, before you go
在结束之前，需要关注两个关键问题
Curiosity and humility — both are necessary for approaching other people in a way that builds connection.
好奇心和谦逊——两者都是与他人建立联系的必要条件。
Heyman: “There are billions of people in the world, each with a rich mental life, but we only have direct access to our own. We can never know what it would be like if we had been born in another place, at a different time, or into a different family. We can’t even be sure what it’s like to experience life from the perspective of the people who are closest to us. This leaves gaps in our understanding that we often try to fill based on our own experiences and perspectives, which means we often get it wrong.”
Heyman:“世界上有数十亿人，每个人都有丰富的精神生活，但我们只能直接接触自己的生活。我们永远不会知道，如果我们出生在另一个地方，在不同的时间，或不同的家庭，会是什么样子。我们甚至不能确定从最亲近的人的角度来体验生活是什么感觉。这在我们的理解中留下了空白，我们经常试图根据自己的经验和观点来填补空白，这意味着我们经常会出错。”
One fix to this conundrum is to try and have more meaningful conversations with the people around us — striving to really learn about them and understand the experiences that shaped who they are and what they care about.
解决这个难题的一个办法是尝试与我们周围的人进行更有意义的对话——真正努力地了解他们，理解那些塑造了他们是谁的经历以及他们关心的问题。
Finally, don’t overdo it. Sometimes small talk is still the way to go. Next time you’re in a grocery line or waiting at a post office, you might not want to dive right in to the personal and poignant — unless you like to see people run.
最后，不要过度。有时，闲聊仍是解决之道。下次当你在杂货店排队或在邮局排队时，你可能不想直接进入个人的和尖锐的话题——除非你喜欢看到人们跑步。
