你喜歡在咖啡館學習或辦公嗎？你是否覺得在那裡工作效率會有所提高？為什麼很多人更願意在嘈雜的咖啡館辦公？一項研究揭示了其中的科學道理：在公共場合，空氣中確實存在一種能提高工作效率的因素——它便是聲波。適度的噪音可以促進大腦處理信息時的流暢度，而咖啡館內的背景音剛好可以最大程度地激發大腦的創造力。
Walk into any Starbucks on a weekend afternoon and you will find two things to be universally true: 1) The Unicorn Barf Frappuccino is gone and never coming back, so please stop asking about it, and 2) There are way too many people with laptops exploiting the cafe as their own public office space. Maybe you’re about to join them, yourself.
周末的午後，走進任何一間星巴克，你會發現兩個定律：第一，不用問了，獨角獸星冰樂已經徹底下架了；第二，許多人帶著手提電腦，將咖啡館當成了他們的辦公場所。或許，你也準備成為他們中的一員。
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Anyone who has ever used a Starbucks for work purposes knows there is a special appeal about getting stuff done in the company of strangers and muffins. There is a palpable, productive, caffeinated energy in the air, an invisible camaraderie that cannot exist in the quiet of a home office. The productivity is literally contagious. You may even argue that you are more creative when working or writing at a coffee shop—and science is ready to back you up on that.
這並不是什麼壞事。任何一個曾經在星巴克辦公的人都知道，在一群陌生人旁邊，吃著小蛋糕把工作搞定，有其特殊的魅力。空氣中瀰漫著一股咖啡因刺激下的十足幹勁。那種無形的情誼是安靜的辦公室裡無從體會的。工作效率確實是會傳染的。你可能會說，在咖啡館工作或寫作會讓你更有創造力——科學證明，你是對的。
It turns out there literally is something productive in the air in public places: namely, the sound waves. A 2012 study from the University of British Columbia found that, counter-intuitively, a moderate amount of background noise can actually make you more creative than the bliss of silence.
事實是，在公共場合，空氣中確實存在著能讓你做事更加高效的東西——它便是，聲波。英屬哥倫比亞大學2012年的一項研究發現，比起一片寂靜，適度的嘈雜聲響實際上會讓你更有創造力，這一發現與我們的日常認知背道而馳。
This conclusion resulted from an insidious study in which researchers piped increasing volumes of background noise into a room full of students engaged in word-association tests and product brainstorms, both of which demanded focus and creativity. Students performed best and generated the most creative solutions when working under moderate noise conditions—70 decibels of ambient sounds. They performed worse in low noise (50 db, the volume of a quiet room) and poorest in high noise (85db, the volume of a garbage disposal). Incidentally, 70 db is about the same volume of background noise that you』d find in a crowded cafe.
研究人員讓學生們進行詞彙聯想測試及產品頭腦風暴。這兩項活動均需要注意力和創造力。實驗過程中，研究人員逐漸將背景噪音的音量調高，暗中觀察學生的表現，最終得出了上述結論。他們發現，當背景噪音為中等程度——70分貝時，學生的表現最好，提出的創造性方案最多。背景噪音降低（50分貝，房間處於安靜狀態）時，他們的表現有所打折。而噪音很大（85分貝，相當於垃圾處理廠的聲音）時，他們的表現最差。巧合的是，70分貝正好是一間咖啡館坐滿人時的環境噪音音量。
What’s going on here? According to the researchers, a little distraction can be a good thing thanks to a mind trick called 「processing disfluency」—basically, the ease or speed in which you can process information.
這說明了什麼？研究人員表示，稍微分下心有時候是件好事兒，因為我們的大腦會耍一個小花招，產生「處理不暢」——簡單來說，就是指人腦在處理信息時的放鬆程度和運轉速度。
While a 「fluid」 mental processing speed is most helpful for highly-focused tasks like, say, filing your taxes, this laser-focus can be detrimental to abstract thinking—you are mentally too close to the problem to be able to think abstractly, too caught up in the particulars. 「This is why if you’re too focused on a problem and you’re not able to solve it,」 said Dr. Ravi Mehta, one of the UBC paper’s authors. 「You leave it for some time and then come back to it and you get the solution.」
在處理納稅申報等需要精神高度集中的工作時，「流暢」的思維處理速度對我們最有助益。而全神貫注不利於我們進行抽象思考。你的大腦過分關注細節，過度聚焦於這個問題，反而無法進行抽象思考。該研究論文的作者之一拉維•梅塔博士表示：「這就是為什麼當你的精力過度集中時，可能無法解決問題。先將其放到一邊，回頭再看，你就會得到答案。」
Just like shifting your focus away from the problem at hand, a moderate amount of noise can shake up your processing fluency just enough to approach ideas from a more creative, abstract position. The gentle bustle of a Starbucks forces you to approach your work from a slight mental distance, boosting creativity—but as soon as the barista hits the coffee grinder, your focus goes veering off track.
就像把注意力從眼下的問題上挪開一樣，適度的噪音可以促進大腦處理信息時的流暢度，讓你剛好可以進行更有創意的抽象思考。星巴克微微的喧鬧能讓你在工作時稍微分心，激發你的創造力——不過，當咖啡館的員工開始磨咖啡時，你的注意力便開始偏離正軌了。
The same is true if a song you can’t stand suddenly starts yodeling over the cafe speakers, or if the table next to you can’t contain their blathering political opinions; as a recent Japanese study points out, sounds that produce feelings of annoyance, regardless of their volume, have an adverse effect on productivity. 「Meaningless」 noise serves the creative best.
同樣的，當咖啡館裡的音響突然開始播放你無法忍受的曲目，或者隔壁桌喋喋不休的政治討論已經傳過來時，你便再也無法集中注意力了。日本最近的一項研究指出，那些會讓人惱火的聲音，不論音量大小，都會大大影響人們的工作效率。「毫無意義」的噪音才能最大程度地激發大腦的創造力。
英文來源：讀者文摘
翻譯：魏千菡（中國日報網愛新聞iNews譯者）
編審：yaning 董靜