By Leon Neyfakh

Every holiday season in America, as Thanksgiving fades and turkey sandwiches give way to Christmas trees and candy canes,Americans unleash an immense flow of charitable donations.2. fade： 消失，這里指“結(jié)束”；give way to：為……所替代；candy cane： 拐棍糖，一種紅白相間的拐棍形棒糖；unleash：發(fā)動；immense： 巨大的，極廣大的；charitable donation： 慈善捐款。For charities, it’s the busiest time of the year.

The urge to give that is awakened around this time is an important one: Philanthropy plays a crucial role in American society, providing funding for a vast array of services.3. 如今，捐贈的沖動普遍被喚起是很重要的：慈善事業(yè)在美國社會地位舉足輕重，它是大量公共服務(wù)的資金來源。awaken： 喚起，使……意識到；philanthropy： 慈善行為，慈善事業(yè)；crucial： 重要的；array： 一系列。Giving also connects us as a culture:According to a study by Indiana University, nearly two-thirds of all Americans gave to charity in 2008. American charities took in nearly$300 billion in 2010.

Underlying all those donations is a mystery: Why do we give at all?From a rational perspective,4. underlie： 引起，使發(fā)生；rational： 合理的，理性的；perspective： 觀點(diǎn)，視角。it’s hard to see why people worried about their own families, taxes, and bills would want to give money to help strangers. Though the tradition of giving to the less fortunate has existed for millennia—and though researchers have long been interested in what makes humans want to help others at their own expense5. at one’s expense： 由某人負(fù)擔(dān)費(fèi)用。—social scientists have only begun to seriously examine the act of donating money in the past 20 years.

The insights they’ve drawn have been helpful to fund-raisers,enabling them to craft better campaigns and tug at our heartstrings with greater precision.6. 他們（社會科學(xué)家們）對于人們捐款心理的洞悉對籌款人很有幫助，這使得籌款人可以精心策劃更有的放矢的籌款活動，也更能觸動我們的心弦。insight：洞悉，深刻見解；draw： （drawn為過去分詞形式）獲得，得到；fund-raiser： 募捐者，籌款人；craft： 精心制作，文中指精心籌劃；tug at one’s heartstring： 觸動心弦；precision： 精確性。But for those of us just looking to donate, and donate well, the emerging research on charitable giving has yielded a dif ficult truth:7. emerging： 新興的；yield： 產(chǎn)生。Thinking harder about how to give makes us less likely to give at all.

美國的慈善事業(yè)和美國的歷史一樣悠久，卡耐基的名言“在巨富中死去是一種恥辱”是對人們的慈善行為的最好詮釋。而石油巨人洛克菲勒的思想也與卡耐基如出一轍，他也將“盡其所能獲取，盡其所有給予”作為自己的信條。憐憫之心，人皆有之。盡管我們都是普通人，無力去徹底改變遭遇不幸的人們的處境、無力去消除他們的貧窮。但是，我們?nèi)詴樗麄儽M自己的一份力。

Research by economists and psychologists suggests that the impulse to give does not square with thinking in such a calculating way.8. impulse： 沖動；square with： 與……協(xié)調(diào)或一致；calculating： 精明的，深謀遠(yuǎn)慮的。On the contrary, it appears that giving is driven by emotional motives, rooted in deep impulses, cognitive biases, and even our own sel fish needs.9. 正相反，看來施與是由情感動機(jī)所驅(qū)使的，來源于強(qiáng)烈的心理沖動、認(rèn)知偏差，甚至是我們自身自私的需求。root in： 來源于，起因于；cognitive bias： 認(rèn)知偏差。And when we think too analytically about giving, we can de flate our initial generous instinct.10. analytically： 分析地，解析地；de flate： 打擊，使泄氣；initial： 最初的；instinct： 本能，天性。

Is it possible to be both generous and smart about it? A lot of donors11. donor： 捐贈人。would like to think so, but new research suggests that it may be harder than we realize. And while there may be things we can do to make sure our money doesn’t end up wasted, charity appears to be one area where we have to be extra-careful not to let our brains get in the way.12. brains： [常用復(fù)數(shù)]智慧，聰明；get in the way： 妨礙，阻礙。

Why anyone is ever sel fless is a mystery that has fascinated, not to mention frustrated, scientists since Charles Darwin, who considered it a major problem for his theory of natural selection.13. fascinate： 使著迷；frustrate： 挫敗，使感到灰心；Charles Darwin：查爾斯·達(dá)爾文，是英國生物學(xué)家，進(jìn)化論的奠基人；natural selection： 達(dá)爾文的“自然選擇，優(yōu)勝劣汰”理論，他認(rèn)為，生存斗爭及適者生存的過程，就是自然選擇的過程。If every creature on earth was in competition with every other, then how to explain bees sacri ficing themselves for the good of the hive,14. for the good of： 為了……的利益；hive： 蜂巢。or men and women running into burning buildings to save the lives of strangers? These questions have led researchers to posit that helping others, even when it costs us dearly, is simply part of being successful social animals:Despite our imperative to compete, we ultimately find it pays off to be generous.15. posit： 假設(shè)，設(shè)想；dearly： 昂貴地；imperative： 必須要做的事；ultimately： 最后，終于；pay off： 得到預(yù)料的結(jié)果，獲得成功。

Of course, it’s one thing to explain why people in general are inclined to16. be inclined to： 傾向于……。help others, and another to examine how it plays in the mind of an individual person. Studying charitable donation has been a valuable window into that process for researchers, because it allows them to quantify17. quantify： 量化，用數(shù)量表示。the amount of good a person is doing, and how much he or she is giving up.

One dominant thought among charity researchers is that our donations aren’t chie fly driven by concern for others, or a principled sense of altruism—that instead, it’s largely a way for us to indulge the desire to feel virtuous and happy about our role in the world.18. 慈善研究者們的一個主要想法是：我們捐款的目的并不首要出于對他人的關(guān)心或是利他主義的原則感，而是因?yàn)樗鼭M足了我們的心愿——讓我們認(rèn)為自己的社會角色是高尚的并感到幸福。dominant：主要的；principled： 有原則的；altruism： 利他主義；indulge： 滿足，沉溺于；virtuous： 道德高尚的。This theory was formalized in 1989 by behavioral economist James Andreoni,who described the rush of self-satisfaction and sense of purpose one experiences after committing support to a worthy cause as “warm glow.”19. 這一理論于1989年由行為經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家詹姆斯·安德里尼所創(chuàng)立，他將人們向高尚的事業(yè)伸出援手之后所獲得的自我滿足的快感和目標(biāo)達(dá)成感描述為“溫情效應(yīng)”。formalize： 使成形；rush： 激動，快感；commit sth. to sth： 投入。The reason we give money, Andreoni wrote, is that it makes us feel good—regardless of how much it bene fits the people we’re ostensibly20. ostensibly： 表面上。trying to help.

Another prominent21. prominent： 重要的，著名的。theory to emerge from the research is that people give because of social pressure. We want to avoid appearing sel fish or coldhearted, especially in front of people who are suffering or people whose opinions we care about. We might feel this type of pressure when we find ourselves passing a homeless person on the street.

Jonathan Baron, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania,asked a group of participants which charity they’d rather give to: one that achieved its goals so ef ficiently that it could spend 20 percent of its money on advertising, or one that required more money to do the same amount of good, and thus spent less on promotion. Though the first charity was technically more ef ficient, people tended to favor the latter:What mattered to them was seeing more of their own money at work,Baron concluded, rather than the amount of good it did.

The lesson Baron took from his own research is that would-be philanthropists22. philanthropist： 慈善家。need to be more thoughtful: “People don’t ask themselves enough, ‘What is this charity actually doing, and what good does it do, and how important is that good?’” Baron has revised his own giving strategy, so that instead of spreading a number of small gifts across 10 different charities, he now focuses it on a couple of organizations that he believes will do the most with his money.

Can more of us be like Baron,and harness23. harness： 抑制，約束。our charitable impulses while making smarter decisions about where our money is going? The latest findings from psychology suggest it’s unlikely—that when it comes to giving, at least, the deliberative24. deliberative： 慎重的。thinking that’s associated with making informed choices actually makes it less likely that a person will give at all.

Small, of the Wharton School, conducted an experiment showing that when people were given more facts and statistics about the problem a charity was trying to address,25. the Wharton School： 美國賓夕法尼亞大學(xué)沃頓商學(xué)院，該學(xué)院位于費(fèi)城，是世界最著名的商學(xué)院之一；address： 處理。they actually became less likely to donate. The best approach for a charity raising money to feed hungry children in Mali,26. approach： 方法；Mali： 馬里，西非國家。the team found, was to simply show potential donors a photograph of a starving child and tell them her name and age. Donors who were shown more contextual information about famine in Africa—the ones who were essentially given more to think about—were less likely to give.27. contextual： 前后關(guān)系的，相關(guān)聯(lián)的；famine： 饑荒；essentially： 大體上，基本上。

Small’s findings are backed up by Daniel Oppenheimer, a psychologist at Princeton and coeditor of the book The Science of Giving, who found that simply giving people information about a charity’s overhead costs28. overhead costs： 管理費(fèi)用。makes them less likely to donate to it. This held true, remarkably, even if the information was positive and indicated and the charity was extremely ef ficient.

“When we start thinking about it, we might start analyzing it,” Small said. “Is this really going to be effective? Is this going to be the best use of my money? How else might I spend my money? What happens is you stop feeling.”

For humans, who distinguish themselves from beasts in part through their analytical powers, this is a troubling con flict.29. distinguish： 區(qū)別；in part： 部分地，在某種程度上。Why should thinking be the enemy of generosity? What does it mean that as soon as we enter the “deliberative mindset,” to use Small’s term, we become less altruistic30. altruistic： 利他的，無私心的。towards our fellow man?