新概念雙語：你將為工作時隱藏自己性格付出代價

There is you, and then there is work-you. Work-you is, depending on your job, perhaps a little more outgoing and maybe a little more organized than regular-you. In short bursts, this is fine. But what happens when your job requires you to act against your natural personality for an extended period of time?

一個是你，一個是工作的你。由于職業(yè)，工作的你也許比日常的你顯得更外向，做事更有條理。短期內(nèi)沒什么問題。但是如果當(dāng)工作需要你持續(xù)地違背你的性格，那會怎么樣呢?

This is the question Sanna Balsari-Palsule, a Ph.D. candidate in social psychology at the University of Cambridge, is currently investigating. Although much of the research suggests that personality seems to be at least somewhat genetic — and therefore, potentially, fixed — people are also able to act against their natures when the situation calls for it. It’s a concept called free traits, a term coined by University of Cambridge psychologist Brian Little, with whom Balsari-Palsule is collaborating on this new project. But it comes with a price, according to Little: Suppress your true self for too long, and you risk stress, burnout and perhaps even physical health consequences。

桑娜是劍橋大學(xué)社會心理學(xué)在讀博士，她現(xiàn)在正在研究這個問題。盡管許多研究表明至少人的性格是有先天性傾向的，即有可能不會變。但若不得已人們也能反性格行事。這部分性格特征稱之為“可變性格”。這個概念是由劍橋心理學(xué)家布萊恩·利特爾提出來的。正是他和桑娜合作研究這個新項目。利特爾說長時間壓抑真我是有代價的，隨之而來的壓力會讓你精疲力竭，甚至?xí)绊懮斫】怠?/p>

Balsari-Palsule was curious how this concept might play out in the workplace, given the obvious pressures to act differently in the office than you do elsewhere. So she rounded up about 300 employees at a marketing firm in the U.K., asking them to complete a personality test, plus survey questions about their work life. The human relations department of the marketing firm also handed over data on these employees’ performance reviews and promotions over the years (with the employees’ permission, of course)。

桑娜對于“可變性格”在工作場合如何發(fā)生很感興趣，鑒于辦公室里壓抑本我的壓力顯而易見，所以她調(diào)查了一家英國營銷公司的約300名員工。請這些員工來完成她的性格測試及工作期間的一些問題調(diào)查。公司人事部也將這些員工多年的績效考核和晉升潛力等數(shù)據(jù)交給她。(當(dāng)然經(jīng)由員工允許)

The results of the study are preliminary, as Balsari-Palsule is still analyzing her data. But so far, she said, it seems like extroverts suffer when they pretend to be introverts at work, and more so than introverts who pretend to be extroverts. When naturally talkative and social people had to be quiet and solitary for long periods of time at their desks, they reported less job satisfaction and more stress than the extroverts whose jobs allowed them to act like themselves. This was especially true for the younger employees at the organization. (Though the standard “correlation does not equal causation” caveat may apply here; there could be other reasons for these statistical relationships。)

數(shù)據(jù)初步顯示(桑娜尚未全部完成分析)：內(nèi)向的人假裝外向比外向的人假裝內(nèi)向受到的傷害更大。健談合群但必須長期安靜獨自辦公的人與工作符合性格特征的外向的人相比較來說，他們工作滿意度更低，他們的壓力也更大。這個公司里的年輕雇員便是明證。(“相關(guān)性不等于因果性”可以用在這里，也許有別的原因)

Beyond job satisfaction, research has suggested that suppression of one’s natural behavior is linked with poorer health — specifically, a decrease in immune-system functioning. Your heart may start to pound and your muscles may tense, both indicators of autonomic arousal, the physiological manifestation of stress or anxiety, Little said。

除了工作滿意度外，研究還表明壓抑性格與糟糕的健康狀況也有聯(lián)系，特別是免疫系統(tǒng)功能。利特爾說可能會導(dǎo)致心慌和身體僵硬。這兩項正是焦慮癥和壓力過大的生理表現(xiàn)。

Balsari-Palsule and other researchers think this doesn’t just apply to introversion and extroversion, but to the rest of the so-called “big five” personality traits; the other four are openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism. Take conscientiousness, for example. “It is highly plausible that people regularly exhibit pseudo-conscientiousness at work, given that it is both socially desirable and a major driver of success in the workplace,” Balsari-Palsule said, adding that research has consistently shown that conscientiousness is the strongest predictor of job performance and success. So if her theory is right, then even though conscientiousness is clearly a useful thing for the non-conscientious to fake, doing so for an extended period could lead to stress or health problems。

桑娜和其他的研究人員認(rèn)為這不僅僅適用于內(nèi)向和外向，而是適用于所謂的“大五”人格。“大五”人格其他的四項分別是：開放性，謹(jǐn)慎性，宜人性和神經(jīng)質(zhì)。拿謹(jǐn)慎性為例來說，“人們在工作中展示自己不具備的謹(jǐn)慎性是非常合情理的，因為謹(jǐn)慎性既是社會需要也是工作成功的驅(qū)動力之一。” 桑娜補充說，研究一再表明謹(jǐn)慎性是工作表現(xiàn)和成功的最好預(yù)測器。如果她的理論是對的，雖然嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)性對不嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)?shù)娜藖碚f明顯是有利的但是長時間偽裝嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)也可能導(dǎo)致壓力或者健康問題。

There’s probably a way to undo this damage, though. Little argues that it’s crucial to allow yourself some sort of restorative period, meaning time to revert back to your true self. If you’ve heard of this idea, you’ve likely heard it applied to introversion, the internet’s favorite personality trait, thanks at least in part to the success of Susan Cain’s 2012 best seller, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, which covered some of Little’s research. “In the pop-psychology literature on introversion, you often hear things about how introverts have to ‘recharge their batteries’ after social interactions,” said Sanjay Srivastava, a University of Oregon psychologist who studies personality. “Once upon a time I got curious if that was supported by evidence — and when I went to look for studies, I had trouble finding studies that really spoke directly and definitively to that issue. It sounds like [Balsari-Palsule’s] research might be some of the first to do that。”

當(dāng)然是有辦法免受這種傷害的。利特爾說給自己恢復(fù)期非常重要。恢復(fù)期的意思是給自己做真我的一段時間。你也許已經(jīng)聽過“恢復(fù)期”運用在內(nèi)向性這個網(wǎng)絡(luò)最鐘情的性格特征上了。這得歸功于2012年蘇珊凱恩的暢銷書《安靜：內(nèi)向性格的競爭力》，這本書包含了部分利特爾的觀點。“在流行心理學(xué)文學(xué)作品中，你常常會看到內(nèi)向的人在參與社交后怎么怎么樣充實的報道” 桑杰(Sanjay Srivastava)說，他正攻讀俄勒岡大學(xué)心理學(xué)學(xué)位。“以前我很好奇這種論調(diào)是否有論據(jù)支持，當(dāng)我開始研究的時候我發(fā)現(xiàn)很難找到明確有利的證據(jù)，看起來桑娜的研究才是首先真正該做的。”

Specifically, Balsari-Palsule said she found that extroverts who took time to be social during the day – for example, by going to lunch with colleagues – did seem to feel less emotional exhaustion and stress during the workday. (She’s currently running another study to determine the typical “restorative niches” introverts and extroverts use in the workplace。) For a pseudo-conscientious person, on the other hand, a restorative period may be a weekend without any fixed agenda – no commitments, no plans, Balsari-Palsule suggested。

桑娜稱特別是當(dāng)她發(fā)現(xiàn)當(dāng)外向的人的花時間社交比如午休時與同事一起吃飯，那么他們這一整天都不那么累，壓力也會減少(她現(xiàn)在做的另一個研究是確定內(nèi)向者和外向者可以在工作場合用的“恢復(fù)壁龕”)。另一方面對于偽謹(jǐn)慎性的人來說恢復(fù)期可以是任意一天，不用特意做計劃，桑娜建議說。

Without that restorative time, you run the risk of your true nature “leaking out,” perhaps in ways you don’t expect, as Little argues in his 2014 book Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being. The idea makes intuitive sense. You might meet your deadlines at work, but the self-control you spend on that means you’re a week late mailing a baby shower gift to a close friend who lives across the country, to borrow an example from my own life . (Self-control, or willpower, is widely thought to be a limited resource, though that idea has been challenged as of late。) “If such consequences accrue over time, there may be spillover effects into the workplace, leading to stress and increasing difficulty at enacting pseudo-conscientiousness effectively,” Balsari-Palsule continued. It seems you can fake your personality at work, but only for a limited time。

如果沒有恢復(fù)期，你的性格可能會以你意想不到的方式“流露”出來，利特爾在他2014年寫的書《我，我自己，我們：性格的科學(xué)和幸福的藝術(shù)》中如是寫道。這種說法很形象。也許你會在截止日前完工，但是自律的意思讓我拿自己的經(jīng)歷做個例子講吧：是一周后給遠(yuǎn)方至交的小孩郵寄禮物，(人們起初認(rèn)為自律，毅力是有限的資源，后來這種觀點多次受到挑戰(zhàn))。“如果不停累積，可能在工作場合產(chǎn)生溢出效應(yīng)。致使偽謹(jǐn)慎性的人越來越難演下去，惡性循環(huán)” 桑娜補充說。看起來你可以偽裝自己的性格，但僅僅是在短時間內(nèi)。