来源：《新科学家》
原文见刊日期：2022年2月19日
The notion that “good” posture is beneficial isn’t completely ill-founded. Certain postures can lift your spirits. An awareness of a link between our body and our emotions goes back to the 19th century, when philosopher William James suggested that we don’t laugh because we are happy, rather we are happy because we laugh.
“良好”姿势有益的观点并非完全站不住脚。某些姿势可以振奋你的精神。我们对身体和情绪之间联系的认识可以追溯到19世纪，当时哲学家威廉·詹姆斯提出，我们不是因为快乐而笑，而是因为笑而快乐。
This idea is now known as “embodied cognition”, where the body influences our thoughts. For instance, when you meet a loved one, your heartbeat may increase and you might feel their skin against your own as you embrace. The brain, which is constantly assessing changes to information from the outside world and from our internal body, combines this new data and conjures up the appropriate emotion. Only then do we consciously perceive the feeling of love, or joy.
这种观点现在被称为“具身认知”，即身体影响我们的思想。例如，当你遇到一个心爱的人，你的心跳可能会加快，当你拥抱时，你可能会感觉到他们的皮肤与你的皮肤相贴。大脑不断评估来自外部世界和我们内部身体的信息的变化，将这些新数据结合起来，产生适当的情绪。只有这样，我们才能有意识地感受到爱或快乐。
Several experiments support this idea. For instance, studies by Elizabeth Broadbent at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, have shown that the posture of people with depression tends to be more slumped than that of people without the condition. But the effect goes both ways. Her team randomly split people without depression into two groups, using physiotherapy tape to strap their back into either a slumped or upright seated position. The participants then gave a speech. Afterwards, the upright group not only reported a more positive mood, but were less stressed as measured by blood pressure.
几个实验都支持这个观点。例如，新西兰奥克兰大学的伊丽莎白·布罗德本特所做的研究表明，抑郁症患者往往比没有抑郁症的人更倾向于弯着身子坐。但这种影响是双向的。她的团队将没有抑郁症的人随机分成两组，用理疗胶带将他们的背部分别固定在弯腰或直立的坐姿上。然后参与者发表了演讲。之后，直立的那组人不仅报告了更积极的情绪，而且从血压上看，他们的心理压力也更小。
Another experiment, by Johannes Michalak at Witten-Herdecke University in Germany and his colleagues, used biofeedback to manipulate people’s style of walking on a treadmill.
另一项实验由德国维滕·赫德克大学的约翰·米查拉克及其同事进行，利用生物反馈控制人们在跑步机上行走的方式。
Students were initially shown positive and negative words and asked how well each word described them. They were then guided into walking in a style that resembled that of someone who was unhappy or extremely happy.
研究人员首先向学生展示了积极和消极词汇，并询问每个词汇是否能恰当的描述他们的情绪状态。然后，学生们被引导以一种类似于不快乐或极度快乐的人的方式行走。
These gaits were based on experiments showing that people who are sad tend to walk with an increased sideways body sway, decreased arm swing and have a more bent over posture than those who are happy.
选择这些步态是基于以前的实验，实验表明，与快乐的人相比，悲伤的人走路时倾向于增加身体的侧摆，减少手臂的摆动，并且有更弯曲的姿势。
At the end of the study, the participants were given a surprise test – to remember as many words from the start of the study as possible. Participants recalled more negative words when walking in a style that resembled individuals who are sad than they did when walking with a happier gait. The researchers suggest that the walking style may have triggered a change in emotional state, which then affected memory recall.
在研究结束时，参与者接受了一个突击测试——从研究一开始就尽可能多地记住单词。与以快乐的步态走路相比，以悲伤的步态走路的参与者回忆起的负面词汇更多。研究人员认为，这种走路方式可能引发了情绪状态的变化，进而影响了记忆。