聪明人连变老都比我们慢！！！

现在，花点时间来想想你自己的年龄。不是你那个生理上的、每年喜加一的真实年龄——是你自己的主观感受。

Abundant research during the past few decades has shown that this “subjective age” can be a powerful predictor of your health, including the risk of depression, diabetes and hypertension, dementia, and hospitalisation for illness and injury, and even mortality – better than your actual age. In each case, the younger you feel, the healthier you are.

几十年来，一大堆的研究都显示，这个“主观年龄”对于一个人健康状况的重要指标，包括抑郁症、糖尿病、高血压、痴呆等让人住院的疾患和伤病，甚至死亡——的预测准确性甚至比一个人的生理年龄还要好。简而言之，你觉得自己越年轻，你就真的越健康。

The link probably goes in both directions. So while it’s true that ill-health may make you feel older, a higher subjective age could also limit your physical activity and increase feelings of vulnerability that make it hard to cope with stress – both of which could, independently, lead to illness. The result could even be a vicious cycle, where feelings of accelerated ageing lead you to become more inactive, and the resulting ill-health then further confirms your pessimistic views. And as I recently wrote for BBC Future, understanding this process could be essential for designing more effective health programmes.

而且很可能的是，反之亦然。就是说，一方面疾病等不健康的状态的的确确会让你觉得自己变老了，另一方面更大的“主观年龄”同样能限制你的生理活动、增加你的脆弱感，并导致你更难应对各种压力——而这些都会最终导致疾病。而结果可能就是一个恶性循环。“老得快、变老了”的感觉导致你更加不愿意运动，由此导致的不健康状态则进一步让这种消极的想法得到了确认。理解这种过程可能是解决许多健康问题的关键。

Yannick Stephan at the University of Montpellier has led much of the work examining this phenomenon, and his latest paper, published with colleagues in the journal Intelligence, extends this understanding by revealing a surprising link with IQ. According to this research, the more intelligent we are in our late teens and early 20s, the younger we will feel in our 70s – and this may also be reflected in various markers of biological ageing.

蒙彼利埃大学(University of Montpellier)的Yannick Stephan领导了许多关于这种现象的实验，在他最新与同事一起发表在《智力(Intelligence)》杂志的论文中，他将对这种现象的理解与一个人的智商之间的建立起了令人惊讶的联系。根据这项研究，一个人在20岁左右时的智商水平越高，他/她在70多岁时就会感觉自己越年轻——这也会反应在各种生理年龄的指标上。

Stephan’s team’s analysis is based on data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which for many years has tracked thousands of men and women born between 1937 and 1940. In 1957, each member of the study took an IQ test, which Stephan then compared to their estimated subjective age, taken more than 50 years later in 2011.

Stephan团队的研究基于“威斯康辛纵向追踪实验(Wisconsin Longitudinal Study)”的数据，这个实验在长达几十年的时间里，持续追踪了1937至1940年出生的上万名男女。1957年，每一位实验对象都参加了一次智商(IQ)测试，Stephan就用这些IQ测试结果与实验对象们在50多年后(2011年)的“主观年龄”数据进行了比对。

In line with other studies, the average participant felt about 17 per cent younger in their 70s than their actual age – but the precise difference depended on their adolescent intelligence (those participants who’d had higher teen IQ felt even younger), a link that remained even when the analysis controlled for the influence of demographic factors.

与其他研究的结果类似，参与实验的对象在70多岁时的“主观年龄”要比生理年龄年轻17%——但是，具体的差距则与他们青春期时的智力水平有关(那些年轻时IQ更高的实验对象在年老时觉得自己更年轻)，而即使控制了人口统计学的因素，这种联系依然存在。

After establishing this basic correlation, Stephan’s team also looked for other personal characteristics, such as education level and different personality traits, that might mediate the relationship. They found that greater “openness to experience”, which is associated with having a higher IQ, seemed to be important. Perhaps a higher IQ, which helps us to process complex information more easily, also increases our curiosity about the world, and it’s that sense of wonder and excitement that can make us feel more youthful.

在建立起这种关联之后，Stephan的团队也进一步检查了其他可能间接影响这种关联的个人特点——比如受教育水平、不同的人格特征等。他们发现，更高的“经验开放性(openness to experience)”看起来非常重要——而这项特征和高智商联系紧密。也许更高的智商有助于我们更为容易地处理复杂信息，也会增强我们对于世界的好奇心，这种求知欲和兴奋感能够使人自我感觉更加年轻。

Everything we know about physics in one neat infographicHaving higher intelligence might also make it easier to cope with the challenges that come with age, so that we don’t feel so vulnerable to our changing circumstances. And people with higher IQ may also be better able to deconstruct the negative age stereotypes that might otherwise place limits on our behaviour and lead to greater feelings of vulnerability.

拥有高智商也让我们能更好地应对挑战，这样在外部环境变化时会带来更少的挫败感。智商较高的人还可能更容易消解年龄增长带来的负面刻板印象，这些刻板印象可能对人的行为有所限制并导致更强烈的脆弱感。

The study chimes with others that have similarly linked a higher childhood IQ to various signs of biological ageing, including the length of our cells’ telomeres (the protective “caps” on the end of chromosomes that tend to shorten over the lifespan) and epigenetic markers.

将这项研究与其他研究联合起来看，童年时期的高智商也可能与其他多种生理年龄指标相关，包括细胞的端粒长度(染色体末端的“帽子”，随着年龄增长会缩短)，以及其他遗传指标。

Given that lower subjective age appears to encourage healthier behaviours, these new findings could help to explain these earlier IQ-ageing correlations. But once again, we should be wary of oversimplifying these relationships. A higher IQ could easily enhance our health through other pathways, such as the socioeconomic advantage that comes with better education.

鉴于较低的“主观年龄”往往会鼓励人拥有健康的生活方式，这些新的发现也许可以解释早年的高智商与晚年年龄自我认知的关联。但是，我们还是应该警惕把这种关联看得过于简单的倾向。拥有高智商也能很容易地在其他方面影响一个人的健康情况，比如由于接受更好的教育而带来的社会经济优势。

Stephan’s paper can’t unpick all these mechanisms, but it could certainly provoke some fascinating future research on the ways our cognitive abilities influence the ageing process.

Stephan的论文不能揭示所有的这些机制，但这篇文章一定会启发未来那些关于我们认知能力对衰老过程影响的研究。

I’d be particularly interested to see similar studies that look beyond the reasoning found on traditional intelligence tests. As Research Digest explored last year, our critical thinking skills (such as how well we are able to dispassionately evaluate an argument), are more predictive than our basic IQ of the likelihood we will experience many life events – from the small stresses such as losing your passport to getting divorced, falling into debt, or catching a sexually transmitted diseases.

我个人则更期待看到未来的研究不仅仅限于传统的智商测试方法。正如《研究文摘(Research Digest)》在去年探讨的话题一样，我们的批判性思维(比如面对争论时冷静评估一个论点的能力)比基本的智商水平更能准确预测许多生活现象——从找不到身份证这种小小的压力，一直到离婚、负债，甚至是面对感染性传播疾病的窘境。

Might other measures of “good” thinking, prove to have an even closer link to the measures of subjective and biological ageing? It would be fascinating to see if these skills – which can be taught – could also help people cope with the challenges of old age, by reducing stressful mistakes and encouraging healthier behaviours, and by helping us to question age stereotypes.

未来，会不会出现其他衡量思维能力“好坏”的方式，并能够被证明与主观和实际的年龄联系更加紧密呢?如果可以找到这些能力——这可是能传授、能锻炼的后天本领——可以帮助人们更好地应对年龄增长带来的挑战，从而减少压力导致的错误并鼓励健康的行为，并最终帮助我们重新看待那些针对年龄的刻板印象，那将是非常令人神往的一件事情。

In the meantime, Stephan’s paper provides one more fascinating example of the far-reaching effects of our thinking and reasoning abilities, far beyond their obvious influence over our academic and professional success.

与此同时，Stephan的论文还展示了一个更有意思的例子，那就是我们的思维水平和理性思维能力所造成的影响，其实远远超出了学业和事业的范围。