宏浩翻譯有限公司

◎陳正健

When you take a painkiller to reduce your pain, you may also be decreasing your empathy, a new study suggests. If your job depends on feeling empathy for others, you might need to quit the medicine the next time you have a headache.

一項新研究指出，當你服用止痛藥以減緩疼痛時，你的同理心可能也會降低。如果你的工作仰賴對他人的感同身受，當你下次頭痛時，你可能要戒用這種藥物。

The researchers from Ohio State University carried out an experiment, including 80 college students, who were split into two groups. One group took 1,000 mg of acetaminophen, while the other was given a placebo. Acetaminophen is a common painkiller ingredient in Tylenol.

美國俄亥俄州州立大學的研究人員進行一場實驗，包括將80名大學生分成2組。一組服用1000毫克乙醯氨酚，另一組則給予安慰劑。乙醯氨酚是泰諾止痛片裡常見的成份。

After waiting one hour for the drug to take effect, the participants read eight short scenarios in which someone suffered some sort of pain. As a result, the participants who took acetaminophen rated the pain of the people in the scenarios to be less severe than did those who took the placebo.

受測者等了1小時讓藥物發揮作用，然後閱讀8段人們承受某些痛苦的簡短情節敘述。結果，服用乙醯氨酚的受測者，相較於服用安慰劑的受測者，對於痛苦情節的感受較不強烈。

"Empathy is important. If you are having an argument with your spouse and you just took acetaminophen, this research suggests you might be less understanding of what you did to hurt your spouse’s feelings," the researcher Mischkowski stated.

研究人員米史科夫斯基表示：「同理心很重要。如果你和配偶發生口角，並且剛剛服用乙醯氨酚，這份研究指出，你可能比較不能了解自己如何傷害伴侶的感受。」

新聞辭典

empathy：名詞，同理心，移情作用。例句：There is a strange empathy between the old lady and her grandson.（老婦人和她的孫子間有種奇妙的心靈互通感。）

placebo：名詞，安慰劑。例句：The placebo effect refers to all the observable behaviors caused by placebo.（安慰劑作用意指安慰劑引起的可觀察行為。）

scenario：名詞，劇情，腳本。例句：The most likely scenario is that house prices rise again, forcing interest rates up.（最可能的情況是房價再度上漲，迫使利率調升。）

宏浩翻譯引用自 http://iservice.ltn.com.tw/Service/english/english.php?engno=990690&day=2016-05-17