《经济学人》双语：职场中，乐观主义重要，还是悲观主义重要？

原文标题：

Business | Bartleby

The benefits—and dangers—of optimism

Why you should (almost) always look on the bright side of life

商业 | 巴托比专栏

乐观的益处与风险

为什么你应该（几乎）总是要看到生活的光明面

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It pays to be an optimist. Upbeat types tend to be in better health.

保持乐观心态大有裨益。心态积极的人，健康状态普遍更好。

A meta-analysis by Alan Rozanski, a cardiologist, and his co-authors found that optimism was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular events.

心脏病专家艾伦·罗赞斯基及其团队的一项汇总研究发现，乐观情绪能够降低心血管疾病的发病风险。

They also tend to be resilient. Optimists are likely to see setbacks as temporary and attributable to external circumstances, whereas pessimists regard reverses as a verdict on their own enduring weaknesses.

乐观者心理承受力也更强，他们通常将挫折视作暂时遭遇，且归因于外部环境，而悲观者却会把逆境归结为自身长久存在的缺陷。

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Optimists are more likely to rise up organisational ladders as well.

乐观者在职场中也更容易获得晋升。

In a recent paper Nadine Chochoiek of Munich Business School and her co-authors surveyed founders, bosses and employees in the Netherlands, and found that entrepreneurs and managers are as upbeat as each other. Both are more optimistic than employees.

慕尼黑商学院的纳丁·乔乔伊克及其合作者近期发布的论文，调研了荷兰的企业创始人、管理者与普通员工，结果发现企业家和管理者都十分开朗乐观，远比普通员工心态乐观积极。

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Causality works both ways. Power itself is a source of optimism. It’s easier to feel better about the future if you have an ability to shape it.

因果关系是双向的。权力本身能催生乐观心态。如果自己能决定未来的走向，就更容易对未来感到乐观。

One reason why bosses have a more positive attitude towards AI than workers is surely that they have more control over what will happen.

企业管理者对AI的态度比普通员工更积极，原因之一是他们对事态发展拥有更强的把控力。

But optimism also propels people onwards and upwards. Optimists are more likely than pessimists to be entrepreneurs.

但乐观心态也会推动人们不断进取和提升。乐观者比悲观者更有可能成为创业者。

Low expectations of success and a decision to found a business tend not to go together.

若是对成功不抱期待，人们就不会投身创业。

Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-prizewinning psychologist, described “delusional optimism” as an engine of capitalism.

诺贝尔奖得主、心理学家丹尼尔·卡尼曼认为，这种“偏执乐观精神”是资本主义发展的驱动力。

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Confidence, justified or not, is a big part of why people are chosen for bigger jobs within organisations.

不管自信心是实实在在还是凭空而来，都是职场人士获得晋升重用的关键因素。

The standard psychological test for measuring how optimistic or pessimistic people are is a short questionnaire called the Revised Life Orientation Test, which features statements like “If something can go wrong for me, it will”.

衡量个人乐观与悲观程度的通用心理测评工具，是一份名为“修订版生活倾向测试”的简短问卷，其中有“倒霉事注定找上我”之类的题目。

Would you follow someone who strongly believes that they are cursed?

试问，你会愿意追随一个自认命运不济的人吗？

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Optimism can plainly go too far.

乐观显然也会走极端。

In an influential paper published in 2007, Manju Puri and David Robinson of Duke University used the gap between individuals’ own longevity expectations and actuarial assumptions as a proxy for people’s level of optimism.

2007年杜克大学学者曼朱·普里与戴维·罗宾逊发表一篇颇具影响力的论文，以个人预期寿命与精算预估寿命的差值，作为衡量乐观程度的参照标准。

They found that extreme optimists were more likely to smoke than moderate optimists, and to keep a great share of their personal wealth in illiquid assets.

他们发现，极端乐观者比温和乐观者更有可能吸烟，并且会将大部分个人财富配置在流动性较差的资产上。

Within organisations, too, excessive optimism often causes trouble. Unrealistic starting expectations make it more likely that projects will miss budgets and deadlines, for instance.

在企业内部，过度乐观也同样会导致麻烦问题。例如，一开始定下不切实际的目标，项目就容易经费超标，无法按期完工。

Optimism also makes it less likely that failing projects will be canned; decision-makers have a habit of assuming better outcomes than originally planned to justify ploughing on.

乐观情绪也会让人迟迟不愿叫停亏损项目，决策者会习惯于设想优于原定计划的结果，以此作为继续推进的理由。

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A lot depends on the context.

乐观与否，很大程度取决于所处场景。

“What could possibly go wrong?” sounds much more worrying on the lips of a pilot than a podcaster.

同样一句“能出什么差错呢”，飞行员说出这话会让人倍感担忧，而播客主持人说来就并无不妥。

A study by Damiano Silipo of the University of Calabria and his co-authors quantified optimism at American banks by looking at how much money they set aside to cover future loan losses.

卡拉布里亚大学达米亚诺·西利波团队进行的一项研究，依据美国银行计提的贷款损失准备金规模，来量化银行的乐观情绪。

Optimism prevailed among bankers in the run-up to the 2007-09 financial crisis. Then, suddenly, it didn’t.

在2007-2009年金融危机爆发前夕，银行从业者们普遍心态乐观。然而，后续情况便迅速逆转。

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There are plenty of ideas on how to counter optimism bias.

有很多方法可以应对乐观偏差。

Processes can help—in a “pre-mortem”, for example, people deliberately imagine the failure of a proposed initiative and identify the most likely causes.

流程机制能够起到约束作用——比如开展事前推演，大家预想方案失败的场景，来找出最可能出错的原因。

Team composition also matters. A paper by Ulrike Malmendier of the University of California, Berkeley and her co-authors found that overoptimism on the part of the CFO is more predictive than a cocksure CEO when it comes to a preference for debt over equity.

团队人员构成也同样重要。加州大学伯克利分校乌尔丽克·马尔门迪尔团队研究表明，相较于自负的首席执行官，过度乐观的首席财务官更倾向于选择债务融资而不是股权融资。

But the same paper found that overconfident CEOs tend to hire overconfident CFOs.

但同一篇论文也发现，过度自信的首席执行官往往会聘请过度自信的首席财务官。

If it’s optimists all the way down, you have a problem.

如果从上到下都是乐观主义者，那就麻烦了。

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Yet it is also possible to lean too far in the other direction.

但也有可能走向另一个极端。

In his new book, “The Four Principles”, Adrian Gore, founder of the Discovery Group, a big South African financial-services firm, argues that ingrained pessimism is a widespread problem in business.

南非大型金融服务公司Discovery Group的创始人阿德里安·戈尔，在他的新书《四大原则》中提出，骨子里的悲观情绪是商界普遍存在的问题。

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People are conditioned to look for negative signals, reckons Mr Gore.

戈尔认为，人们会习惯性留意负面信息。

Explaining why things might go wrong is seen as more sophisticated than believing that things will turn out well.

预判风险隐患，比相信事态顺利更显得高明老成。

Loss aversion, a strong behavioural bias against giving up what you already have, means that the scales are already tipped against risk-taking.

损失厌恶是一种强烈的行为偏差，人们害怕失去已拥有的东西，这种心理让大家不敢轻易冒险。

Mr Gore thinks that the trope of learning from failures is overdone; successes teach you more.

戈尔认为，从失败中汲取教训的说法已经是老生常谈；而成功的参考意义更大。

Performance appraisals ought to focus on putting people in positions that play to their strengths rather than trying to fix their weaknesses.

绩效考核应侧重扬长避短，而不是刻意弥补短板。

Pessimism has its place, but it is optimism that makes things happen.

悲观主义固然有它存在的意义，但乐观主义才是推动成事的关键。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇732左右）

原文出自：2026年5月23日《TE》Business版块

本文翻译整理: Irene
本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【重点句子】（3个）

Causality works both ways. Power itself is a source of optimism. It’s easier to feel better about the future if you have an ability to shape it.

因果关系是双向的。权力本身能催生乐观心态。如果自己能决定未来的走向，就更容易对未来感到乐观。

Within organisations, too, excessive optimism often causes trouble. Unrealistic starting expectations make it more likely that projects will miss budgets and deadlines, for instance.

在企业内部，过度乐观也同样会导致麻烦问题。例如，一开始定下不切实际的目标，项目就容易经费超标，无法按期完工。

Pessimism has its place, but it is optimism that makes things happen.

悲观主义固然有它存在的意义，但乐观主义才是推动成事的关键。

自由英语之路