If you ever feel vaguely guilty about the vast amounts of television you watch, might I suggest you cling to the findings of this study, published last week in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. In it, the authors claim that watching high-quality television dramas —things like Mad Men or The West Wing —can increase your emotional intelligence. That is, watching good TV makes you more empathetic.

如果你曾因看過巨多電視劇而有那么些許的愧疚，那我就要建議你去參考下這項研究的結果了。該研究上周在《心理學美學》、《創造》和《藝術》等雜志期刊上發表過。研究中，作者稱看一些像《廣告狂人》和《白宮風云》等電視劇能夠提高人的情緒感知力。即，看一些優質電視劇能夠讓你對事物更加地感同身受。

In the paper, the authors describe two experiments. In one, they asked about 100 people to first watch either a television drama (Mad Men or The West Wing) or a nonfiction program (How the Universe Works or Shark Week: Jaws Strikes Back). Afterward, all of the participants took a test psychologists often use to measure emotional intelligence: They're shown 36 pairs of eyes and are told to judge the emotion each pair is displaying. The results showed that the people who'd watched the fictionalized shows did better on this test than those who watched the nonfiction ones.

文中，作者描述了兩個實驗。在一組實驗中，主辦者先讓100個人看電視劇(《廣告狂人》或者是《白宮風云》)或者是紀實節目(《宇宙解碼》或者是鯊魚周：鱷反擊)。之后所有的參與者進行了一下測試，通常心理學家用這種測試測量情緒感知：測試者會看到36對眼睛，并要求判斷每雙眼睛中表現出來的情緒。結果顯示，測試中看虛構電視劇的試驗者比看紀實節目的測試者表現更好。

It's a similar finding to a widely reported 2024 study that claimed that reading literary fiction is linked to better scores on this empathy-measuring test. The authors of that study and this new one argue that a complex fictional narrative forces the reader or viewer to consider a problem from multiple perspectives; further, since not every character's emotion is explicitly spelled out, the audience must do some mental work to fill in those gaps, making a guess at the inner lives of the character.

這與2024年廣泛報道的一項發現極為相似，2024年的研究稱，閱讀文學小說能夠使人們在感性測試中獲得較高的分數。該項研究的作者與此項新研究的作者稱：復雜的虛構讀物能夠強迫讀者或觀眾從多方面考慮問題;而且，由于不是每個角色的情緒都會很明確地表達出來，觀眾們就要思考以填補這些空缺，揣度人物角色的內心世界。

If you ever feel vaguely guilty about the vast amounts of television you watch, might I suggest you cling to the findings of this study, published last week in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. In it, the authors claim that watching high-quality television dramas —things like Mad Men or The West Wing —can increase your emotional intelligence. That is, watching good TV makes you more empathetic.

如果你曾因看過巨多電視劇而有那么些許的愧疚，那我就要建議你去參考下這項研究的結果了。該研究上周在《心理學美學》、《創造》和《藝術》等雜志期刊上發表過。研究中，作者稱看一些像《廣告狂人》和《白宮風云》等電視劇能夠提高人的情緒感知力。即，看一些優質電視劇能夠讓你對事物更加地感同身受。

In the paper, the authors describe two experiments. In one, they asked about 100 people to first watch either a television drama (Mad Men or The West Wing) or a nonfiction program (How the Universe Works or Shark Week: Jaws Strikes Back). Afterward, all of the participants took a test psychologists often use to measure emotional intelligence: They're shown 36 pairs of eyes and are told to judge the emotion each pair is displaying. The results showed that the people who'd watched the fictionalized shows did better on this test than those who watched the nonfiction ones.

文中，作者描述了兩個實驗。在一組實驗中，主辦者先讓100個人看電視劇(《廣告狂人》或者是《白宮風云》)或者是紀實節目(《宇宙解碼》或者是鯊魚周：鱷反擊)。之后所有的參與者進行了一下測試，通常心理學家用這種測試測量情緒感知：測試者會看到36對眼睛，并要求判斷每雙眼睛中表現出來的情緒。結果顯示，測試中看虛構電視劇的試驗者比看紀實節目的測試者表現更好。

It's a similar finding to a widely reported 2024 study that claimed that reading literary fiction is linked to better scores on this empathy-measuring test. The authors of that study and this new one argue that a complex fictional narrative forces the reader or viewer to consider a problem from multiple perspectives; further, since not every character's emotion is explicitly spelled out, the audience must do some mental work to fill in those gaps, making a guess at the inner lives of the character.

這與2024年廣泛報道的一項發現極為相似，2024年的研究稱，閱讀文學小說能夠使人們在感性測試中獲得較高的分數。該項研究的作者與此項新研究的作者稱：復雜的虛構讀物能夠強迫讀者或觀眾從多方面考慮問題;而且，由于不是每個角色的情緒都會很明確地表達出來，觀眾們就要思考以填補這些空缺，揣度人物角色的內心世界。