双语阅读：聪明人更喜欢大城市

Cities are more crowded, more polluted, and more stressful to live in than any other kind of man-made environment in the world. But they are also where the smartest people want to live.

一般来说，城市与其他地方相比，会更加拥挤，污染更严重，生活压力也更大。但是它却是聪明人的梦想居住地。

A new study of American mobility patterns suggests that people with higher intelligence are more likely to be moving in and out of cities. Among them, those individuals who originate from rural towns exhibit the highest forms of intelligence. The findings, now online, will be published in the September/October issue of the journal Intelligence.

一个关于美国人口迁移模式的研究表明，拥有更高智商水平的人更倾向于在迁入或迁出城市。而在这群人中，那些原本居住在农村，后来迁入城市的人智商水平最高。上述的研究结果将会发表在今年九月或十月的Intelligence杂志上。

The study, conducted by psychologist Markus Jokela from the University of Helsinki, traced the 16-year migratory patterns of 11,500 Americans between the ages of 15 and 23, starting in 1979. Jokela found that people who moved from rural and suburban areas to central cities typically had much higher intelligence scores than people who stayed put or made other kinds of movements. Those same people also tended to leave central cities for suburban environments, to a lesser degree.

这项研究由芬兰赫尔辛基大学的心理学家Markus Jokela主持，从1979年起，研究人员追踪了11500名年龄介于15到23岁的美国人。经过长达16年的追逐，Jokela发现，与其他人群相比，那些原本居住在农村后来搬到城市的人们拥有更高的智商，而且他们离开中心城市搬往郊区的可能性也更少。

The findings themselves aren't particularly revelatory – it has long been thought that smart young people flock to the cities for better education and higher-paying jobs, and move out to the suburbs in order to raise a family. But the most striking part about Jokela's study is the numbers; most notably a 12-point intelligence gap between rural residents who stayed in their hometown and those who moved to central cities. When Jokela controlled for socioeconomic status, this gap was reduced to 4 point. While this is less stunning, it does indicate that intelligence plays a role in where Americans decide to live. “The most general message is that the selective residential mobility we observe associated with socioeconomic status has its psychological underpinnings in intelligence differences,” Jokela told CityLab.

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这样的研究结果其实并没有让人觉得惊讶，因为一直以来就我们就认为：智商较高的群体会为了更好的教育和更高的薪酬而迁入城市，而后会前往郊区组织自己的家庭。但是Jokela的研究让人惊讶的是它的具体数据：出生并一直居住在农村的人群与从农村移居至中心城市的人群比较，存在12个点的智商水平差异。当控制了社会经济的影响因素后，这个差异下降至4个点。虽然这个数字并没有很大，但是它证明了智商水平确实是美国人选择定居点的一个影响因素。Jokela说：从本次研究我们可能发现这么一个信息，居民选择定居点与社会经济状态有关，同时也存在以智商水平差异为基础的心理学差异。

While the results are interesting, they should be read with caution. Jokela’s analysis illustrates that intelligence and migration are connected, but not whether intelligence actually influenced individuals’ decision to move. The dataset for the study is also cut off after 1996, and American migratory patterns may have changed a great deal in the last two decades.

不过我们在看这份研究的时候应该注意几点，Jokela的分析称智商水平和迁移有关，但不是说智商水平会直接影响个人的迁移决定。此外这次研究的数据调查到1996年结束，而美国人的迁移模式可能在这20年发生了巨大的变化。

The biggest takeaway, however, is that smart people are constantly anxious to keep moving around. If you live in the city, you may want to talk to your new neighbor from that rural town you've never heard of – they probably have a few things to teach you, before they leave for greener pastures.

最后一点就是，高智商的人总是渴望不停的搬迁，因此如果你住在城市，也许可以和你那个新搬来的来自农村的邻居聊聊。也许他能教你些什么。 

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