人際關係中"弱紐帶"比小圈子有用

This may be a statement of the obvious at Christmas, but our families can sometimes let us down. Evidence comes from a little-noticed survey published by the US Census Bureau in September.

我們的家庭有時會讓我們失望。美國人口普查局(US Census Bureau) 2013年9月發佈的一項調查爲這一觀點提供了證明，不過沒引起多少關注。

The findings are conveyed in a sad and simple graph. It reports a survey of “households experiencing hardship” in 2011 - and who helped them when times were tough. What counted as tough times? Having a phone disconnected, missing utility bill payments, falling into rent or mortgage arrears, or not seeing a doctor or dentist when needed.

該項調查針對2011年“經歷困境的家庭”，以及陷入困境時得到過誰的幫助，調查結果通過一幅簡單而令人悲哀的圖表呈現。那麼怎樣算是陷入困境呢？電話停機，漏繳公用事業賬單，拖欠房租或房貸，或者生病了看不起醫生或牙醫。

More than half of such households expected help from family members, as did almost half from friends. Rather fewer - about a fifth - hoped for help from a social agency, charity or church.

一多半家庭期望得到家人的幫助，還有近一半則指望朋友幫助。只有很少一部分家庭（大約五分之一）希望得到社會機構、慈善團體或教堂的援助。

The overwhelming majority were disappointed. It was rare for family members to provide help with rent arrears - about one time in six - and it was rarer still to receive financial help from other sources or for other purposes.

結果絕大多數家庭的希望都落了空。家人極少幫忙付租金（大約六分之一），而從其他來源（或者爲了其他目的）獲得資金援助就更加罕見了。

In short, hard-up Americans were confident of help in need from those close to them - and that confidence was misplaced. (If you're looking for an explanation of the popularity of payday loans, this finding isn't a bad start.)

簡言之，手頭拮据的美國人相信能從親友那兒得到幫助，但這種信任是沒有根據的。（如果你想了解“發薪日貸款”爲何如此流行，不妨從這份報告入手。）

An optimistic reading of this research is that there are plenty of people whose families or friends did help them and thus never featured in the sample. Perhaps.

這份研究當然也不乏樂觀解讀：也許有許多人得到了親友的幫助，因此根本不在調查對象之列——或許吧。

But as the economist Timothy Taylor comments, enough people experience disappointment to leave “lasting shadows”.

但正如經濟學家蒂莫西•泰勒(Timothy Taylor)所言，生活中有太多人經歷深切失望，這種失望給他們留下“持久的陰影”。

This dispiriting stuff reminded me of Mark Granovetter's work on “the strength of weak ties”, published in 1973. Granovetter, a sociologist, brought together two disparate strands of work: a survey of how people with professional or managerial jobs had found those jobs; and a theoretical analysis of the structure of social networks.

這種令人沮喪的現實讓我想起馬克•葛蘭諾維特(Mark Granovetter)在1973年發表的《弱紐帶的力量》(the strength of weak ties)。葛蘭諾維特是社會學家，他將兩項不相干的研究拉到一起：一個是關於人們怎樣找到專業或管理工作的調查；另一個是對社會關係網結構的理論分析。

Start with the theoretical observation first: the most irreplaceable social connections, paradoxically, are often rather weak or distant ones. A family group or clique of close friends all tend to know each other and know similar things at similar times. Their social ties are strong but also redundant, in the sense that there are many different paths through which information could pass from one member of that group to another.

先談理論觀察：最不可取代的社會關係（聽上去有點矛盾）往往是相當薄弱或者遙遠的關係。家族或朋友圈成員傾向於在圈子內互相結交，他們在同一個時期知道的事情也大致相同。這種社會紐帶雖強但也累贅，也就是說，信息在這些圈子內部的傳播渠道非常多。

By contrast, “weak ties” between one social cluster and another are valuable precisely because the social contact is unusual. Information passed along a weak tie will often be totally new - and if it doesn't arrive through the weak tie, it is unlikely to arrive at all.

與此形成反差的是，不同社會羣體之間的“弱紐帶”有價值，正是因爲這樣的社會聯繫不尋常。通過弱紐帶傳遞的信息往往是全新的——換言之，如果不通過弱紐帶，新信息可能壓根傳遞不過來。

Granovetter then supplemented this theoretical idea with his survey, showing that it was very common for people to find jobs - especially managerial jobs and jobs with which they were satisfied - through personal contacts. The old saw is true: it's not what you know, it's who you know. Or as Granovetter put it in his book Finding a Job, what matters most is “one's position in a social network”.

葛蘭諾維特接着通過自己的調查對上述理論進行補充。調查顯示，人們常常通過個人關係找到工作（尤其是管理工作，或者是稱心如意的工作）。老話說得對：知道什麼不重要，認識誰才重要。或套用葛蘭諾維特在其著作《怎樣找工作》(Finding a Job)中的說法，最重要的是“一個人在社會關係網中的位置”。

But this is not because of crude nepotism: the key contacts who helped job-seekers find jobs were typically distant rather than close friends - old college contacts, perhaps, or former colleagues. Granovetter's analysis made this finding make sense: it's the more peripheral contacts who tell you things you don't already know.

但這不同於赤裸裸的裙帶關係：幫助求職者找到工作的關鍵聯繫人，一般關係並不密切，算不上老同學、前同事等密友。葛蘭諾維特的分析爲調查結果提供了合理的解釋：比較外圍的聯繫人才能提供你不知道的信息。

More recent research - for instance, a “big data” analysis of millions of mobile phone records conducted by Jukka-Pekka Onnela, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and others - has backed up Granovetter's argument that the weaker ties are the vital ones.

就拿最近一項研究爲例，尤卡-佩卡•翁內拉(Jukka-Pekka Onnela)，奧爾貝特-拉斯洛•鮑勞巴希(Albert-Laszlo Barabasi)等人分析了數以百萬計的手機通話記錄，用這些“大數據”對葛蘭諾維特的觀點提供了支持，即弱紐帶纔是必不可少的。