A confession: I am one of the maybe six people left who have never seen an episode of Game of Thrones. Just existing in the world and on the internet means I have, over the years, indirectly absorbeda rough working knowledge of the show, enough that I can sort of follow along with friends’ conversations about it.

我坦白：我就是大約六人里面那個連一集《權力的游戲》都沒看過的人。我是說，只要活在世上而且上個網，過去這些年，我對這部劇的粗略了解也夠我跟得上朋友們的對話了。

One study suggested that spoiled stories were actually more enjoyable possibly because they’re easier to process while a later investigation found the precise opposite.

有研究稱，劇透的故事情節其實更令人愉悅，大概因為這樣的故事更好理解吧，而后又有一項調查的結果與之截然相反。

But the answer may be slightly more nuanced than “spoilers good” or “spoilers bad” — maybe, as a new study in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture suggests, it depends on your personality.

“劇透“”到底“是好是壞”，答案或許還有些微妙，《大眾媒體文化心理》期刊一項新的研究發現，這取決于你的個性。

The study authors, professors of communication at Albany State University, in Georgia, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, focused on two personality elements: “need for cognition,” or how much a person likes to use their brain for challenging mental activities, and “need for affect,” or the tendency to seek out emotional situations.

研究的作者是通訊方向的教授，來自美國紐約州立大學奧爾巴尼分校和阿姆斯特丹自由大學，他們重點關注兩大個性元素：“認知需求”，即一個人需要多大的腦力活動挑戰，和“影響需求”，走出情感局面的傾向。

In the first part of the study, a group of 358 college students read “previews” of short stories, including some that contained spoilers, and then reported which previews made them most interested in reading the full stories. When the volunteers then took personality tests, the researchers found, the same people who had scored low on need for cognition were also the ones who said they’d rather read the stories that’d already been spoiled.

在第一部分的研究中，358名大學生讀了小說的“預告”，包括部分劇透內容，然后報告他們對整篇故事里哪部分情節最有興趣。然后，這些學生志愿者參加了性格測試，研究人員發現，“認知需求”分數低者同樣也是稱愿意讀劇情透露故事的人群。

The study authors then gave their subjects copies of a handful of stories that had been included in the previews — some that they’d read spoilers for, and some where they still didn’t know what would happen. When the volunteers rate how much they’d liked the stories, another pattern emerged: The people who had scored higher on the need for affect enjoyed the unspoiled stories more.

研究人員繼而給了實驗參與者一批故事看，這些故事在預告中已經有所涉及，有些已經劇透，還有些故事的情節尚不知如何發展。后來這些實驗參與者評價他們對故事的喜歡程度時，又一個模式出現了：影響需求分值高者更喜歡讀未經劇透的故事。

A confession: I am one of the maybe six people left who have never seen an episode of Game of Thrones. Just existing in the world and on the internet means I have, over the years, indirectly absorbeda rough working knowledge of the show, enough that I can sort of follow along with friends’ conversations about it.

我坦白：我就是大約六人里面那個連一集《權力的游戲》都沒看過的人。我是說，只要活在世上而且上個網，過去這些年，我對這部劇的粗略了解也夠我跟得上朋友們的對話了。

One study suggested that spoiled stories were actually more enjoyable possibly because they’re easier to process while a later investigation found the precise opposite.

有研究稱，劇透的故事情節其實更令人愉悅，大概因為這樣的故事更好理解吧，而后又有一項調查的結果與之截然相反。

But the answer may be slightly more nuanced than “spoilers good” or “spoilers bad” — maybe, as a new study in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture suggests, it depends on your personality.

“劇透“”到底“是好是壞”，答案或許還有些微妙，《大眾媒體文化心理》期刊一項新的研究發現，這取決于你的個性。

The study authors, professors of communication at Albany State University, in Georgia, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, focused on two personality elements: “need for cognition,” or how much a person likes to use their brain for challenging mental activities, and “need for affect,” or the tendency to seek out emotional situations.

研究的作者是通訊方向的教授，來自美國紐約州立大學奧爾巴尼分校和阿姆斯特丹自由大學，他們重點關注兩大個性元素：“認知需求”，即一個人需要多大的腦力活動挑戰，和“影響需求”，走出情感局面的傾向。

In the first part of the study, a group of 358 college students read “previews” of short stories, including some that contained spoilers, and then reported which previews made them most interested in reading the full stories. When the volunteers then took personality tests, the researchers found, the same people who had scored low on need for cognition were also the ones who said they’d rather read the stories that’d already been spoiled.

在第一部分的研究中，358名大學生讀了小說的“預告”，包括部分劇透內容，然后報告他們對整篇故事里哪部分情節最有興趣。然后，這些學生志愿者參加了性格測試，研究人員發現，“認知需求”分數低者同樣也是稱愿意讀劇情透露故事的人群。

The study authors then gave their subjects copies of a handful of stories that had been included in the previews — some that they’d read spoilers for, and some where they still didn’t know what would happen. When the volunteers rate how much they’d liked the stories, another pattern emerged: The people who had scored higher on the need for affect enjoyed the unspoiled stories more.

研究人員繼而給了實驗參與者一批故事看，這些故事在預告中已經有所涉及，有些已經劇透，還有些故事的情節尚不知如何發展。后來這些實驗參與者評價他們對故事的喜歡程度時，又一個模式出現了：影響需求分值高者更喜歡讀未經劇透的故事。