social考研四级六级 /'sәuʃәl/

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that "social epidemics" are driven in large part by the actions of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well connected.

在他的著作《引爆点》中，马尔科姆·格拉德威尔认为，"社会流行"在很大程度上是由一小部分特殊个体的行为驱动的，这些人通常被称为有影响力者，他们往往信息特别灵通、极具说服力或人脉广泛。

In their recent work, however, some researchers have come up with the finding that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed.

然而，最近一些研究人员的研究结果表明，影响者对社会流行现象的影响远没有人们普遍认为的那么大。

The researchers' argument stems from a simple observation about social influence: With the exception of a few celebrities like Oprah Winfrey - whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence - even the most influential members of a population simply don't interact with that many others.

研究人员的论点源于对社会影响的一个简单观察：除了像奥普拉·温弗瑞这样少数几位其巨大影响力主要源于媒体而非人际影响的名人外，人群中最有影响力的人实际上并不与太多其他人互动。

Yet it is precisely these non-celebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics, by influencing their friends and colleagues directly.

然而，正是这些非名人影响力者，根据两步传播理论，应该通过直接影响他们的朋友和同事来推动社会流行现象。

For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential.

然而，要使社会流行现象发生，每个受到影响的人随后都必须去影响他们自己的熟人，而这些熟人又必须进一步影响他们自己的熟人，依此类推；而究竟有多少其他人关注这些受影响的人，与最初的影响力者关系不大。