Don&39;t Let Stereotypes Warp Your Judgment

Don’t Let Stereotypes 惯性思维 套路Warp Your Judgments

Robert L. Heilbroner

不要让模式化遮蔽了你的判断

Is a girl called Gloria apt to be better-looking than one called Bertha? Are criminals more likely to be dark than blond浅? Can you tell a good deal about someone’s personality from hearing his voice briefly over the phone? Can a person’s nationality be pretty accurately guessed from his photograph? Does the fact that someone wears glasses imply that he is intelligent?

The answer to all these questions is obviously, "No."

名叫Gloria的女孩一定会比名字是Bertha的女孩漂亮么？罪犯通常长得较黑而不是白么？你能通过仅仅在电话里听会某个人的声音就很好的辨别出他的个性么？一个人的国籍能十分准确的从照片上看出来么？某人戴眼镜的事实就意味着他很聪明么？

以上所有问题的答案是显然的：“不能”。

Yet, from all the evidence at hand, most of us believe these things. Ask any college boy if he’d rather take his chances with a Gloria or a Bertha, or ask a college girl if she’d rather blind-date a Richard or a Cuthbert. In fact, you don’t have to ask: college students in questionnaires have revealed that names conjure up the same images in their minds as they do in yours—and for as little reason.

然而，从掌握的证据来看，我们大多数人却是相信这些说法的。不信可以问任何一位大学男生他更愿意和Gloria还是Bertha待在一起，或者问位女大学生她更愿意和Richard 还是Cuthbert见面。事实上根本不需要去问，接受调查的学生已经表明名字总是会毫无缘由的和某种形象联系在一起。

Look into the favorite suspects of persons who report "suspicious characters" and you will find a large percentage of them to be "swarthy"深 or "dark and foreign-looking"—despite the testimony of criminologists that criminals do not tend to be dark, foreign or "wild-eyed." Delve仔细检阅 into the main asset of a telephone stock swindler欺诈 and you will find it to be a marvelously confidence-inspiring telephone "personality." And whereas we all think we know what an Italian or a Swede looks like, it is the sad fact that when a group of Nebraska students sought to match faces and nationalities of 15 European countries, they were scored wrong in 93 percent of their identifications. Finally, for all the fact that horn-rimmed glasses have now become the standard television sign of an "intellectual," optometrists know that the main thing that distinguishes people with glasses is just bad eyes.

了解下会被人们认为可疑的人特点，你会发现这些可疑人士大多都会长得黑、像外国人。然而犯罪学家早已证实罪犯并不会长得更黑、更像外国人或是更野性。研究下那些在电话里进行股票欺诈的人，你会发现他们在电话里聊天都很有一手。尽管我们都认为我们知道意大利人或是瑞典人长什么样，悲哀的是，当一群内布拉斯加州的学生试图将来自15个欧洲国家的人的照片跟国籍相匹配时，他们的判断中93%都是错的。另外，尽管金光闪闪的眼镜已经成为了智慧的标志，验光师知道戴眼镜的人所具有的主要特质只是眼睛不好而已。

Stereotypes are a kind of gossip about the world, a gossip that makes us prejudge people before we ever lay eyes on them. Hence it is not surprising that stereotypes have something to do with the dark world of prejudice. Explore most prejudices (note that the word means prejudgment) and you will find a cruel stereotype at the core of each one.

模式是关于世界的一种谣言，这种谣言让我们在观察一个人之前就形成预判。因此毫不奇怪，模式化与黑暗的偏见王国有关。注意到偏见意味着预断，追溯偏见的产生，你会发现大多数偏见的核心都是一种模式化的看法。

For it is the extraordinary fact that once we have typecast the world, we tend to see people in terms of our standardized pictures. In another demonstration of the power of stereotypes to affect our vision, a number of Columbia and Barnard students were shown 30 photographs of pretty but unidentified girls, and asked to rate each in terms of "general liking," "intelligence," "beauty" and so on. Two months later, the same group were shown the same photographs, this time with fictitious虚构 Irish, Italian, Jewish and "American" names attached to the pictures. Right away the ratings changed. Faces which were now seen as representing a national group went down in looks and still farther down in likability, while the "American" girls suddenly looked decidedly prettier and nicer.

这是因为确定无疑的事实是：一旦我们已经模式化了世界，我们便倾向于用标准化的方式来看待人们。在另一个展示了模式化对我们看法影响的实验中，先向一群来自哥伦比亚大学和巴纳德学院的学生展示了30张未标名字的美女照片，让后让他们将这些美女按“普通”、“智慧”、“美丽”等分类。两个月后，这些人又看了相同的照片，不同的是这次照片上标注了虚构的爱尔兰、意大利、犹太和美国人名。排名立即发生了变化。被认为代表了有些国家的脸孔在外表上的排名出现了下降，可爱程度上则降得更多，相反的是“美国女孩”突然间变得十分美丽和可爱。

Why is it that we stereotype the world in such irrational and harmful fashion? In part, we begin to type-cast people in our childhood years. Early in life, as every parent whose child has watched a TV Western knows, we learn to spot the Good Guys from the Bad Guys. Some years ago, a social psychologist showed very clearly how powerful these stereotypes of childhood vision are. He secretly asked the most popular youngsters in an elementary school to make errors in their morning gym exercises. Afterwards, he asked the class if anyone had noticed any mistakes during gym period. Oh, yes, said the children. But it was the unpopular members of the class—the "bad guys"—they remembered as being out of step.

我们为什么用如此荒唐和有害的方式来模式化世界呢？部分原因是我们早在孩提时代就开始将人们进行分类了。正如那些孩子能看电视的父母知道的那样，在生命的早期时，我们就尝试从坏人中找出好人了。几年前，一位社会心理学家清楚地展示了这些孩提时代的模式化的看法是何等的给力。他秘密的让在小学最受欢迎的学生在做早操时犯错。然后，他问班上的同学是否有人注意到了做操期间的一些错误。“噢，是的”，学生们答道。但是记住的却是班上不受欢迎的成员---“坏学生”做错了。

We not only grow up with standardized pictures forming inside of us, but as grown-ups we are constantly having them thrust推进 upon us. Some of them, like the half-joking, half-serious stereotypes of mothers-in-law岳母, or country yokels乡下佬，土包子, or psychiatrists精神病医生, are dinned into us by the stock jokes陈腐的笑话 we hear and repeat. In fact, without such stereotypes, there would be a lot fewer jokes. Still other stereotypes are perpetuated by the advertisements we read, the movies we see, the books we read.

我们不仅在成长的过程中在内心形成各种标准化的看法，而且长大后还不停地让它们攻陷我们。它们中的一些模式，比如那些关于丈母娘、乡巴佬、精神病医生的半开玩笑半认真的模式化看法通过那些我们听到然后转述的陈腐笑话呗我们吸收了。事实上，如果没有这些陈见，笑话便会少很多了。还有其它的一些模式化看法是从我们读的广告、看的电影、读的书中打入我们脑海的。

And finally, we tend to stereotype because it helps us make sense out of a highly confusing world, a world which William James once described as "one great, blooming, buzzing confusion." It is a curious fact that if we don’t know what we’re looking at, we are often quite literally unable to see what we’re looking at. People who recover their sight after a lifetime of blindness actually cannot at first tell a triangle from a square. A visitor to a factory sees only noisy chaos where the superintendent sees a perfectly synchronized标准？ flow of work. As Walter Lippmann has said, "For the most part we do not first see, and then define; we define first, and then we see."

最后，我们选择模式化还因为它帮助我们认识让人高度困惑的世界。威廉·詹姆斯曾将世界描述为“一个巨大的、茁壮成长的、膨胀的谜团”。一个奇怪的事实是如果我们不知道我们看的东西，我们通常压根就看不懂它。那些一直失明的人在恢复视力后一开始时甚至不能区分三角形和正方形。一位工厂的游客只能看到混乱的景象，而管理者看到的则是工作在完全标准化的进行。正如李普曼先生所言：“在大多数时候，我们不是先观察再定义；我们先下定义，再去观察”。

Stereotypes are one way in which we "define" the world in order to see it. They classify the infinite variety of human beings into a convenient handful of "types" towards whom we learn to act in stereotyped fashion. Life would be a wearing 磨损process if we had to start from scratch with each and every human contact. Stereotypes economize on our mental effort by covering up the blooming, buzzing confusion with big recognizable cut-outs图案. They save us the "trouble" of finding out what the world is like—they give it its accustomed look.

模式化正是我们我们为了观察世界而给其下定义的一种方式。它们将各种各样的人类划分为常规的几种类型，然后再对这几种类型进行模式化的对待。如果我们和每个人交往时都要从零开始，生活将变得疲惫不堪。模式化通过用大而易识别的图案覆盖发展、膨胀的谜团来使我们的精力付出有效率。它们免去了我们发现世界是什么样的麻烦，它们给出了世界的常规样子。

Thus the trouble is that stereotypes make us mentally lazy. As S.I. Hayakawa, the authority on semantics, has written: "The danger of stereotypes lies not in their existence, but in the fact that they become for all people some of the time, and for some people all the time, substitutes for observation."

因此问题是模式化使我们在精神上变得懒惰了。正如语言大师早川濑里奈在书中所写到的：“模式化的危险性不在于它的存在本身，而在于所有人在有些时候或是有些人在所有时候用它来替代观察了。”

Worse yet, stereotypes get in the way of our judgment, even when we do observe the world. Someone who has formed rigid pre-conceptions of all Latins as "excitable,容易激动" or all teenagers as "wild," doesn’t alter his point of view when he meets a calm and deliberate Genoese, or a serious-minded high school student. He brushes them aside as "exceptions that prove the rule." And, of course, if he meets someone true to type, he stands triumphantly vindicated. "They’re all like that," he proclaims, having encountered an excited Latin, an ill-behaved adolescent.

更糟的是，即使是在我们观察世界时，模式化也会影响到我们的判断。有些人认为拉丁人是容易激动的、青少年是狂野的，对这些已经形成了固定的先入为主的概念的人来说，即使他碰到了一位平静且深思熟虑的热那亚人或是一位严肃的中学生，他也不会改变他的观点，而是将这些作为恰恰能证明模式的列外。而如果他碰到了符合模式观点的人，他便会更加维护这些模式。当他碰到了一位激动地拉丁人或是一位行为糟糕的青少年后，他便会说：“哈！他们果然都这样。”

Hence, quite aside from the injustice which stereotypes do to others, they impoverish削弱 剥夺 ourselves. A person who lumps the world into simple categories, who type-casts all labor leaders as "racketeers,非法 剥削 " all businessmen as "reactionaries,反动派" all Harvard men as "snobs,自命不凡者" and all Frenchmen as "sexy," is in danger of becoming a stereotype himself. He loses his capacity to be himself—which is to say, to see the world in his own absolutely unique, inimitable不可效仿的 and independent fashion.

因此，模式化除了会对他人不公外，更要命的是它们消弱了我们自身。那些将世界归为简单的类别的人、认为工人的领导都是剥削者、商人都是反动派的人、认为哈佛人都自命不凡、法国人都性感的人自身实际上正处于被模式化的危险之中。他会丧失掉做自己的能力，做自己即是意味着用他自己的完全独一无二、不可效仿且独立的方式来看待世界。

Instead, he votes for the man who fits his standardized picture of what a candidate "should" look like or sound like, buys the goods that someone in his "situation" in life "should" own, lives the life that others define for him. The mark of the stereotyped person is that he never surprises us, that we do indeed have him "typed." And no one fits this strait-jacket so perfectly as someone whose opinions about other people are fixed and inflexible.

相反，他会把票投给符合他关于竞选人应该有怎样的形象和声音的模式的人、买那些在他的“生活境遇”的人“应该”拥有的东西、过别人认为他该过的生活。模式化了的人的标志是他从不会给人以惊奇，他确实是被“模式化”了。没有人比那些对他人的观点是固定且不可改变的人更适合穿“模式化者”这件紧身小马甲了。

Impoverishing as they are, stereotypes are not easy to get rid of. The world we type-cast may be no better than a Grade B movie小成本电影, but at least we know what to expect of our stock characters. When we let them act for themselves in the strangely unpredictable way that people do act, who knows but that many of our fondest痴想的 盲目轻信的 convictions will be proved wrong?

尽管不起眼，这些模式却却并不容易被清除。我们模式化中的世界或许比小成本电影好不到哪去，但是我们至少知道该期待角色们做什么。当我们让他们按人们真实的奇怪难测的方式以他们自己的方式行动时，谁又能确定我们的许多痴想的论断就一定会被证明是错的呢？

Nor do we suddenly drop our standardized pictures for a blinding vision of the Truth. Sharp swings改变 of ideas about people often just substitute one stereotype for another. The true process of change is a slow one that adds bits and pieces of reality to the pictures in our heads, until gradually they take on some of the blurriness 模糊of life itself. Little by little, we learn not that Jews and Negroes and Catholics and Puerto Ricans are "just like everybody else"—for that, too, is a stereotype—but that each and every one of them is unique, special, different, and individual. Often we do not even know that we have let a stereotype lapse丧失 失效 流逝 until we hear someone saying, "all so-and-so’s are like such-and-such," and we hear ourselves saying, "Well—maybe."

我们也无法突然间就抛弃那些模式化的观点然后变得洞察真相。对一个人的观点的剧烈改变通常只是用一种模式去替代另一种模式罢了。真实的改变过程是缓慢的，它需要不断地向脑海中添加真实的碎片，直到最终对生活本身形成一点模糊的看法。如此一点一滴地，我们会认识到Jews、Negroes、Catholics、Puerto Ricans并不是“跟其他人一个样”，因为这本身就是一种模式化

Can we speed the process along? Of course we can.

我们能加快这一改变过程么？当然可以。

First, we can become aware of the standardized pictures in our heads, in other peoples’ heads, in the world around us.

首先，我们可以去认识到存在于我们脑海、他人脑海和周围世界中的标准化印象。

Second, we can become suspicious of all judgments that we allow exceptions to "prove." There is no more chastening精炼 净化 thought than that in the vast intellectual adventure of science, it takes but one tiny exception to topple a whole edifice大建筑物 of ideas.

第二，我们可以通过允许列外来质疑论断来批判性的看待所有论断。没有比科学中的大量思考行为更能体现这种想法的了，科学中只要有一个列外便可以推翻之前的想法。

Third, we can learn to be chary小心 谨慎 of generalizations about people. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote: "Begin with an individual, and before you know it you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find you have created—nothing."

第三，我们可以学着警惕对人们进行分类。正如弗兰西斯 司各特 菲茨杰拉德曾在书中写到的：“即使是先将对象当做个体，你也会发现在认识其之前你已经将其归类了；而先将对象归类的话，你会发现你什么也没做。”

Most of the time, when we type-cast the world, we are not in fact generalizing about people at all. We are only revealing the embarrassing facts about the pictures that hang in the gallery画廊 of stereotypes in our own heads.

当我们将世界归类时，大多数时候我们实际上根本就不是将人们分类，而只是展示了我们脑海画廊中悬挂的各种模式的图画而已，这真令人难堪。

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