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。