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。”