Stereotype_译文

Fighting Stereotype Stigma 为“成见”一辩作者：布鲁斯·鲍尔1．几年前心理学家黎岳庭收到了一封对于几个不同国家生活质量进行讽刺性评价的电子邮件。

“天堂是一个拥有美国的房子，中国的食物，德国的汽车和法国的艺术的地方。

”黎岳庭的信友写道，“地狱是一个拥有日本的房子，英国的食物，德国的艺术和法国的汽车的地方。

”2．韦斯尔德(马萨诸塞)州立大学的黎岳庭认为，虽然对于这些国家的说法缺乏绝对真实性，但它们足以精确到赋予格言以幽默的力量。

总的来说，与日本的住房相比，美国的房子的确更为宽敞。

与英国的酒馆相比，中国的酒馆也许具有更多的烹饪潜力。

3．黎岳庭认为在这方面，成见并非毫无道理的偏见，其典型的作用是作为理解其他文化和社会团体以及属于该团体的个人的有效的思维起点。

4．“成见是我们用于对人、物体和事件进行分类时的盖然论的信念，”黎岳庭认为，“我们需要成见来处理我们所在的这个经常是不确定和不熟悉的世界上如此之多的信息。

”5．许多心理学家并不同意这种观点。

他们把成见看作是对他人错误片面看法的滋生地，容易导致种族主义、性别歧视以及其他形式的偏见。

6．马里兰大学的查尔斯·斯坦格认为，在成见这一污淖中，没有什么智慧可言，错误的判断主导地位。

成见使人们对他人的看法简单化，增强了对自己和他们所属群体的看法。

他补充说，一旦世俗的看法掌握在政治强权者的手中，就会对所选择的群体打上某种烙印或进行利用。

7．斯坦格的论点未能反映出成见应有的一面，即虽然不是绝对精确，也经常有助于探索社会，黎岳庭反驳道。

他说一项正在进行的研究表明在许多现实情境中，成见精确地捕捉到了文化和群体的差异。

在黎岳庭和其他两位心理学家新泽西州新不伦瑞克市拉特格斯大学的李．J．贾斯姆和宾夕法尼亚州布林莫尔大学的克拉克·麦考利编写的《成见的精确性：正确评价群体差异》(1995年．美国心理学协会，华盛顿)一书中提供了许多证据。

8．六十多年来科学家一直把成见定义为错误的、不合逻辑的和死板的。

这种观点可追溯到记者沃尔特·利普曼1922年出版的《公共舆论》一书中。

在该书中他认为对社会团体的成见总被证明是不全面的和带有偏见的。

9．在20世纪50年代，心理学家戈登·W·奥尔伯特认为成见的特征是对一个群体所有成员的没有根据的看法。

奥尔伯特把“德国人效率都很高”看作是成见，但“一般来说，德国人比其他国家的人效率高”则不是。

当时就一些成见是否包含了“现实中的真谛”产生了争论。

10．利普曼担心成见会导致社会混乱，这种观点在1970年以后颇为盛行。

心理学家纷纷揭露社会判断中的错误和偏见。

然而在过去的十年里，心理学家更倾向于描述在具体环境中人们的决策可精确到何种程度。

11．黎岳庭对成见的看法正是强调判断的精确性。

他对人们如何理解种族和文化差异产牛更大的兴趣是在他1986年从中国移居美国读研究生之后。

这时他开始猜测对成见进行更敏锐的科学分析是否会有什么应用价值。

例如，黎岳庭指出如果双方能在理解引起仇恨的真正文化差异方向接受帮助，解决种族或国家之间冲突的努力就可以发挥最佳效果。

12．“群体之间的差异，而不是偏见，是造成不同的文化和种族之问紧张和冲突的根本原因。

”他认为“改进群体之间的关系最有效的方法是承认和开诚布公地讨论现有的差异，同时说明存在差异没有什么过错。

13．在斯托尔斯的康涅狄格大学的鲁本·M·巴伦认为这种相互沟通的努力抵消了人强调成见负面特点的惯常倾向。

他指出，人类逐步发展到以群体为单位，从而能够成功地面对一个危险的世界。

我们的祖先肯定曾依赖成见对潜在的危险作出快速反应，例如分食肉动物与被捕食的动物，区分敌友，区分群体内部的同伴与外来者。

14．巴伦认为随着群体规模和复杂性的增加，在与他人进行交流时把人分成不同的“类型”的能力也许也是至关重要的。

在大的社会团体中成见利用了人们根据自身特点去承担社会角色的习惯。

例如古代社会中的武士可能被定型为具有侵略性但缺乏情感，而说书人和音乐家则往往被精确定型为表达能力强而且友好。

15．在巴伦看来成见尽管方便，但即使是准确的成见，也能够导致对他人错误的看法。

， 16．例如在墨西哥与美国商人之间存在对准时的误解。

李说在边界的北边，墨西哥人被认为是“姗姗来迟的人”，因为他们倾向于过了安排好的时间后很久才出现，或在完成规定的任务时错过最终期限。

美国官员把这种特性看作是导致交易破裂的不可原谅的因素。

而他们的墨西哥同行并不对自己的拖延进行反思——而是嘲笑美国人为“机器人”，认为他们一定要在特定的日期前出结论，哪怕还没有收集齐所有的相关数据或完全认清事物的本质。

17．来自不同文化的商人可以明确地对其他群体的人的行为进行分类，但并不理解他们不同的时间观念的文化根源，李说。

18．很少有人研究过成见的这种微妙之处，加州大学里弗赛德分校的心理学家大卫·丰德评论说。

过去25年大多数的研究试图对社会期望扭曲个人判断力的种种方式进行分类，通常是把人置于实验室的环境之中来引出人们对种族或性别的成见。

19．丰德认为这种方法忽视了询问人们在广泛的现实生活中是否把精确信息纳入他们的成见之中。

20．丰德认为，“我们非常需要了解我们相互之间所作的判断，我们自己所作的判断哪些是正确的，哪些是错误的，以及何时是正确的，何时是错误的。

”以下为未引用段落及译文：Some researchers suspect that even if stereotypes draw on genuine group differences, they routinely get exaggerated as people selectively seek evidence that confirms their biases toward others or makes convenient scapegoats of them. Accumulating evidence suggests otherwise, according to McCauley.In one study, directed by McCauley, five groups of white adults--consisting of high school and college students, graduate students in social work, members of a church choir, and members of a labor union--estimated the percentage of black U.S. citizens and all U.S. citizens matching each of seven characteristics.These included having finished high school, living in a family receiving welfare, living in a family headed by a woman, and having been unemployed in the previous month.Most of the volunteers' estimates coincided closely with U.S. Census figures, McCauley states. The few areas in which participants disagreed with government tallies involved underestimates of actual differences between blacks and the entire population.Members of ethnic minority groups, on the other hand, may pay particular attention to differences between themselves and others in order to bolster a positive sense of their social identity, proposes psychologist Carey S. Ryan of the University of Pittsburgh.In a study of black and white students at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Ryan found that blacks reported a stronger tendency to note certain stereotypical attributes in themselves (such as "dance well," "strong emotional bonds to family," and "financial support from athletic scholarships") and other attributes in whites (such as "high SAT math scores," "at least one parent has a college degree," and "spends money frivolously"). However, black students were moreadept than their white counterparts at gauging the prevalence, as reported by the students, of these features in both groups--but particularly in whites. White students judged their own traits more accurately than those of black students.These results support the theory that members of ethnic minority groups have a greater stake in understanding a more powerful majority population than majority members have in understanding minority groups, Ryan argues.Exaggerations of stereotypical characteristics may arise most commonly when one group perceives another as an enemy, McCauley suggests. For instance, many U.S. citizens held stereotypical caricatures of the Japanese during World War II and vice versa. These highly charged assumptions have since eased on both sides, although negative stereotypes can still arise during conflicts over issues of national importance, such as trade practices.Stereotypes exert an insidious effect in the schools, another influential line of research suggests. Children perform much better on achievement and IQ tests if their teachers have positive expectations about their intellectual ability, whereas intellectual decline occurs for kids held in low regard by instructors, these studies find. Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University, who first described this phenomenon in 1968, refers to it as the Pygmalion effect.However, evidence of Pygmalion's classroom shenanigans comes mainly from studies in which teachers were fed information about students whom they had not yet met, notes Jussim. Participating teachers typically have no opportunity to interact with students or observe their achievement over an extended period, he adds.In the real world of elementary education, however, teachers exhibit a good deal of sensitivity to which of their students do and don't have the right academic stuff, according to a project conducted by Jussim and Jacquelynne Eccles of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.Their investigation consisted of nearly 100 mathematics teachers and 2,600 of their students in the Michigan public schools. At the end of the first month of sixth grade, teachers rated each of their students' performance, talent, and effort at math; students also rated themselves on these attributes. Final grades in fifth-grade math classes offered an objective measure of each student's performance; scores on standardized math achievement tests completed in late fifth or early sixth grade served as a measure of talent.Teachers' perceptions of their students closely matched the students' self-reported motivation and their actual performance, Jussim and Eccles contend. No evidence emerged for teacher bias against black students, girls, or students from poor families.When teachers evaluated students from one group more favorably than those from another group, their ratings usually reflected actual disparities in math ability and effort, the researchers assert. For instance, teachers perceived girls as performing slightly better than boys, and girls indeed had obtained somewhat better fifth-grade math marks than boys had.In one exception to this overall trend, teachers felt that girls tried harder than boys to do well at math, although the self-assessments showed no such disparity. This may have stemmed from the fact that girls tend to adopt a more cooperative and pleasant attitude in class, two traits that teachers prefer in their students, Jussim and Eccles propose.Stereotypes that teachers held about particular groups of students probably assumed less importance as they became familiar with individuals from those groups during the first month of the school year, the researchers theorize."Social problems associated with gender, social class, and race undoubtedly exist and are terriblyimportant," Jussim remarks. "But the role of individuals' stereotypes in creating those problems is less clear."A sharper picture of how stereotypes can go awry will emerge only if researchers strive to understand the advantages they confer in the social world, argues Lee."A concern for stereotype accuracy would also have the beneficial effect of coaxing social psychologists out of their ivory tower laboratories and into the field, where real people perceive and interact with other individuals and groups," Lee holds.22．一些研究人员怀疑即使成见真正反映了群体之间的差异，当人们有选择地寻求证据证明他们对他人的偏见或随便找些替罪羊时成见通常会被夸张。