評論
打印
Racial Stereotypes and Memory
種族刻板印象
Although there has been much debate about whether race has a biological or social basis, the bottom line is that race is a psychological reality for many people. That is, many folks assign other individuals to racial categories based on their appearance, and then make assumptions about them.
對于種族歧視究竟是生物種群還是社會因素在作怪，雖然還未有定論，但至少對多數(shù)人來說是一種心理現(xiàn)象的現(xiàn)實反應(yīng)——他們自動地將他人分門別類，然后定版結(jié)論。
But racial stereotyping goes beyond classifying people into groups. When a group is assigned a negative stereotype, individuals that exhibit more of the physical characteristics identified with that group suffer more discrimination.
但種族刻板印象遠遠不止如此。當(dāng)一個人的行為被貼上低等族群的標(biāo)簽時，會遭受到更多的歧視。
For example, in a recent study, participants were asked to read one of four news articles about a hypothetical African American man. The first story was about a professor receiving an award. The second was about an athlete, a role stereotypically linked to African Americans. The third was about a white-collar criminal and the fourth about a violent criminal. No matter which story they read, all participants saw the same photo of the man.
例如在最近的一項研究中，有四篇關(guān)于非裔美國人的新聞，參與研究者被要求閱讀其中的一篇，人們關(guān)于種族的印象在這里彰顯無遺。第一篇是關(guān)于一名教授獲獎的事件。第二篇是一名運動員，他身上非裔美國人的特質(zhì)彰顯無遺。最后兩篇分別是一名白領(lǐng)罪犯和一名暴徒。不論選擇哪篇，文章的附圖都是同一名男子。
Despite that fact, when participants were asked to reconstruct the man's face on a computer, they gave the man more stereotypically African features, such as darker skin tones, if he had been portrayed negatively as the white collar criminal, or—especially—as the violent criminal.
參與者被要求在電腦上重塑這名男子的拼圖，在讓他們描述后兩種負面情況時，他們更偏重男子的非洲人特質(zhì)，例如黑皮膚，
The fact that they didn't associate more African features with the athlete, who was portrayed positively, suggests the participants linked these features to negativity rather than stereotypes. And this happened regardless of the participants'self-reported racial attitudes, which means that they weren't even aware they were having these troubling responses.
事實上，他們并沒有將更多非洲人的特質(zhì)賦予正面的運動員形象。這就意味著參與者將這些特質(zhì)與負面形象聯(lián)系起來，而非刻板印象。而這一切無關(guān)參與者自己的種族觀念，他們根本就沒意識到自己的答案是存在問題的。
If so, then it's not enough to study the way the media portray racial groups. It's also important to study how the public interprets and remembers—or misremembers—the news in a way that sustains racism.
果真如此，這對于研究媒體描述不同種族尚且存在不足。但對于研究基于一定的種族歧視人們是如何理解、記憶或遺漏這些新聞信息的還是有其重要的價值。
