(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.
Eight years ago, the jury in the trial of Casey Anthony announced their verdict. "As to the charge of first-degree murder, verdict as to count one, we the jury find the defendant not guilty."
Anthony had been charged with murdering her two-year-old daughter. But like the murder charge, the jury's decision for additional charges of aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter were again "not guilty."
"That created this huge outcry." Christopher Ferguson, a clinical psychologist at Stetson University in central Florida, not far from where the trial occurred. "There was kind of like this narrative that she got preferential treatment, maybe not on purpose, but that the jury was more sympathetic to her because she was this pretty young female and that kind of conflicted with people's impression of who a murderer is."
Mock trial studies have suggested that attractive people have an edge in the criminal justice system. So Ferguson and his colleagues looked into that stereotype using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the largest long-term study of people who began participating in the study as teens.
The interviewers asked the youths some multitude of questions—and also rated the respondents' degree of attractiveness, a measure that's been used to examine links to health and wealth.
In this case, Ferguson and his team looked at a subset of nearly 8,800 respondents and examined the correlation between attractiveness and arrest, conviction and sentencing. After controlling for things like gender, race and socioeconomic status, they found that attractiveness did have a protective effect—but only for females.
"Girls or women who are more attractive were less likely to be arrested if they'd committed a crime and less likely to be convicted if they were arrested for that crime. However, it did not have any impact on their sentencing. So once they were convicted, attractiveness conveyed no further benefits." The results are in the journal Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.
It's just a correlation, of course, and there are limitations. The attractiveness ratings were an average of four different interviewers' assessments, made over a dozen years. But beauty, as they say, is in the eyes of the beholder. And the effects weren't huge. Still, Ferguson says, "being sort of alert to our stereotypes and prejudices sometimes can help us combat them a little bit" — and perhaps get us closer to the ideal that justice should be blind.
Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
参考译文
这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是克里斯托弗·因塔格里塔。
八年前，审判凯西·安东尼的陪审团宣布了他们的判决。“对于一级谋杀的指控，罪状一的判决，我们陪审团认为被告无罪。”
安东尼被控谋杀她两岁的女儿。但是，与谋杀指控一样，对严重虐待儿童以及严重过失杀人等附加指控，陪审团再次裁决“无罪”。
“这引起了强烈的抗议。”斯泰森大学的临床心理学家克里斯托弗·弗格森说到，这所大学位于佛罗里达州中部，距离案发现场并不远。“有一种说法是，她得到了优待，可能不是故意的，但陪审团更同情她，因为她是那样一位漂亮又年轻的女性，她的形象与人们对杀人犯的印象不符。”
模拟审判研究发现，有魅力的人在刑事司法体系中享有优势。因此，弗格森和同事利用青少年至成人健康国家纵向研究的数据来调查这种刻板印象，该研究是对从青少年时期就开始参与的人进行的规模最大的长期研究。
调查人员询问了年轻人大量问题，并对回答者的吸引力进行评分，这是用于检查健康与财富关系的衡量法。
在此案中，弗格森和团队观察了近8800名回答者，并检查了吸引力与逮捕、定罪和判刑之间的关联。在控制了性别、种族和社会经济地位等变量后，他们发现，吸引力确实有保护作用——但只对女性有效。
“更具吸引力的女孩或女性如果犯罪，被逮捕的可能性更小；她们如果因该罪行而被逮捕，那被定罪的可能性也较小。然而，这对判刑没有任何影响。因此，一旦被定罪，吸引力就不会带来更多好处。”研究结果发表在《精神病学、心理学和法律》期刊上。
当然，这只是一种相关性，还存在一些局限。吸引力评分是由4名采访者在10多年间打出的评分的平均值。但正如他们所说，美存在于欣赏者的眼中。而且，影响也并不大。不过，弗格森说：“警惕我们的刻板印象和偏见，有时可以帮助我们稍微克服它们。”也许还能让我们更接近理想：司法应该是不讲情面的。
谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。
译文为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！
重点讲解
重点讲解：
1. as to 至于…；
No one has come up with a definitive answer as to why this should be so.
对于为什么应该是这样，还没有人想出最终确定的答案。
2. be charged with (警方)指控，起诉；
He has been charged with extortion and abusing his powers.
他被控犯有敲诈勒索罪和滥用职权罪。
3. on purpose 特意地；故意地；有意地；
Was it an accident or did David do it on purpose?
是意外还是戴维故意所为？
4. look into 考察；调查；研究；
We'll look into that right away.
这事我们马上就去调查。
