Racial Stereotypes and Memory
种族刻板印象
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.
对于种族歧视究竟是生物种群还是社会因素在作怪，虽然还未有定论，但至少对多数人来说是一种心理现象的现实反应——他们自动地将他人分门别类，然后定版结论。
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.
但种族刻板印象远远不止如此。当一个人的行为被贴上低等族群的标签时，会遭受到更多的歧视。
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.
例如在最近的一项研究中，有四篇关于非裔美国人的新闻，参与研究者被要求阅读其中的一篇，人们关于种族的印象在这里彰显无遗。第一篇是关于一名教授获奖的事件。第二篇是一名运动员，他身上非裔美国人的特质彰显无遗。最后两篇分别是一名白领罪犯和一名暴徒。不论选择哪篇，文章的附图都是同一名男子。
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.
参与者被要求在电脑上重塑这名男子的拼图，在让他们描述后两种负面情况时，他们更偏重男子的非洲人特质，例如黑皮肤，
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.
事实上，他们并没有将更多非洲人的特质赋予正面的运动员形象。这就意味着参与者将这些特质与负面形象联系起来，而非刻板印象。而这一切无关参与者自己的种族观念，他们根本就没意识到自己的答案是存在问题的。
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，这对于研究媒体描述不同种族尚且存在不足。但对于研究基于一定的种族歧视人们是如何理解、记忆或遗漏这些新闻信息的还是有其重要的价值。