In the early 1970s, a team led by Carl Wordat Princeton University recruited white students for an experiment they weretold was about assessing the quality of job candidates. Unbeknown to them, theexperiment was really about how they treated the supposed job candidates, andwhether this was different based on whether they were white or black.

20世纪70年代初，在美国普林斯顿大学，一支由卡尔·沃德（Carl Word）领导的研究团队对微歧视进行了研究。首先，研究者招募白人学生，并告诉他们这项实验旨在评估求职者的品质素养，而不让他们知道，实验的真正意图在于了解他们会怎样对待所谓的求职者，以及他们的待人方式是否会因求职者的种族不同而有差别。

Despite believing their task was to findthe best candidate, the white recruits treated candidates differently based ontheir race – sitting further away from them, and displaying fewer signs ofengagement such as making eye-contact or leaning in during conversation.Follow-up work more recently has shown that this is still true, and that thesenonverbal signs of friendliness weren't related to their explicit attitudes, sooperate independently from the participants’avowed beliefsabout race and racism.

对于自己的工作是物色最佳人选这一点，新晋的白人面试官们都深信不疑。尽管如此，他们仍根据求职者的种族而给予其差别对待——面试官们会坐得离黑人求职者更远，也较少传递出互动的信号，比如在对话过程中进行眼神交流或倾身向前。最近，该研究的后续工作已经表明，现如今的情况依旧没有发生变化；此外，这些非言语的友善信号与实验对象的外显式态度无关，其运转不受他们在种族和种族主义方面的公开信仰的影响。

So far the the Princeton experimentprobably doesn't tell anyone who has been treated differently because of theirrace anything they didn't know from painful experience. The black candidates inthis experiment were treated less well than the white candidates, not just inthe nonverbal signals the interviewers gave off, but they were given 25% lesstime during the interviews on average as well. This alone would be aninjustice, but how big a disadvantage is it to be treated like this?

到目前为止，对于任何一个因为自身种族而受到区别对待的人而言，普林斯顿大学的这个实验所吐露的种种实情，恐怕与他们从惨痛经历中所遭受的那些并无二致。在这个实验中，黑人求职者的待遇远比不上白人求职者。这种差别不仅体现在面试官们所释放的非言语信号上，而且体现在面试时间上——分给黑人求职者的面试时间，平均起来少了25%。单单这个就构成一项不公正行为，然而，遭受如此的对待，人们会受到多严重的伤害呢？

Word's second experiment gives us a handleon this. After collecting these measurements of nonverbal behaviour theresearch team recruited some new volunteers and trained them to react in themanner of the original experimental subjects. That is, they were trained totreat interview candidates as the original participants had treated whitecandidates: making eye contact, smiling, sitting closer, allowing them to speakfor longer. And they were also trained to produce the treatment the blackcandidates received: less eye contact, fewer smiles and so on. All candidateswere to be treated politely and fairly, with only the nonverbal cues varying.

对此，沃德的第二个实验给我们带来解决问题的“可乘之机”。研究团队在收集了这些非言语行为的测量数据之后又招募了一些新的志愿者，并开展训练，让他们养成与原先实验对象一样的反应方式。也就是说，原先的参与者怎么对待白人求职者，他们就怎么对待白人求职者：进行眼神交流、微笑、坐得更近以及给予求职者有更长的说话时间。同时，原先的参与者怎么对待黑人求职者，他们也就怎么对待黑人求职者：少进行眼神交流、也少微笑等等。除了仅有的非言语暗示有所不同之外，他们会彬彬有礼、公平正派地对待每一位候选人。

Next, the researchers recruited more whitePrinceton undergraduates to play the role of job candidates, and they wererandomly assigned to be nonverbally treated like the white candidates in thefirst experiment, or like the black candidates.

接下来，研究人员从普林斯顿招募了更多的白人大学生来扮演求职者的角色，并将他们随机分为两组：一组的面试官在非言语方面的反应与第一次实验中对白人求职者的反应一样，另一组的面试官则与第一次实验中对黑人求职者的反应一致。

The results allow us to see theself-fulfilling prophesy of discrimination. The candidates who received the"black" nonverbal signals delivered a worse interview performance, asrated by independent judges. They made far more speech errors, in the form of hesitations,stutters, mistakes and incomplete sentences, and they chose to sit further awayfrom the interviewer following a mid-interview interruption which caused themto retake their chairs.

实验结果让我们见证了，关于歧视的预言会自我实现。按照独立裁判的评判，那些遭受了“黑色”非言语信号的求职者的面试表现较为糟糕。他们在言谈上的失误远远多于其他求职者，包括说话犹犹豫豫、口齿不清、错漏百出，句子还残缺不全。此外，在面试中间的一段间歇，他们需要重新搬动座椅，这时他们会选择坐到离面试官更远的地方。

It isn't hard to see that in awinner-takes-all situation like a job interview, such differences could beenough to lose you a job opportunity. What's remarkable is that theparticipants’ performance had been harmed by nonverbal differences of the kindthat many of us might produce without intending or realising. Furthermore, theeffect was seen in students from Princeton University, one of the world's eliteuniversities. If even a white, privileged elite suffer under this treatment wemight expect even larger effects for people who don't walk into high-pressuresituations with those advantages.

不难看出，在诸如工作面试这种赢家通吃的情境中，此类差别可能足以令人错失良机。而值得注意的是，那些中伤实验参与者表现的非言语差别，也许是我们许多人无意为之的。再者，普林斯顿大学是世界级的精英大学之一，在其学生中仍然可见这种效应。即便是一名身为特权阶层的白人精英，也会因这种境遇而备受折磨；可想而知，对于普通人而言，他们没有前者的那些优势，却要面对令人极度紧张的情形，这种效应的威力会更大。

Experiments like these don't offer thewhole truth about discrimination. Problems like racism are patterned by so muchmore than individual attitudes, and often supported by explicit prejudice aswell as subtle prejudice. Racism will affect candidates before, during andafter job interviews in many more ways than I’ve described. Whatthis work does show is one way in which, even with good intentions, people'sreactions to minority groups can have powerful effects. Small differences canadd up.

这类实验并不能揭示有关歧视的所有真相。诸如种族歧视之类的问题是由许多因素造成的，其中远远不止个人态度。而且，它们往往同时得到外显式偏见和内隐式偏见的强化。无论是在求职面试之前，还是面试过程中，抑或面试结束之后，种族主义会对求职者的影响方式还有很多，我所提及的那些不过是冰山一角。这项研究明确地呈现了一种行为方式，其中，人们对少数群体的反应即便出于善意，也会造成巨大的影响。微小的差异积少成多，终将带来质变。