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1、EAP Unit3 PsychologyPersons: Judging a Book by its CoverSaul Kassin et al.1. Have you ever met someone for the first time and formed a quick impression based only on a quick “snapshot快照” of information? As children, we were told that we should not judge a book by its cover, that things are not alway
2、s what they seem, that surface appearances are deceptive欺骗的, and that all that glitters 闪烁 灿烂is not gold. Yet as adults we cant seem to help ourselves. 2. To illustrate the rapid-fire一瞬时过程的本质 nature of the process, Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov (2006) showed college students photographs of unf
3、amiliar faces for one-tenth of a second, half a second, or a full second. Whether the students judged the faces for how attractive, likable, competent, trustworthy, or aggressive they were, their rating等级s even at the briefest exposure were quick and were highly correlated相关的 with judgments that oth
4、er observers made without time-exposure limits. Flip quickly through the pages of an illustrated magazine, and you may see for yourself that it takes a mere fraction of a second to form an impression of a stranger from his or her face.3. If first impressions are quick to form, then on what are they
5、based? In 500 BC, the mathematician Pythagoras looked into the eyes of prospective students to determine if they were gifted. At about the same time, Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, used facial features to make diagnoses of life and death. In the nineteenth century, Viennese physician F
6、ranz Gall introduced a carnival-like science called phrenology and claimed that he could assess a persons character by the shape of their skulls. And in 1954, psychologist William Sheldon concluded from flawed studies of adult men that there is a strong link between physique and personality. 4. Peop
7、le may not measure each other by bumps on the head, as phrenologists used to do, but our first impressions are influenced in subtle ways by a persons height, weight, skin color, hair color, tattoos, piercings, eyeglasses, and other aspects of physical appearance. As social perceivers, we also form i
8、mpressions of people that are often accurately based on a host of indirect telltale迹象 cues线索. In Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, Sam Gosling (2008) describes research he has conducted showing that peoples personalities can be revealed in the knick-knacks found in their offices and dormitory r
9、ooms, the identity claims they make on Facebook pages, the books that line their shelves, and the types of music that inhabit their iPods. In one study, fictional characters with “old-generation” names such as Harry, Walter, Dorothy, and Edith were judged to be less popular and less intelligent than
10、 those with younger-generation names such as Kevin, Michael, Lisa, and Michelle. In another study, both men and women were seen as more feminine when they spoke in high-pitched voices than in lower pitched voices. 5. The human face in particular attracts more than its share of attention. Since the t
11、ime of ancient Greece,human beings have attended to physiognomy the art of reading character from faces. Although we may not realize it, this tendency persists today. For example, Ran Hassin and Yaacov Trope (2000) found that people prejudge others in photographs as kind-hearted rather than mean-spi
12、rited based on such features as a full, round face, curly hair, long eyelashes, large eyes, a short nose, full lips, and an upturned mouth. Interestingly, these researchers also found that just as people read traits特质 from faces, at times they read traits into faces based on prior information. In on
13、e study, for example, participants who were told that a man was kind compared to those told he was mean later judged his face to be fuller, rounder, and more attractive. 6. In social perception studies of the human face, researchers have found that adults who have baby-faced features large, round ey
14、es; high eyebrows; round cheeks; a large forehead; smooth skin; and a rounded chin tend to be seen as warm, kind, naive, weak, honest, and submissive. In contrast, adults who have mature features small eyes, low brows and a small forehead, wrinkled skin, and an angular chin are seen as stronger, mor
15、e dominant, and more competent (Berry & Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1986). Thus, in small claims court, judges are more likely to favor baby-faced defendants who are accused of intentional wrongdoing but rule against否决 做出不利的判决 them when accused of negligence忽视 疏忽. And in the work setting, baby-faced job app
16、licants are more likely to be recommended for employment as day-care teachers, whereas mature-faced adults are considered to be better suited for work as bankers. Results like these have led Leslie Zebrowitz and Joann Montepare (2005) to conclude that baby-facedness profoundly affects human behavior
17、 in the blink of an eye. 7. What accounts for these findings? And why, in general, are people so quick to judge others by appearances? To begin with, human beings are programmed by evolution to respond gently to babyish幼稚 features so that real babies are treated with tender loving care. Many years a
18、go, Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Konrad Lorenz noted that infantile幼稚的 features in many animal species seem to trigger触发 a special nurturing response to cuteness. Recently, this old idea derived new support from a brain-imaging study showing that a frontal额面 骨骼的 brain region associated with love a
19、nd other positive emotions is activated when people are exposed, even fleetingly飞速的, to pictures of babies faces but not to pictures of the faces of other adults (Kringelbach et al., 2008). 8. Our reflex-like response to babies is understandable. But do we really respond in the same way to baby-face
20、d adults and, if so, why? Leslie Zebrowitz believes that we do-that we associate infantile features with helplessness traits and then overgeneralize this expectation to baby-faced adults. Consistent with this point, she and her colleagues found in a brain-imaging study that the region of the brain t
21、hat was activated by pictures of babies faces was also activated by pictures of baby-faced men (Zebrowitz et al., 2009). 9. Other researchers also believe that people as social perceivers感知者 have a tendency to overgeneralize笼统概括 in making snap突然的 judgments. Alexander Todorov and others (2008) find t
22、hat people are quick to perceive unfamiliar faces as more or less trustworthy an important judgment we must often make and that we do so by focusing on features that resemble the expressions of happiness and anger (a trustworthy face has a U-shaped mouth and raised eyebrows; in an untrustworthy face
23、, the mouth curls down and the eyebrows form a V shape). In other words, faces are seen as trustworthy if they look happy, an emotion that signals a person who is safe to approach, and untrustworthy if they look angry, an emotion that signals danger to be avoided. (1102 words)第三单元 心理学Text B以貌取人索尔卡辛等6教学g