雙語研究：罪犯可能會“因臉獲罪”

　　導讀：最新研究表明，罪犯可能會“因臉獲罪”。生活中人們通常會被一個人的長相給自己帶來的感覺所左右，或者遠離，或者親近，或者委以重任，或者潦草打發(fā)。但是在法庭上，長相為自己帶來的風險可能是致命的。以下是小編整理的英語文章：罪犯可能會“因臉獲罪”， 希望能對大家的英語學習有幫助。

　　Criminals with untrustworthy faces get harsher sentences

　　面孔無法人信任的罪犯刑罰更嚴酷

　　PEOPLE decide quickly how trustworthy a stranger is, based on what his face looks like. And experiments show that, regarding any particular individual, they generally come to the same conclusion. There really are, it seems, trustworthy and untrustworthy faces—though, surprisingly, there is little consensus among researchers as to whether someone whose face is deemed devious really is more likely to betray a trust. The perceivedly untrustworthy do, however, suffer for their phizogs. And a study published in this month’s Psychological Science suggests that in extreme cases—in America at least—this suffering may be fatal.

　　人們會依據(jù)一個陌生人的面孔迅速判斷他的可信任度。實驗表明，人們對某一個人結(jié)論一般相同。看來，確實存在可信任的臉龐和不可信任的臉龐——雖然，令人吃驚的是，對于一個面容狡詐的人是否會更容易背叛，研究者們莫衷一是。然而，那些長著不可信任的面龐的人確實在為長相所連累。本月的《心理學》中發(fā)布的一個研究表明在一些極端案例中——至少是在美國——這種連累可能是致命的。

　　John Wilson and Nicholas Rule, psychologists at the University of Toronto, looked at convicted murderers in the American state of Florida, which retains the death penalty. They selected 371 prisoners on death row and a further 371 who were serving life sentences. To avoid confounding variables, all those chosen were male and were either black or white (no Asians or other ethnic groups). Each sample included 226 white convicts and 145 black ones. A group of 208 volunteers whom Dr Wilson and Dr Rule had recruited were then invited to rate photographs of each convict’s face for trustworthiness, on a scale of one to eight, where one was “not at all trustworthy” and eight was “very trustworthy”.

　　John Wilson和Nicholas Rule, 多倫多大學的心理學家，查看了美國弗羅里達州的被判死刑的殺人犯。他們挑選出371個將受死刑的犯人和371個終身監(jiān)禁的犯人。為減少多余的變量，所有被遴選上的人皆為男性，或白人或黑人(沒有亞洲和其他種族)。每個樣本包括226個白人罪犯和145各黑人罪犯。Wilson博士和Rule博士招選了208個志愿者為每個罪犯的面孔照片評信任度分數(shù)，從1到8，1為“完全不值得信任”，8為“非常值得信任”。

　　The results of all this work revealed that the faces of prisoners who were on death row had an average trustworthiness of 2.76 and that those serving life sentences averaged 2.87. Not a huge difference, but one that was statistically significant (it, or something larger, would have happened by chance less often than one time in 100). That suggests untrustworthy-looking defendants are more likely to face a lethal injection, if convicted, than trustworthy-looking ones.

　　評分的結(jié)果表明被處以死刑的罪犯評分平均為2.76，而終身監(jiān)禁的罪犯平均分為2.87。差距并不明顯，但是數(shù)據(jù)上卻意義重大(每100次中會發(fā)生的頻率少于1次)。這說明那些面孔看起來不讓人信任的被告人如果被定罪，比那些面孔讓人信任的人更有可能被送上斷頭臺。

　　To show that this was not a result of people with untrustworthy faces actually committing more heinous (and therefore death-penalty-worthy) murders, Dr Wilson and Dr Rule also looked at the faces of those who had been convicted of murder, sentenced and then acquitted on appeal, usually on the basis of DNA evidence. These innocents, too, had more often been sentenced to death in their original trials if their faces were rated untrustworthy. In Floridian courts, at least, it seems that your face really is your fortune.

　　Wilson博士和Rule博士為了證明這并不是因為面孔不讓人信任的人實際上會犯更嚴重的殺人罪(因此會被判死刑)，他們同樣也查看了那些因殺人罪獲刑罰，最后因為DNA證據(jù)而在上述期間被免罪的人的面孔。這些清白的人，同樣是被評為面孔不讓人信任的人，更多的在原審判中被判了死刑。所以至少在弗羅里達的法庭看起來是這樣：面孔決定命運。