Both Tom Hanks and Ray Liotta are handsome white Hollywood actors roughly the same age. But I am willing to bet that these two actors have never auditioned for the same part in their careers. (Imagine Ray Liotta sitting on a park bench, uttering the line “My name is Forrest Gump. People call me Forrest Gump.”) Why is this? Why are actors typecast?
Tom Hanks usually plays the good guy in movies, whereas Ray Liotta usually plays the bad guy. This is because Tom Hanks looks like a good guy, whereas Ray Liotta looks like a bad guy. If you show pictures of these two men to people in Papua New Guinea, who have never seen any movies in their lives, let alone movies starring Hanks or Liotta, they can probably tell which is the good guy and which is the bad guy. This suggests that the third stereotype or aphorism about physical appearance “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” meaning that you cannot judge people’s characters by their physical appearance, may be false.
There is some experimental evidence to support this suspicion. When people view pictures of others who have been shown to be either a cooperator or a defector, there is some tendency for people to remember the faces of defectors better than the faces of cooperators, even when they don’t know who is a cooperator and who is a defector. Similarly, people appear to be able to distinguish between honest people and dishonest people simply by looking at their pictures.
If you think about it, this makes perfect evolutionary sense. It is important for our ancestors (and for us as well) to guard against the possibility of deception, because being deceived can only have negative consequences for our survival and reproductive success. As a result, the human brain consists of many evolved psychological mechanisms that protect us from being deceived in our social exchange and interpersonal relationships. The ability to tell potential defectors (bad guys) from potential cooperators (good guys) by their appearance would be tremendously helpful for our ancestors (and us) in guarding against possible fraud.
Of course, the nature of evolutionary arms race is such that defectors and other dishonest people will be selected not to betray their deceptive nature by looking honest and trustworthy, so that people won’t be able to tell that they are bad guys. At any rate, evidence against the third stereotype “You can’t judge a book by its cover” is not yet as convincing as the evidence against the first two stereotypes “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and “Beauty is only skin deep.” More research is necessary to make sure that the third stereotype is definitely false.
The only exception, in which we already have solid evidence, is where the judgment involves physical attractiveness. The evidence is overwhelming that people judge beautiful people to possess all kinds of positive attributes, from intelligence, to competence, to good character, to social skills, captured in another aphorism “What is beautiful is good.” And the evidence shows that this perception is largely true. For example, beautiful people are slightly though significantly more intelligent than ugly people. Nobody said life was fair.
译文:
【所有刻板印象都没错，除了……】四：“人不可貌相”
汤姆·汉克斯和雷·利奥塔都是好莱坞的帅哥，都是白人，年龄也差不多，但我敢打赌他们俩在职业生涯中从来没有竞争过同一个角色。（想象一下雷·利奥塔坐在公园长椅上，念着台词“我的名字叫阿甘，大家都叫我阿甘。”）这是为什么呢？为什么演员总是被定型于某一类角色中？
汤姆·汉克斯在影片中常常出演正面角色，而雷·利奥塔却总是出演反派，这是因为汤姆·汉克斯
看上去像个好人，而雷·利奥塔
看起来就是个坏人。巴布新几内亚的居民一辈子都没见过电影，更不用说汉克斯或利奥塔的成名作了，但如果你让他们看这两人的照片，他们却能分辨出谁是好人谁是坏人。这表明第三个关于外表的刻板印象“人不可貌相”——意为你不能通过外表来判断别人的品质，也许是错误的。
有一些实验证据支持这个猜测：当人们浏览合作者或背叛者的照片时，
即使他们不知道谁是合作者、谁是背叛者，也会倾向于将背叛者的面孔记得更牢。同样，人们还能通过看照片区分出诚实的人与骗子。
仔细想想，这确实有完美的进化学意义。对我们的祖先来说（对我们也一样），防止被欺骗是很重要的，因为被欺骗只会给生存繁衍带来负面影响。从而人脑中就会存在许多精密的心理机制，以保护我们在社会交换和人际关系中不受欺骗。从外表上分辨可能的合作者（好人）和可能的背叛者（坏人）的能力可以极大地帮助我们的祖先（和我们）防止可能存在的欺骗。
当然，进化军备竞赛的本质决定了那些用诚实可信的外表伪装自己，从而不会被认出来是坏人的背叛者以及其他骗子会被自然所选择。无论怎么看，反对“人不可貌相”的证据都远不如反对“
美在观者眼中”和“
美丽是肤浅的”的证据来得令人信服，有必要进行进一步实验来确定这个刻板印象确实是错误的。
我们唯一一个有确凿证据的例外是关于外貌相关的评价作用于何处。人们会认为美丽的人拥有所有的美好特征，从智力到能力，到人品，到社交技巧，这些都被归结到一句谚语中：“美即是好。”有证据表明这种观念很大程度上是正确的，例如漂亮的人的智力要微弱但显著地高于丑陋的人。没人说过生活是公平的。