Attractive Young Females May Have Justice Edge
在司法判决面前 年轻漂亮的女性会更有优势吗？
Eight years ago, the jury in the trial of Casey Anthony announced their verdict. "As to the charge of first-degree murder, verdict as to count one, we the jury find the defendant not guilty."
八年前，审判凯西·安东尼的陪审团宣布了他们的判决。“对于被告人所受到的一级谋杀指控，我们陪审团认为被告无罪。”
Anthony had been charged with murdering her two-year-old daughter. But like the murder charge, the jury's decision for additional charges of aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter were again "not guilty."
安东尼被控谋杀她两岁的女儿。但是，像这样的谋杀罪、严重虐待儿童以及严重过失杀人罪等额外指控，陪审团的裁决却再次为“无罪”。
That caused this huge outcry. Christopher Ferguson, a clinical psychologist at Stetson University in central Florida, not far from where the trial occurred. "There was this narrative that she got preferential treatment, maybe not on purpose, but that the jury was sympathetic to her because she was this pretty young female and that kind of conflicted with people's impression of who a murderer is."
“这个判决引起了强烈的抗议。”弗罗里达中部斯泰森大学的临床心理学家克里斯托弗·弗格森说道：“有一种说法是，她得到了优待，也许不是出于有意，但陪审团同情她，因为她是这么年轻漂亮的女性，她的形象与人们对凶手的印象不符。”
Mock trial studies have suggested that attractive people have an edge in the criminal justice system. So Ferguson and his colleagues looked into that stereotype using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the largest long-term study of people who began participating in the study as teens.
模拟审判研究表明，在刑事司法体系中，有魅力的人是有优势的。所以弗格森和他的同事们通过“全国青少年到成人健康纵向研究”的数据研究这种成见，全国青少年到成人健康纵向研究是对从青少年时期就开始参与这项研究的人进行的最大的长期研究。
The interviewers asked the youths a multitude of questions - and also rated the respondents' degree of attractiveness, a measure that's been used to examine links to health and wealth.
调查人员询问了这些年轻人许多问题，此外，研究人员还对每位调查对象的吸引力进行了评分，并以此作为考察健康和财务之间关联的指标。
In this case, Ferguson and his team looked at a subset of nearly 8,800 respondents and examined the correlation between attractiveness and arrest, conviction and sentencing. After controlling for things like gender, race and socioeconomic status, they found that attractiveness didhave a protective effect - but only for females.
在这个案例中，弗格森和他的团队调查了近8800名受访者，研究了吸引力与被捕、定罪和判刑之间的关系。在对性别、种族和社会经济地位等控制变量进行排查后，他们发现吸引力确实具有保护作用——但只在女性身上有效。
Girls or women who are more attractive were less likely to be arrested if they'd committed a crime and less likely to be convicted if they were arrested for that crime. However, it did not have any impact on their sentencing. So once they were convicted, attractiveness conveyed no further benefits. The results are in the journal Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.
“假如更有魅力的女孩或女性犯了罪时，她们被捕的可能性更小；而假如她们因为那项罪行被逮捕，她们被定罪的可能性也更小。”不过，吸引力对她们的判刑没有任何影响。所以，一旦他们被定罪，外表吸引力就不会带来进一步的好处。”研究结果发表在《精神病学、心理学和法律》杂志上。
It's just a correlation, of course, and there are limitations. The attractiveness ratings were an average of four different interviewers' assessments, made over a dozen years. But beauty, as they say, is in the eyes of the beholder. And the effects weren't huge. Still, Ferguson says, "being alert to our stereotypes and prejudices sometimes can help us combat them a little bit" - and perhaps get us closer to the ideal that justice should be blind.
当然，这只是一种相关性，也存在局限性。这些吸引力评分是十几年前四位采访员所打出的评分，且取得是平均值。但是，正如人们所说，情人眼里出西施。而且影响也并那么大。尽管如此，弗格森说，“时常警惕不要带有成见和偏见之心，有时可以帮助我们稍微克服成见，”也许还能离“司法原则是盲目的”这一理想更近一步。
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