来源：《新科学家》
原文见刊日期：2022年4月23日
People may overestimate the presence of individuals from minority ethnic groups, even if they belong to those groups, which could create illusions of diversity.
人们可能会高估少数族群个体的存在，即使他们属于少数族群，这可能会造成多元化的错觉。
“Individuals from the minority group are by definition less frequent,” says Rasha Kardosh at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Therefore, we are more likely to notice them and so are more likely to remember their presence, and so we end up overestimating their presence.” To investigate this overestimation, Kardosh and her colleagues carried out 12 psychological experiments with a total of 942 participants.
为了研究这种高估，卡多什和她的同事们对942名参与者进行了12项心理实验。耶路撒冷希伯来大学的卡多什说：“从定义上讲，少数族群的人出现频率较低。因此，我们更有可能注意到他们，也更有可能记住他们的存在，所以我们最终高估了他们的存在。”
In one experiment, white people in the US were shown 100 faces, of which 25 per cent were Black people and the remaining 75 per cent were white, for 2 seconds. This was repeated 20 times with different sets of faces. The experiment was then carried out again, but this time 45 per cent of the faces were Black people and 55 per cent were white.
在一项实验中，研究人员向美国白人展示了100张面孔，其中25%是黑人，其余75%是白人，时长为2秒。这样的实验重复20组，每组的面孔都不同。然后又进行了一次实验，但这次有45%的面孔是黑人，55%是白人。
After both experiments, the participants were asked what percentage of faces they saw were of Black people, estimating 43 per cent for the first experiment and 58 per cent for the second.
在两次实验之后，参与者被问及他们看到的黑人面孔的比例，第一次实验估计为43%，第二次估计为58%。
The researchers then repeated both experiments with Black participants seeing the various faces, who estimated 43 per cent and 56 per cent of the faces were Black people in the first and second experiments, respectively.
然后，研究人员让黑人参与者看这些面孔，并重复了两个实验，黑人估计，在第一个和第二个实验中，分别有43%和56%的面孔是黑人。
“This overestimation is something that likely happens to most of us,” says Kardosh. “Regardless of if you’re in the minority or majority group.”
“这种高估很可能发生在我们大多数人身上，”卡多什说。“不管你属于少数族群还是多数族群。”
In another experiment, 32 Jewish Israeli and 30 Palestinian Israeli students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem were asked to estimate the number of Arab students at the university. The Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Israeli students estimated 31 per cent and 35 per cent, respectively, compared with the actual figure of 9 per cent.
在另一项实验中，耶路撒冷希伯来大学的32名犹太裔以色列学生和30名巴勒斯坦裔以色列学生被要求估计该大学阿拉伯裔学生的数量。犹太裔以色列学生和巴勒斯坦裔以色列学生的估计比例分别为31%和35%，而实际数字为9%。
Combining the 12 experiments, overestimation bias affected 82 per cent of the participants, regardless of their own ethnicity.
结合这12个实验，82%的参与者受到高估偏见的影响，无论他们属于哪个族群。
In another experiment, carried out on 100 students in the US, the participants who overestimated the presence of Black people in college programmes reported being less supportive of diversity-improving programmes when asked via a questionnaire. Kardosh believes the main way to combat overestimation illusions is to improve the accessibility of diversity data. “Otherwise, people will be basing their decisions on biased impressions,” she says.
在另一项对100名美国学生进行的实验中，那些在大学项目中高估黑人存在的参与者在接受问卷调查时表示，他们不太支持促进多元化的项目。卡多什认为，防止高估错觉的主要方法是提高多元化数据的可获取性。“否则，人们就会根据偏见做出决定，”她说。
Martijn Meeter at Free University Amsterdam says the experiments’ results are unsurprising. “The main proposed mechanism is so much in line with what we know about memory that it is, in hindsight, hard to imagine why no one thought of testing this experimentally before,” he says. “Indeed, the frequency of rare events are overestimated, that’s why so many people are afraid of airplanes crashing – a vanishingly rare event.”
阿姆斯特丹自由大学的马蒂恩·米特说，实验结果并不令人意外。他说：“该研究提出的主要机制与我们对记忆的了解非常一致，事后看来，很难想象为什么以前没有人想到用实验来测试它。确实，罕见事件的频率被高估了，这就是为什么这么多人害怕飞机坠毁——一种极其罕见的事件。”