2015最新英语六级阅读及翻译.doc

本材料由超级课程表和智课网联合整理提供 英语六级阅读及翻译 Obama’s success isn’t all good news for black Americans As Erin White watched the election results head towards victory for Barack Obama, she felt a burden lifting from her shoulders. "In that one second, it was a validation for my whole race," she recalls. 　　"I've always been an achiever," says White, who is studying for an MBA at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. "But there had always been these things in the back of my mind questioning whether I really can be who I want. It was like a shadow, following me around saying you can only go so far. Now it's like a barrier has been let down." 　　White's experience is what many psychologists had expected - that Obama would prove to be a powerful role model for African Americans. Some hoped his rise to prominence would have a big impact on white Americans, too, challenging those who still harbour racist sentiments. "The traits that characterise him are very contradictory to the racial stereotypes that black people are aggressive and uneducated," says Ashby Plant of Florida State University. "He's very intelligent and eloquent." Sting in the tail 　　Ashby Plant is one of a number of psychologists who seized on Obama's candidacy to test hypotheses about the power of role models. Their work is already starting to reveal how the "Obama effect" is changing people's views and behaviour. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not all good news: there is a sting in the tail of the Obama effect. 　　But first the good news. Barack Obama really is a positive role model for African Americans, and he was making an impact even before he got to the White House. Indeed, the Obama effect can be surprisingly immediate and powerful, as Ray Friedman of Vanderbilt University and his colleagues discovered. They tested four separate groups at four key stages of Obama's presidential campaign. Each group consisted of around 120 adults of similar age and education, and the test assessed their language skills. At two of these stages, when Obama's success was less than certain, the tests showed a clear difference between the scores of the white and black participants—an average of 12.1 out of 20, compared to 8.8, for example. When the Obama fever was at its height, however, the black participants performed much better. Those who had watched Obama's acceptance speech as the Democrats' presidential candidate performed just as well, on average, as the white subjects.After his election victory, this was true of all the black participants. Dramatic shift 　　What can explain this dramatic shift? At the start of the test, the participants had to declare their race and were told their results would be used to assess their strengths and weaknesses. This should have primed the subjects with "stereotype threat" – an anxiety that their results will confirm negative stereotypes, which has been shown to damage the performance of African Americans. 　　Obama's successes seemed to act as a shield against this. "We suspect they felt inspired and energised by his victory, so the stereotype threat wouldn't prove a distraction," says Friedman. Lingering racism 　　If the Obama effect is positive for African Americans, how is it affecting their white compatriots (同胞)? Is the experience of having a charismatic (有魅力的) black president modifying lingering racist attitudes? There is no easy way to measure racism directly; instead psychologists assess what is known as "implicit bias", using a computer-based test that measures how quickly people associate positive and negative words—such as "love" or "evil"—with photos of black or white faces. A similar test can also measure how quickly subjects associate stereotypical traits—such as athletic skills or mental ability—with a particular group. 　　In a study that will appear in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Plant's team tested 229 students during the height of the Obama fever. They found that implicit bias has fallen by as much as 90% compared with the level found in a similar study in 2006. "That's an unusually large drop," Plant says. 　　While the team can't be sure their results are due solely to Obama, they also showed that those with the lowest bias were likely to subconsciously associate black skin colour with political words such as "government" or "president". This suggests that Obama was strongly on their mind, says Plant. Drop in bias 　　Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who runs a website that measures implicit bias using similar test, has also observed a small drop in bias in the 700,000 visitors to the site since January 2007, which might be explained by Obama's rise to popularity. However, his preliminary results suggest that change will be much slower coming than Plant's results suggest. Talking honestly 　　"People now have the opportunity of expressing support for Obama every day," says Daniel Effron at Stanford University in California. "Our research arouses the concern that people may now be more likely to raise negative views of African Americans." On the other hand, he says, it may just encourage people to talk more honestly about their feelings regarding race issues, which may not be such a bad thing. 　　Another part of the study suggests far more is at stake than the mere expression of views. The Obama effect may have a negative side. Just one week after Obama was elected president, participants were less ready to support policies designed to address racial inequality than they had been two weeks before the election. Huge obstacles 　　It could, of course, also be that Obama's success helps people to forget that a disproportionate number of black Americans still live in poverty and face huge obstacles when trying to overcome these circumstances. "Barack Obama's family is such a salient (出色的) image, we generalise it and fail to see the larger picture—that there's injustice in every aspect of American life," says Cheryl Kaiser of the University of Washington in Seattle. Those trying to address issues of racial inequality need to constantly remind people of the inequalities that still exist to counteract the Obama's effect, she says. 　　Though Plant's findings were more positive, she too warns against thinking that racism and racial inequalities are no longer a problem. "The last thing I want is for people to think everything's solved." 　　These findings do not only apply to Obama, or even just to race. They should hold for any role model in any country. "There's no reason we wouldn't have seen the same effect on our views of women if Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin had been elected," says Effron. So the election of a female leader might have a downside for other women. Beyond race 　　We also don't yet know how long the Obama effect—both its good side and its bad—will last.Political sentiment is notoriously changeable: What if things begin to go wrong for Obama, and his popularity slumps? And what if Americans become so familiar with having Obama as their president that they stop considering his race altogether? "Over time he might become his own entity," says Plant. This might seem like the ultimate defeat for racism, but ignoring the race of certain select individuals—a phenomenon that psychologists call subtyping—also has an insidious (隐伏的) side. "We think it happens to help people preserve their beliefs, so they can still hold on to the previous stereotypes." That could turn out to be the cruellest of all the twists to the Obama effect. 奥巴马的成功对美国黑人来说未必是好消息 当Erin White观看奥巴马选举而得知了他胜利的消息时，她感到如释重负。“在那一刻，我的整个种族获得了认可。”她回忆说。 “我过去总会是一个成功者，”正在田纳西州的纳什维尔，攻读范德比尔特大学MBA学位的White说，“但是我的种族出身，会使我心疑惑，疑惑我是否能够真的成为自己想要成为的人。它就像个阴影，有声音不断萦绕在我耳边：你就只能走这么远了。而现在就像是我心中的障碍得以摆脱了。” White的经历是许多心理学家早已预料到的，那就是对非裔美国人来说，奥巴马确实成为了他们强大的榜样。一些人希望他的崛起会对白种美国人带来巨大冲击，也会挑战那些仍然隐藏着种族歧视情绪的人。他出类拔萃的特质，有力地反驳了那些带有歧视性的，认为黑人粗鲁好斗的陈腔滥调，”福罗里达州立大学的Ashby Plant说，“他真是极其地聪慧，且辩才滔滔。” 始料未及的缺陷 Ashby Plant是众多抓住奥巴马竞选这个机会，来检验议题“榜样的力量”的心理学家之一。他们的工作已经揭示出，“奥巴马效应”正在改变人们的思想行为。也许会有点出人意料，但奥巴马效应未必完全是好事：它也有令人始料未及的缺陷。 还是先说说好的方面吧。巴拉克·奥巴马确实是非裔美国人的积极榜样，甚至在他还为入主白宫之前就对人们造成了冲击。确实，正如范德比尔特大学的Ray Friedman和他的同事们发现的那样，奥巴马效应是惊人地快准狠。 他们在奥巴马总统竞选的四个关键时期分别测试了四个单独的小组。每一组由约120名年龄和受教育水平相当的成年人组成，而这个测试是用来评估他们语言技能的。在其中两个时段，当奥巴马的成功还不太确定时，测试清楚地显示了白人和黑人参与者的得分差距——比如，在满分为20时，两类参与者的得分分别为12.1和8.8。然而，当奥巴马热达到了高潮时，黑人参与者则会表现得好得多。而那些看过了奥巴马作为民主党总统候选人而进行的提名演讲的（黑人）参与者，他们的平均测试成绩则刚好跟白人被试者一样好。在他的选举胜利之后，这种现象就真正地印证在了所有黑人参与者的身上。 戏剧性的转折 什么可以解释这戏剧性的转折呢？在测试之初，参与者们必须要说明他们的种族，并被告知其结果会被用来评估他们能力的强弱。这就会使得被测者作出“成见威胁”的心理准备了——那是一种焦虑，担心测试结果会证实“黑人能力较弱”这种成见，而这种焦虑已经被证明会破坏非裔美国人表现。 奥巴马的成功像是保护盾那样使这种焦虑减小对非裔美国人的影响。“我们猜想他们因他的成功而欢欣鼓舞，所以这种成见威胁不再显现出会扰乱黑人被测者表现的迹象。”Friedman说。 挥之不去的种族主义 如果奥巴马效应对非裔美国人来说是积极的，那么这对他们的白人同胞而言又会如何呢？拥有一位如此魅力十足的总统，这样的经历会修正那挥之不去的种族歧视观念吗？难以直接估量种族歧视的情况，但心理学家会用既定的“内因偏见”来评估它。他们用一种计算机测验来测试：当看到黑肤色或白色面孔的相片时，计量人们能有多快地联想到词义积极或消极的词语，比如“爱”与“邪恶”。而另一种相似的测试也能在特定小组中，测量出被测者联想到“在陈旧观念中的人种特征”（比如运动技能和心智能力）会有多快。 在《实验社会心理学》杂志的一份研究中，Plant的团队于奥巴马热的高潮时期对229名学生进行了测试。他们发现与2006年一份类似研究报告中的数据水平相比，本次调查报告中持内隐性偏见的人数比率下降了90%.“那是一个显著的下降。”Plant说。 尽管这个团队还不能确定他们的调查结果是否仅仅由奥巴马引起，但他们同样可以表明，那些持有种族偏见最低的人们会倾向于将黑肤色与像“政府”或“总统”这样的政治词语联系起来。这就表明了奥巴马在他们心中是多么地强大，Plant说。 持有种族偏见的人数比率下降了 来自夏洛茨维尔市的弗吉尼亚大学的Braian Nosek，运营着一家用类似方法来调查内隐偏见的网站。从2007年起，在700000人次的网站访问者之中，他也观察到了持有种族偏见人数比率的一个小幅度下降。可以认为这是由奥巴马人气上升所带来的影响。然而，从他的初步结果表明，这个偏见比率的下降速度比Plant的结论所得出的速度慢得多。 诚实地表达 “人们现在可以天天表达对奥巴马的支持，”加利福尼亚州，斯坦福大学的Daniel Effron说，“我们的研究引起了的关注，许多人现在可能更倾向对非裔美国人的持负面观点。”另一方面，他说，也许这恰好鼓励了人们说出他们对人种问题的感受，所以可能并不是一件坏事。 这份研究的另一部分更强调的是一种危机，而不仅仅是人们的言论表达。奥巴马效应也许有不好的一面。测试发现，与奥巴马当选前两周相比，在奥巴马当选总统的一周以后，对那些为应对种族不平等而制定的政策，人们参与的积极性降低了。 巨大障碍 当然，奥巴马的成功也会让人们忘记仍有过多的美国黑人生活在贫困之中。而且，我们若要改变这个状况，就要面临巨大阻碍。“奥巴马的家庭形象如此出色，我们难以用它代表大众的情况——各阶层的美国人民的生活存在着诸多不平等。”来自西雅图华盛顿大学的Cheryl Kaiser说。那些为消除种族不平等问题而奔走呼吁的人，需要不断地提醒人们，不平等仍然存在，且抵销着奥巴马当选所带来的正面效应。 尽管Plant的发现更为正面，她还是提醒人们不要认为种族歧视和种族不平等已不再是问题。“我最不希望看到的就是人们认为所有事情都解决了。” 这些发现不仅适用于奥巴马的成功，抑或仅仅是人种问题。它们还将适用于任何国家的任何榜样。“当我们研究女性的崛起时，如果希拉里·克林顿或是Sarah Palin当选，我们没有理由不能在这之中发现相同的效应。”Effron说。所以女性领导人的落选也许会给妇女们的带来不利影响。 超越种族的范畴 我们还不知道奥巴马效应（包括它的利与弊）会持续多久。政治舆论以它的善变而臭名昭著：如果奥巴马犯错了，如果他的支持率暴跌，会怎样呢？ 而如果美国人渐渐对奥巴马这样一位总统熟悉适应起来，从而可以完全不注重他的种族呢？“随着时间的流逝，他可能会以他自己的个体身份来被人们看待。”Plant说。这似乎是与种族歧视作斗争的终极目标，但是忽视人种而只看待单独的个体（那是一种被心理学家称为“亚型”的现象），也会有隐含危机。“我们认为使人们坚持他们的信念是无可厚非的，所以他们仍然可以继续保有他们先前的种族成见。”那会对是奥巴马效应最残忍的解释。 （扫一扫，关注超级课程表微信公众号） 全国最大的校园交友社区—超级课程表： （二维码免费领课） 智课网免费选课链接： 关注微信公众号：新版四六级备考（微信号：newcet46），逢考必过！