自主招生训练(三)阅读4篇.docVIP

passage 5 We say that physical beauty is skin-deep and that pretty is as pretty does. But we don’t always act that way. What pretty does is often seen in a forgiving light, while we are quick to leap to judgment of the unbeautiful, imagining, for instance, that fat people are lazy or greedy. We know that the link between beauty and goodness is spurious(欺骗的), but our actions are not always guided by conscious reason. The expectations start in childhood. Teachers in 400 classrooms in the American state of Missouri were given a report card of a fifth-grade student, including grades, evaluation of attitude, work habits, and attendance. The only variant was the attached photograph of the child — an attractive or unattractive boy or girl. Despite the wealth of information about behavior and performance, looks swayed opinions. The teachers expected the good-looking children to be more intelligent and more sociable and popular. In fact ,good-looking people often do not get better class-reactions, even though they do no better in standardized tests. People presume that attractive people of both sexes are more intelligent. Several different studies have found that the better-looking a painter or writer or student is, the more positively his or her work is evaluated. Looks help most when the work is not of high quality, but they can even give an extra boost to good work. Social psychologists call this a halo(光环) effect. Karen Dion, a pioneer researcher on attractiveness, asked adults to consider hypothetical seven-year-olds who misbehaved. When a good-looking child was depicted doing these things, adults gave it the benefit of the doubt and presumed it was having a bad day or was the victim of circumstance. The unattractive children were more likely to be eyed suspiciously as possible future juvenile delinquents. Good-looking adults are more likely to get away with anything from shoplifting to cheating in exams to committing serious crimes. They are less likely to get repor