辨識臉孔對某些人而言是最困難的挑戰

In a recent episode of“The Sopranos,”Tony Soprano dreamed that he'd been slapped by a Buddhist monk who mistook him for another white man who'd swindled him.

最近的影集「黑道家族」中，黑幫老大湯尼．索波諾夢見他被一名和尚賞了一記耳光，因為這名和尚將他誤認為之前曾欺騙他的人。

"All Caucasians look alike,"explained the unapologetic monk.

這名不願道歉的和尚辯解道：「所有的白人看起來都一個樣！」

They often do, it turns out, at least to people who aren't Caucasian. For that matter, blacks often look alike to whites and Hispanics to Asians. It's not that people of any one race are harder to distinguish; researchers say that individual features vary equally among races. Rather, it's that people have problems telling people from another group apart.

事實上，他們的確是，起碼對白人以外的種族來說。就此而言，白人認為黑人都長的一樣，而亞洲人則認為西班牙裔長相普遍一致。並非種族間的差異令人難以分辨，研究員表示種族間的個別特徵均有不同，反而是人們本身無法辨識不同族群的差異。

This so-called“cross-race effect”?something of a misnomer because the phenomenon includes ethnic, cultural and regional groups as well as racial ones ?can cause trouble in an increasingly globalized world. For example:

這即是所謂的「跨種族效應」— 某事物由於族裔、文化、地區與種族設群等現象，而被誤稱 — 這在日益全球化的世界，會帶來困擾，例如：

U.S. forces in Iraq sometimes have mistakenly admitted foreign insurgents because they couldn't tell Saudis or Egyptians from Iraqis, according to Steve Casteel, a U.S. security consultant who until recently advised Iraq's interior ministry, which handles domestic security. Iraqi police who later picked up foreign fighters would discover that the foreign insurgents had convinced U.S. screeners that they were Iraqis.

最近才對掌管國內安全的伊拉克內政部提出建議的美國安全顧問史提夫．凱斯地爾表示，駐伊拉克美軍有時允許外籍叛亂者進入，因對他們無法辨別沙烏地阿拉伯人或埃及人與伊拉克人有什麼不同。伊拉克警方在後來逮捕到外籍叛亂者時，才發現美國安檢人員誤以為他們是伊拉克人。

U.S. drug agents sometimes can't tell Colombian leaders of smuggling groups from the Peruvian and Bolivian peasants who work for them, said Casteel, a vice president at Vance International, a worldwide security firm based in Oakton, Virginia. An agent's ignorance can be dangerous, he continued, because Colombian smugglers are more likely to be armed and violent.

任職為全球知名保全公司Vance International(其總部位於維吉尼亞州的歐克頓)副總裁的凱斯地爾表示，美國緝毒署有時無法分辨哥倫比亞走私集團的首領與在他們底下工作的祕魯與玻利維亞農民，長相有什麼不同，他還表示，緝毒署在不知情的狀況下，會有危險，因為哥倫比亞走私者通常皆攜帶武器且手段凶殘。

The Innocence Project, a New York nonprofit legal clinic that tracks life imprisonment convictions that are overturned by DNA evidence, found that white eyewitnesses misidentified innocent blacks 44 percent of the time. That's nearly twice as often as they misidentified innocent whites.

以藉由DNA識別來替無期徒刑囚犯翻案的紐約非營利醫療機構「無辜者計劃」，發現目擊證人若為白人，他們錯認無辜黑人的機率高達百分之四十四，幾乎是他們錯認無辜白人的兩倍。

Misidentifications aren't due to racism, however, said Roy Malpass, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who's published widely on the cross-race effect.“People make about 50 percent more errors,”he said, whenever they're asked to remember other-race faces.

曾發表許多關於跨種族效應著作的德州大學艾爾帕索分校的心理學教授洛伊．馬爾帕斯表示，辨識錯誤並非源自於種族歧視，他說，當人們被要求記住其他種族的面孔時，「他們辨識錯誤的機率約有五成以上」。