The common perception that people from other racial groups look alike is rooted in the way human brains process what they see, researchers say.

研究人员表示，人们普标认为来自其他种族群体的人看起来很像，而这种看法的根源在于人类大脑处理所见事物的方式。

It has long been known that people find it easier to tell apart members of their own race than those of a different race. Now a new study backs up the idea that the phenomenon is rooted, at least in part, in visual and neural processes.

众所周知，人们区分自己种族的成员比区分其他种族的成员更容易。如今一项新研究证实，这种现在至少有一部分源于视觉和神经机制。

The researchers, whose study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reported how 20 white participants were shown a series of images including faces, numbers and objects, while they had their brains scanned using functional MRI — a technique that allowed the team to spot changes in activity.

这项研究已经发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上。研究人员报告，他们向20名白人参与者展示了一系列图像，包括面部、数字和物体，并用功能性核磁共振成像技术扫描了他们的大脑——这项技术可以让研究团队观察大脑活动的变化。

In 19 of the 20 participants, a greater area of the face-recognition region was activated when the participants saw a white face compared with a black face. The researchers said that it suggested participants were better at picking up on physical differences between white faces — even for faces completely different to each other, brain activity was higher for white faces.

在20名参与者中，有19人在看到一张拜仁面孔时，大脑中负责面部识别区域的激活程度比看到黑人面孔的时候更强。研究人员说，这表明参与者更善于识别拜仁面孔之间的差别；即使看到的同种肤色的面孔之间完全不同，他们看到拜仁面孔时的大脑活动还是更强。

The researchers said the findings could help to investigate ways to avoid harmful biases. Nick Camp, the co-author of the research from Stanford University, said some evidence suggested the phenomenon could depend on which characteristics were used to group people. He said: “Getting people to think about groups in different ways, or re-categorising individuals, might be an effective way of combating even these low-level perceptual biases.”

研究人员表示，其发现或许有助于研究如何避免有害的偏见。 来自斯坦福大学的论文合著者Nick Camp说，有证据表明这种现象可能取决于用来给图像中的人们分组的特征是什么。 他说：“让人们用不同的方式思考群体，或者对个体进行重新分类，可能是对抗这些底层感知偏见的有效方式。”