At first glance, this role does not seem so significant. But this is because few people realize that they have succumbed to the influence of social stereotypes. Most of the stereotypes used remain unconscious by people, accepted by them as their own position, their own conclusions. Even such commonplace stereotypes, like "all blondes are fools" - even then find adherents. People quite often form ideas about things not on the basis of their own observations and conclusions, but on the basis of various stereotypes walking in society. Sometimes these stereotypes are confirmed by their private experience, from which they draw an erroneous conclusion about their correctness, make incorrect generalizations. Stereotypes replace the need for people to think, they replace the understanding of things. In one way or another, all people are subject to stereotypes, even those that are distinguished by a certain independence of thinking. They usually resort to stereotyping in areas with which they have little or no knowledge.
Stereotypes that exist in the mind of a person affect his behavior, because create a false idea of reality and a person acts in accordance with this idea. Stereotypes can be both personal, formed by the person himself, and public, formed by society, which the person has learned and accepted. These are the latter in question. They are the most dangerous, because. form misconceptions in a large number of people, interfere with their thinking. Of course, not all stereotypes are harmful. If people did not form stereotypes, it would be very difficult for them to exist. Thanks to stereotypes, we know that fire burns, snow is cold, and a thrown stone will certainly fall - and you do not need to be convinced of this every time to know that this is so. In many life situations, a stereotype can help. For example, everyone knows that switches are usually located near the door, and this helps to quickly navigate in an unfamiliar room and turn on the light. But in everything that concerns more complex things, for example, human consciousness and behavior, stereotypes only get in the way. We must always try to clearly distinguish where the real conception of the subject under consideration is, and where the stereotypes about it are.
Often people become hostages of social stereotypes. For example, when a person does not have his own conscious moral position, but obeys the ideas of morality that prevail in society - even when they run counter to his inner feelings. As an example, we can cite a falsely understood sense of duty, based not on understanding or at least an intuitive feeling of the correctness of an act, but on prevailing stereotypes. For a long time, society was dominated by the notion that a woman's duty is humility, admiration for men, and the main concern is maintaining a home. Men are surrounded by an even more ancient stereotype of the role of the breadwinner. And to this day, both those and others are struggling to live up to these stereotypes. There is nothing wrong with a sense of duty - but only when it is a consequence of a person's inner convictions, confirmed by his conscience, and not caused under the influence of public opinion or social stereotypes. Otherwise, a person experiences dissonance, a mismatch in motives. On the one hand, he strives to conform to the stereotype, on the other hand, he opposes what this stereotype requires of him. When a person is guided by a correct understanding of duty, then he does what he must, voluntarily, without any disagreement, consciously. Not because it is expected of him, but because he himself wants it, because he understands the correctness of his act, its necessity.
The desire of people to adjust themselves and others to certain stereotypes spoils their lives and relationships with others, distorts their perception of reality. Often people judge themselves or others not by who they really are, but by some existing stereotypes about the group of people to which they themselves (or others) belong. For example, a person may consider himself a believer, because. periodically attends church, and on the basis of this, ascribe to himself Christian virtues, although in reality he may not have them. It happens that a person does not even try to form his own opinion about himself (or about others), but unconditionally accepts the social stereotype. For example, the already mentioned blondes can agree with the stereotype that they are stupid, and not only not try to fight it, but, on the contrary, try to live up to it. Each conditional group of people has a certain set of stereotypes attributed to this group, and if a person can be attributed to one of these groups, then stereotypes for this group are automatically assigned to him. What might these groups be? These are groups into which people are divided according to age, gender and other characteristics: by profession, income level, education, etc. For example, a person's belonging to the male or female sex allows him to attribute to him those stereotypes that relate to this gender. Although it is quite clear that a person's belonging to a certain gender does not indicate the presence of certain qualities, behavior, habits attributed to people of this gender. Following this stereotype, people are often deceived in their expectations. For example, when a woman marries, she expects to be under the protection of her husband, but it turns out that he does not have the necessary qualities for this. Or a man marries, hoping that his wife will cook, look after the children and take care of the house, and she chooses a career. People become victims of stereotypes. It is clear that it is impossible to project well-known stereotypes onto everyone in a row. It is necessary to recognize the person himself, his qualities, try to understand his aspirations and views, and not attribute to him some stereotypes characteristic of his group.
Stereotypes are a cage for consciousness. They should be recognized and discarded in favor of understanding things, perceiving reality in a form undistorted by stereotypes.
Every day of our lives, we listen to the people around us when their opinion on a particular problem is important to us. They share their emotions, feelings and experiences with us or simply answer our questions. And at the same time, we most often believe the words of others, although we understand that their judgments are subjective. In the same way, we try to extract information from newspapers and magazines, books and television programs. But this is how stereotypes are born: a certain level of knowledge is superimposed on a person's emotional attitude to some object or phenomenon. Moreover, we begin to encounter social stereotypes that become known through the media, family, friends, religion from childhood.
In psychology, social stereotypes are considered as stable and emotionally colored representations within a group of people, which together constitute a person's worldview. In other words, the stereotypes recognized by us are a kind of picture of the world, which consists of our interests, desires, habits. According to I. S. Kohn, “stereotyping consists in the fact that a complex individual phenomenon is mechanically brought under a simple formula or image that characterizes a class of such phenomena.”
Everything that surrounds a person is involuntarily compared with his inner ideals. That is why stereotypes can be positively or negatively colored, for example, “all children are pure in soul” and “women are more stupid than men”, respectively. All stereotypes reflect the peculiarities of perception and simplify the process of cognition of reality by individuals. But this reality in most cases is not objective, because a stereotype is a preconceived opinion. Then on what basis can we conclude whether the stereotype is a positive phenomenon or not?
For quite a long time, stereotypes were considered a negative social phenomenon, but today, the analysis takes into account not only their negative, but also positive features and consequences. The reason for this is that Western and domestic researchers have identified important functions of stereotypes that are implemented both at the group and at the individual level. These include the identification of groups, the formation and maintenance of their ideologies, and, of course, the simplification of thinking. It must be understood that the essence of a stereotype - positive or negative - depends on the current situation, since under some conditions a stereotype can be true, and under others - completely untrue. Stereotypes appear under the influence of certain circumstances, which can change at any time, and then prejudice will still exist for many years.
On the one hand, stereotypes often help a person to make a choice or make a decision that is necessary for him without any extra effort. Every person in modern society is sure that it is necessary to respect the elders, protect the little ones, help others. Such stereotypes have become norms of human behavior in society, rules, and no one thinks about why an educated person will behave in this way and not otherwise. But this is not the only manifestation of the good side of stereotypes. It can be quite difficult to give an adequate assessment of an event or social phenomenon about which there is no necessary information. Accordingly, when there is no opportunity to be based on their personal beliefs, people often resort to stereotypes already entrenched in society, the use of which does not require individual decisions and, as it were, removes responsibility from a particular person. It turns out that if they are true, stereotypes sometimes “save” us: accelerating the processes of cognition, they create the basis for the opinion that is formed in a person, help to predict the line of behavior of the people around.
On the other hand, a social stereotype based on false knowledge imposes a certain model of behavior, which may already be incorrect from the very beginning. We begin to involuntarily avoid public attention when we are constantly told: “Don’t stand out, you need to be like everyone else!” And the words “You will no longer be respected for this” sound completely threatening. This means that through stereotypes, one can mislead an individual or a group of people, manipulate them, which can lead to both personal failures and social disagreements and conflicts, fear, contempt, and discomfort. False stereotypes not only do not help to determine the correct life guidelines, but also set up a person with hostility towards other people: their race, nationality, appearance or lifestyle. Stereotypes do not reveal similarities between groups of people, but focus on their differences, as a result of which people are divided into "bad" and "good", "us" and others.
It turns out that the influence of stereotypes on a person can be extremely negative, and in fact most of them contain precisely false knowledge and become prejudices. Suffice it to recall such stereotypes as "a smart woman cannot be happy in her personal life", "all the French are arrogant and illegible" or "all children are good when they sleep with their teeth against the wall." These judgments are easy to believe, however, they impose on us false ideas about different groups of people.
For example, gender stereotypes are already so firmly entrenched in the minds of people that today men and women are assigned certain social roles, which makes gender equality almost impossible. From almost every man you can hear that women do not know how to drive, they are poorly versed in technology, politics, and the only thing they do in the best way is housekeeping and raising children. And at the same time, few people think that among women there are truckers, and programmers, and politicians, and men often cook well and take care of children. You can recall another stereotype: "women only need money from men." Guided by this social stereotype, some men perceive women as illusory, that is, they do not try to understand what their loved one really wants. They do not say warm and affectionate words to them, do not show concern, preferring material things to all this as a means of expressing their feelings. The words "I love you" or "I'm sorry" are often replaced with gifts. But gold and diamonds are far from the only thing women want. And sooner or later, any woman can get tired of relationships and end them, despite the numerous gifts from the man. It turns out that such a social stereotype can have a very detrimental effect: when an image is “tried on” for a certain person, the opportunity to discern individuality in it, to understand the desires and needs of this person disappears, which means that such a stereotype does not allow building relationships or maintaining them.
All of the above allows us to conclude that social stereotypes play a significant role in the life of a modern person. An infinite number of examples of the influence of stereotypes on modern man can be cited. However, it is impossible to give an unambiguous assessment of this phenomenon. As a positive phenomenon, a true stereotype structures certain knowledge, which can be important and sometimes even necessary in order to understand the current situation. False stereotypes, directing our behavior, in many ways program us to destroy communication and understanding with other people that have not yet been established. And at the same time, society will never be able to get rid of all stereotypes and prejudices, since a person is not physically able to carefully think over and weigh each of his decisions or actions every time. The negative influence of stereotypes can only be weakened by acquired experience and acquired knowledge. If a person tries to check the information received from the outside about something, and does not believe everything he hears or reads at the same moment and does not draw unfounded conclusions, he may well limit this influence, which means turning stereotypes into positive phenomena for himself, extracting from the contained they have a certain amount of knowledge usefulness.
Bibliography:
1. Ageev V.S. Psychological study of social stereotypes // Questions of psychology. - 1996. - No. 1. 95s.
2. Kon I.S. "Sociology of Youth" In the book: "A Brief Dictionary of Sociology" - M. - 1988. - 164 p.
Types of stereotypes
There are stereotypes-representations, stereotypes-behaviors, stereotypes-situations and stereotypes-images.
stereotype representationthere is a certain structure of the mental-lingual complex, formed by an invariant set of valence connections attributed to a given unit and representing the image, the representation of the phenomenon behind the given unit, in its [image, representation] national marking with a certain predictability of directed associative connections (vectors of associations) .
A stereotype, from the point of view of "content", is a certain fragment of the picture of the world that exists in the mind. This is some image-representation , this is a mental “picture”, a certain stable, minimized-invariant, national-culturally specific idea of an object or situation. And not about a specific object or situation that has ever taken place, but about an object or situation “in general”.
Stereotypes of behavior represent activity invariants, determine communicative behavior in a particular communicative situation and are stored in consciousness in the form stamps acting as canon. In other words, they dictate certain behaviour.
Stereotypes-representations stored in the form cliche consciousness and function as standards. They are also associated with speech behavior, characterizing it and appearing in it, i.e. they dictate not so much the behavior itself as a set of associations and predetermine the language form expressing them. And since such stereotypes are a certain idea of an object or situation, they stand out, respectively, stereotype image (the form of storage is a cliché) and stereotype situation (the form of storage is a cliche, but the latter can be updated in communication and as a stamp). Thus, at the first level, a stereotype of behavior (a stamp of consciousness) and a stereotype representation (cliché) are singled out; at the second level - a stereotype-situation (cliché / stamp) and a stereotype-image (cliché). Examples of such stereotypes are:
Stereotypes-images: bee – hard worker; French – grace, refined, graceful; ram – stubborn; lemon– sour, yellow, and so on.
Stereotypes-situations: ticket – punch; stork – cabbage and so on.
Stereotypes-situations include certain (predictable, expected) behavior of communication participants. Thus, we can say that a stereotype-situation in some way predetermines a stereotype of behavior (for example, a stereotype-situation: transport - ticket; stereotype of behavior: appeal to the nearest passenger " Punch / Compost / Pass, please" etc.).
The integrity of culture involves the development of cultural stereotypes - stereotypes of behavior, perception, understanding, communication, that is, stereotypes of the general picture of the world. Stereotypes have much in common with traditions, customs, myths, rituals, but differ from the latter in that traditions and customs are characterized by their objectified significance, openness to others, and stereotypes remain at the level of hidden mindsets that exist among their own.
The set of stereotypical forms of behavior developed in every society is not limited to the sphere of ritual and custom. Standards of behavior are characteristic of many areas of activity, and, above all, communication (etiquette), socialization of individuals, technological processes (work methods and skills), gaming behavior, and so on. Human behavior in society is typified, that is, it obeys the norms developed in society, and therefore in many respects it is standard. A set of typical behavior programs is specific to each team. The standardized behavior has its variations. In accordance with the characteristics of social organization in the sphere of given behavior, various types are distinguished: the behavior of a peasant, a warrior, a hunter, an intellectual, and so on. In accordance with the criteria for the biosocial division of the life path, the behavior of children, adults, the elderly, men, and women differs.
Thus, in the culture of a particular people, stereotypes cover:
verbal behavior;
Non-verbal behavior (facial expressions, gestures, etc.);
National character and ideas about it by other countries and peoples;
Social situations, behavior in social situations;
Features of life and everyday life of the nation;
national cuisine;
Religious and national rites.
So, since all people act in accordance with the expectations of their society, their behavior can be called stereotypical speech behavior. Stereotypes become such after repeated repetition and fixation in the minds of many people. Once formed, they acquire a high degree of stability and are difficult to modify.
At the communicative level, stereotyping occurs on the basis of:
1) accents (for example, the well-known Georgian accent in Russia or the southern accent in the USA: "Boy, I'm gonna book you for sassin' a law officer");
2) manners of pronouncing words and placing stresses;
3) features of intonation;
4) the pace of speech (for example, the speech of southerners in the United States is slower than northerners);
5) manners of speaking loudly or quietly (Americans speak louder than most Europeans, for which the latter condemn them);
6) the choice of vocabulary (there are certain words and phrases characteristic of certain groups of the population, such as the words brother, lol and others in the speech of the "new Russians");
7) cliched phrases;
8) syntactic features;
9) speech strategies;
10) communication distance (for example, it is less for Russians and Americans than for the British, as a result of which Russians perceive Americans as more cordial, and the British as more distant).
stand out different kinds stereotypes at the language level that can interfere with intercultural communication:
1) racial;
2) ethnic;
3) geographical;
4) gender;
5) social;
6) political;
7) professional, etc.
In intercultural communication, stereotypes are the result of an ethnocentric reaction - an attempt to judge all groups of people from the standpoint of only one's own culture. Often, when joining the MC and evaluating their communication partners, communicants are already deliberately guided by pre-existing stereotypes. However, the degree of stereotyping is lower in individuals with experience in intercultural communication, who had the opportunity to be convinced of the falsity of certain stereotypes. In most cases, the degree of stereotyping is inversely proportional to the experience of intercultural interaction. However, this rule does not always work due to the individual characteristics of the communicators and can be aggravated due to traits that are unfavorable for communication (ill-will, bias, a tendency to criticize, etc.).
With regard to MC, there are exostereotypes, i.e. external stereotypes that have developed among representatives of one culture about another, and endostereotypes, i.e., myths about themselves that exist within a given culture.
Influence of stereotypes. (Examples)
Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause, authors of the study "Introduction to Popular Culture", note that stereotypes are an integral part of popular culture. They can be formed on the basis of age (“Young people only listen to rock and roll”), gender (“all men want only one thing from women”), race (“Japanese are indistinguishable from each other”), religion (“Islam is a religion terror"), professions ("all lawyers are crooks") and nationality ("all Jews are greedy"). There are also geographic stereotypes (for example, “life in small towns is safer than in megacities”), clothing stereotypes (for example, “German cars are the highest quality”), etc. Stereotypes in most cases are neutral, but when they are transferred from a specific person to a group of people (social, ethnic, religious, racial, etc.) often acquire a negative connotation. It is on stereotypes that phenomena such as racism, sexism, Islamophobia, etc. are based.
Sera Khan, a professor at the University of San Francisco, published an article in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology in which she argues that it is extremely dangerous to trust stereotypes. The stereotype has cognitive and motivational functions. From a cognitive point of view, the stereotype is a double-edged weapon - it provides information in an easy and digestible way. However, this information is very far from reality and can disorient a person. From a motivational standpoint, stereotypes are even more unreliable. A person who bases his decisions on mass perceptions, and not on facts, takes a serious risk. Perhaps the most succinct statement of stereotyping was made by basketball star Charles Buckley, who stated: “You realize the world is not what you thought it was when you find out that the best rapper is white (meaning the singer Eminem), the best golfer is black, the tallest basketball player is Chinese (NBA superstar Yao Ming, 2 m 29 cm), and the Germans do not want to fight in Iraq.
Fred Jundt, a professor at California State University at San Bernardino and author of An Introduction to Intercultural Communication, points out that in most cases stereotypes are not used for good purposes. Stereotypes are often a weapon of propaganda for racism and xenophobia. For example, anti-Semitic propaganda based on stereotypes was actively carried out in Germany in the 1920s-1930s - as a result, the German people reacted rather indifferently and even favorably to the extermination of 6 million Jews.
In the United States, for a long time, negative stereotypes towards blacks prevailed in the media (similar views can be traced in many works of literature and cinema - for example, modern African Americans have an extremely negative attitude towards the image of the protagonist of the famous novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe "Uncle Tom's Cabin "). Therefore, the struggle of African Americans for their civil rights was accompanied by a struggle against the usual stereotypes: Martin Luther King actively opposed the prejudice against his race that had developed in American society. His secret opponent, FBI Director Edgar Hoover, on the contrary, tried to reinforce negative stereotypes about blacks.
In 2002, Columbia University published the results of its study on the use of the death penalty in the world. As it turned out, the courts are initially biased towards certain groups of people. For example, death sentences in North America and Europe are more likely to be handed down in areas where the percentage of blacks is higher. A black American has a higher chance of being sentenced to exceptional punishment than a white American who has committed a similar crime. One of the reasons for this is considered racial stereotypes of jurors.
A stereotype tends to change depending on changing conditions. Gregory Tillett, author of the study “Resolving Conflict. The practical approach notes that prejudice against migrants and immigrants is usually based on two different stereotypes. In a period of economic recession, the population perceives the newcomers as invaders, taking away jobs from local residents. During the period of economic recovery, local residents pay attention primarily to the customs of migrants, which are contrary to local traditions. Whatever stereotype is based on hatred, it leads to the fact that it is not possible to establish trusting and productive relationships with hated groups of the population. The most difficult thing to deal with is stereotypes between two ethnic groups that have a long history of conflict with each other.
Benjamin Barber, author of Jihad Against Macworld, believes that the current wave of international terrorism is largely driven by stereotypes. The Islamic world perceives the West as a world of materialism, consumerism, narcissism, immorality, etc. Naturally, such views are a breeding ground for the emergence of terrorists.
Stereotypes also exist in relations between peoples who, in general, know each other quite well and have a common historical past. For example, such prejudices once again showed their strength in a situation where France did not support the US on the Iraq issue. Publications immediately appeared in the media in both countries recalling old prejudices against the Americans and the French.
Pascal Baudry, professor of business administration and head of the consulting firm WDHB Consulting Group, who has lived in the United States for a long time, published the book The French and the Americans. The Other Shore ”, in which he gave a list of qualities that, according to the French, a typical resident of the United States possesses. The American is friendly and sociable, noisy, rude, intellectually underdeveloped, industrious, extravagant, self-confident, full of prejudices, underestimating the achievements of other cultures, rich, generous, promiscuous and always somewhere in a hurry.
In turn, Harriet Rochefort, an American living in France, in her book "French Toast" gave a list of typical American ideas about the French. The French have a reputation for being lazy and not speaking English for ideological reasons. They are self-righteous, impolite and unhelpful, nevertheless, quite helpful to the ladies and artistic. It is very difficult to get close to them. The French live in a bureaucratic socialist state and are completely dependent on officials. They do not know how to fight, and the Americans had to save France twice in the 20th century. In addition, the French are unclean, they eat snails and frogs.
It is no secret that society lives in a world of stereotypes and conjectures that arise due to a trivial lack of information (and in some cases, knowledge). This article will talk about the origin of this term and what social stereotypes exist.
Stereotype: what is it
Stereotype is a term from social psychology. In the broad sense of the word, these are certain beliefs that relate to any category of people, as well as a certain model of behavior that is used to determine the entire group of such people or their behavior as a whole. A stereotype is a concept that has much in common with such terms as "custom" and "tradition".
These thoughts or beliefs do not always accurately reflect reality. In psychology and other sciences, there are various concepts and theories of stereotypes that have common features and also contain contradictory elements.
Origin of the term
It is necessary to know the etymology of this word in order to understand its essence. "Stereotype" comes from the Greek words στερεός (stereo) - "solid, hardened" and τύπος (typos) - "impression", therefore, this word can be translated as, "a solid impression from one or more ideas/theories".
This term was originally used mainly in typography. It was first used in 1798 by Firmin Didot to describe a printing plate that replicated any printed matter. A duplicate of a printed form, or a stereotype, is used for printing instead of the original. Outside the context of typography, the first use of the word "stereotype" dates back to 1850. It was used in the sense of "perpetuation without change." However, it was not until 1922 that the term "stereotype" was first used in its modern psychological sense by the American journalist Walter Lippman in his work Public Opinion. Gradually, this term comes into use and is constantly used both in the speech of ordinary people and in the media.
Types of stereotypes
Social stereotypes can be divided into main subspecies:
- Stereotypes relating to peoples and entire races (for example, stereotypes about Russians and Jews).
- About the rich and the poor.
- Concerning men and women.
- About sexual minorities.
- Age (how a person should behave at a particular age).
- Stereotypes related to any profession.
These are just some of the prejudices that influence social norms and people's behavior.
Stereotype functions
The first scientific studies claimed that stereotypes are used only by rigid and authoritarian people. This idea has been refuted by modern research, which suggests that stereotypes of society exist everywhere.
It has also been proposed to consider stereotypes as a kind of belief of some group of people, meaning that people belonging to the same social group have the same set of stereotypes. Modern research argues that a full understanding of this concept requires considering it from two complementary points of view: both divided within a particular culture / subculture, and formed in the mind of an individual.
Gender studies
Gender bias is one of the most dominant in the public mind. For this reason, gender differences between men and women have been studied by experts in various scientific fields for a very long time. For a long time, the main goal of scientists who studied the differences between men and women was to find scientific evidence for gender stereotypes and thereby provide a reliable justification for the prevailing stereotypes regarding gender roles.
But this problem has not been solved: most studies have revealed much more similarities than differences between two opposite sexes, and the small differences that are detected usually have an obviously social basis. For example, men, in contrast to the fair sex, according to the traditional gender role, report that they are not too emotional and sensitive. However, measurements of physiological reactions and their facial expressions have repeatedly shown that there are no differences directly in emotional reactions between opposite sexes.
Other scientific evidence once again confirms that men feel anger, sadness and anxiety just as often as women, but at the same time express anger and suppress other negative emotions more often, while women, on the contrary, suppress anger and express sadness and fear.
This once again confirms that these are the stereotypes of the perception of our society, which make it very difficult to see the objective reality.
Impact of gender bias
Like other social stereotypes, gender prejudices perform the function of justifying social, namely sexual, inequality. This type of stereotyping disturbs both women and men. For example, stereotypes that prescribe women to be gentle and condemn the display of aggression and assertiveness often contribute to discrimination against the fair sex in the workplace.
Most stereotypes attribute positive properties to women: sensuality, intuitiveness and care. According to experts, in societies with such stereotypes, such character traits are not valued as much as rationality and activity, which are inherent in the stronger sex. Thus, these stereotypes create and perpetuate androcentrism - the belief that men are the norm, regarding which the female gender is, in fact, a deviation.
As many scientific data show, adherence to these stereotypes and patriarchal views on the roles of men and women is one of the main characteristics of men who commit domestic and sexual violence against women. Domestic violence is always closely related to the desire of the stronger sex to dominate.
Prejudice also harms men who, for one reason or another, are not in a strong position. For example, men who have experienced sexual violence, due to the pressure of these stereotypes, very rarely ask for help, and even if they ask, they often do not receive it, since doctors and police do not believe that men could become a victim of this type of violence. Society is gradually recognizing that these stereotypes are very often far from reality.
Glass ceiling
All these factors create the effect of the so-called "glass ceiling". This concept comes from the psychology of sex, which was introduced in the mid-1980s to describe the career barrier). This "ceiling" limits the movement of women on the career ladder for reasons that are not related to their level of professionalism. Subsequently, the term was extended to representatives of other social groups and minorities (ethnic minorities, representatives of non-traditional orientation, etc.). Of course, this ceiling does not officially exist, since it is unspoken.
Career implications
According to women's rights organizations, women still face this invisible ceiling today. Thus, about 80% of the leaders of America's top 500 companies are men, despite the fact that women make up a significant proportion of all workers at the grassroots levels in firms.
This barrier, according to experts, exists because of the established stereotypes about the female gender and other social groups that are oppressed. In this category of persons, the appearance of the so-called fear of success is even possible. According to modern researchers, the main obstacles on the way of women to high and responsible positions are the traditional personnel policy of firms, which believes that a woman is not suitable for the role of a leader.
national prejudices
Almost any nationality has developed one or another stereotype. For example, all Jews are pragmatic and greedy, Germans are born pedants, and Italians are the most passionate men.
One of the most important prejudices about Russians is the opinion about the general alcoholism of the Russian population.
However, according to world statistics on the consumption of alcoholic beverages by country, Russia is far from the first place. It should be recognized that this is a stereotype that has no real basis. The first places in this rating belong to Moldova, Ireland and Hungary.
Another stereotype about Russia is that supposedly Russians are a gloomy and unfriendly people. Of course, it is not in the Russian tradition to smile at every passerby. But there is hardly another such nation in Europe that treats other people's grief or worldly difficulties so responsibly. In some settlements in Russia, even now you can knock on the door and ask for an overnight stay. The uninvited guest, of course, will be fed and allowed to stay the night.
There are also stereotypes about Russian women. For example, it is believed that Russian ladies are the most beautiful and feminine among all European women. However, other Slavic women can boast of their attractive appearance. Polish and Ukrainian women are also famous in the bride market in Europe.
Of course, there are a lot of stereotypes about Russia. They are mainly distributed in Western countries, which have always feared a mighty and big Russia.
Every questionable fact is worth checking for authenticity. Very often it turns out that this is a stereotype, just someone's opinion, which has nothing to do with reality.
