All people exist in a society in which certain norms of behavior have been developed. But often they flow into clichés called stereotypes. And in order to wallow in inertia, you need to know what stereotypes are.

Where do modern stereotypes come from?

Stereotypes are not the trend of the present time. They have always existed, because the public was just as eternal. But it is precisely under its influence that a tendency to averaging and simplifying appears. So it is easier for a person to predict his own behavior, so as not to get into trouble. And he begins to expect the same from other people, starting to think more limitedly.

What are the stereotypes?

It is quite difficult to clearly answer what stereotypes exist. After all, you can find a great many of them.

Scientists, when asked what stereotypes are, offer the following classification:

• positive;
• negative;
• generalized-simplified;
• approximate;
• accurate.

In addition, stereotypes are divided into social and ethnic. The first group is household stamps. These are, for example, ideas that a woman should be weak, that a man should not cry, that carbohydrate food is an absolute evil, etc. The second group is a stable image of a certain nationality. For example, the Japanese think that they are eternal workaholics, the French are obsessed with fashion, and so on.

stupid stereotypes

There are also frankly stupid clichés, the limitations of which everyone knows, but, nevertheless, continue to believe in them. This should include the myth that all blondes are fools, that in Russia everyone wears earflaps, etc. The opinion that everyone likes thin girls, which provoked a surge in anorexia, cannot be called anything other than stupid. And about inflated men, they often think that their intelligence is at an extremely low level, although this is often far from the case.

Below we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the works of the American photographer Joel Pares, which most eloquently show the work of the stereotypical. After all, we often give a hasty assessment of a person based on his appearance, nationality, gender, age, etc.

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 linguistic 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 warm-hearted, and the British as more distant).

There are different types of 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.

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 any 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.

stereotypes- these are characteristics that describe members of social groups, are attributed to them or associated with them. Until today, in the ordinary mind and in the mass media, stereotypes are widely believed to be a negative phenomenon. This is largely due to the fact that in world science the negative stereotypes of ethnic minorities subjected to discrimination have been most often studied. However, it is necessary to make a clear distinction between stereotypes as a social phenomenon and stereotyping as a psychological process. In social psychology of recent decades, stereotyping has come to be regarded as a rational form of cognition, as a special case of a more universal process of categorization. Our world is difficult to perceive not only because of the quantitative oversaturation of information, but also as a result of its qualitative uncertainty. Stereotyping should be considered as a means of comprehending the social significance of inf-ation. Those. noun stereotyping. mainly not to save the cognitive resources of the perceiving individual, but rather to reflect social reality. The psychological mechanism of stereotyping has at all times been used in various reactionary political doctrines that sanction the capture and oppression of peoples in order to maintain the domination of the enslavers by planting negative stereotypes about the defeated and enslaved. On the other hand, stereotypes often play a negative role when used by an individual in the process of interpersonal perception with a lack of information about a particular communication partner. Not only negative, but also quite positive stereotypes can lead to difficulties in establishing mutual understanding between people. There are 4 types of ethnocultural stereotyping: simple auto- and hetero-stereotypes (what we think of ourselves and "outsiders") and portable auto- and hetero-stereotypes (what we assume about what "outsiders" think of us and themselves.

54. Interpersonal interaction strategies.

The choice of one or another strategy of interpersonal interaction depends on the communication style. The concept of comm. style refers to the habitual, stable ways of behavior inherent in this person, which he uses when establishing relationships and interacting with other people. Understanding one's own comm. style and the ability to recognize the style of a partner in K are important characteristics of comm. competence. Most researchers of styles of activity and communication share the following methodological guidelines: style is a manifestation of the integrity of individuality; - style is associated with a certain orientation and system of values ​​of the individual; - style performs a compensatory function, helping the individual most effectively adapt to the requirements of the environment. Every person in his life, according to Adler, is faced with three inevitable problems: 1) a professional problem: how to find an occupation that would allow him to survive in a complex social world; 2) the problem of cooperation and friendship: how to take a position among other people that would allow you to cooperate with them and share the benefits of cooperation; 3) the problem of love and marriage: how to adapt to the fact that the continuation and development of human life depends on our love life. All these problems are interconnected. Styles of behavior in interpersonal relationships, only outlined in the concept of Adler, received a deep study and development in the works of the German psychologist K. Horney. The main thesis of her approach is as follows: in order to achieve a sense of security in the outside world, reduce anxiety, a person resorts to various protective strategies. Each strategy is accompanied by a certain basic orientation in relations with other people: - Orientation to people, or compliant type. This type assumes such a style of interaction, which is characterized by dependence, indecision, helplessness. A compliant person needs to be needed, loved and protected, led by him. Such people enter into relationships to avoid feelings of loneliness, helplessness, or worthlessness, but their pleasantness may hide a suppressed need to behave aggressively; - orientation from people, or a separate type. For this type of character, the attitude is in no way to be carried away, whether it is a love affair, work or leisure. As a result, a person of this type loses true interest in people, gets used to superficial pleasures. For this style, the desire for solitude, independence and self-sufficiency is har-rno; - orientation against people, or hostile type. This style is characterized by dominance, hostility, exploitation. The hostile type is able to act tactfully and friendly, but his behavior in the end is always aimed at gaining control and power over others, everything is aimed at increasing his own prestige, status or to satisfy personal ambitions.

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 the black, 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.