Stereotyping is the process of forming a stable representation or image of any people, events, phenomena. It is typical for representatives of one or another social community. Let us consider further how stereotyping of perception occurs.
General characteristics
Various social communities, ideal (professional) and real (nations) develop stable explanations for certain facts, create habitual interpretations of phenomena. This process is quite logical, since stereotyping is a useful and necessary tool for understanding the world. With its help, you can quickly and at a specific level simplify the social environment of a person. In this way, things become clear and therefore predictable. The mechanism of stereotyping is associated with the limitation, selection, categorization of a huge amount of social information that concerns a person every minute. This tool is motivated by evaluative polarization directed in favor of one's own group. It gives the individuala sense of security and belonging to a particular community.
Functions
G. Tajfel singled out four tasks that stereotyping solves. This is:
- Selecting public information.
- Formation and preservation of a positive "I-image".
- Creating and maintaining a group ideology that justifies and explains its behavior.
- Formation and preservation of a positive "We-image".
The first two functions are performed at the individual level, the last two at the group level.
The emergence of images
Stereotyping is a process that is associated with certain situations in society. In each particular case, a certain image successfully completed the tasks indicated above, and, accordingly, took a stable form. However, the social conditions in which the life of the group and the people in it proceed are changing faster than the stereotypes generated in it. As a result, a stable image begins to exist separately, independently. At the same time, it influences the development of relations of this group with other communities, a particular person - with other people. When stereotypes arise, they often go through a stage associated with the pattern of formation of "public pronouns" - "they-we-me".
Negative content
At the household level, there are persistent myths regarding stereotypes. The first is that a stable image is considered as a modelideas about another group, containing predominantly hostile, negative characteristics. This provision is misleading. Stereotyping in psychology is a response to real relationships between groups of people. The stable images that arise in this case are saturated with those emotions that are characteristic of specific established interactions. In one situation, the tendency for the subjective increase in differences between groups can be reduced to almost zero. In this case, sympathy arises, attractive images of other groups are formed, perhaps even with a touch of light, harmless irony. In another situation, the relationship is stereotyped in the form of malicious sarcasm, negative and sometimes humiliating characterizations.
Dogma
The second myth concerns the perception of the stereotype itself. A person who thinks in fixed images is often recognized as the bearer of poor and unpromising mental models. Stereotyping in psychology is a phenomenon that cannot be characterized as good or bad. Another thing is that the possibilities of this stable image are local. They are limited by the scope of the situation of role-playing, intergroup perception. When transferring stable models to events of interpersonal understanding, replacing them with more subtle tuning tools for other individuals, there is a distortion, destruction of communication and interaction.
Physiognomic reduction
In its essence, it is an attempt to assess the internal psychologicalfeatures of a person, his actions and predict his actions based on the typical features of appearance inherent in his group. This mechanism functions very actively in interethnic interactions. Physiognomic reduction works very successfully in the simplest social relations.
In-group favoritism
It represents a tendency to favor members of one's own group in comparison to other collectives. Simply put, "ours are better than not ours." This explains the fact that in a foreign city people are very happy with fellow countrymen, and in another country - with compatriots. However, this phenomenon does not always occur. Favoritism is not characteristic of every group, but only those that are successfully developing, have a positive system of internal values, and are distinguished by cohesion. In teams where conflicts, disintegration, restructuring of goals take place, there may be no time for a favorable trend. Moreover, the exact opposite is also possible. It will manifest itself in favoritism towards members of the other group.
Stereotyping effect
According to Snyder, persistent images can shape their own reality. In this case, they direct social interaction in such a direction that a stereotypically perceived person begins to confirm with his actions the corresponding impressions of another individual about himself. Such an image, which is able to give rise to a new reality, received the appropriate name. It is called the "expectation stereotype". observer, according tohis perceptual (sensory) research, forms his strategy of behavior in relation to the object of observation and begins to implement it. The latter, in turn, builds its own line of activity, but starts from the indicated model and, consequently, from the subjective opinion that is formed about it. If the observer is an authoritative person, then the observed will strive to fit into the proposed strategy. As a result, subjective evaluation will take effect.
Stereotyping, identification, empathy
The process of forming stable images within groups was discussed above. There is also the phenomenon of identification. It is likeness to another individual. This manifests itself in an attempt to understand the mood, state of a person, his attitude towards himself and the world, putting himself in his place, merging with his "I". A related concept in a sense is empathy. It represents the comprehension of the emotional background of the individual. The term is currently used with different meanings. The basis of empathy is the ability to correctly imagine what is happening in the soul of another person. Both in the first and in the second case, stable images formed in certain groups, to which the observed persons may belong, can also be of no small importance.
