Stereotyping is a classification of forms of behavior. Stereotyping in psychology is ...

Stereotyping is the process of forming a stable image or image of any people, events, phenomena. It is typical for representatives of one or another social community. Let's consider in more detail 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 cognizing the world. With its help you can quickly and at a specific level simplify the social environment of a person. Thus, things become clear and, therefore, predictable. The mechanism of stereotyping is associated with the restriction, selection, categorization of a huge volume of social information that pertains to a person every minute. The motivation for this tool is the estimated polarization, directed in favor of his group. It gives an individual a sense of security and belonging to a specific community.

Functions

G. Tajfel singled out four tasks that stereotyping decides. It:

1. Selection of public information.
2. Formation and preservation of a positive "I-image."
3. Creation and maintenance of the ideology of the group, justifying and explaining its behavior.
4. Formation and preservation of a positive "We-image."

The first two functions are executed on the individual, the latter at the group level.

Appearance of images

Stereotyping is a process that is associated with certain situations in society. In each specific case, a certain image successfully performed the tasks indicated above, and, accordingly, took a stable form. However, the social conditions in which the life of the group and the people entering it are changing faster than the stereotypes generated in it. As a result, a stable image begins to exist separately, independently. Together with this, it influences the development of relations of this group with other communities, a particular person - with the rest of the people. When stereotypes arise, there often pass a stage connected with the pattern of the formation of "public pronouns" - "they-we-I".

Negative content

At the domestic level, there are stable myths concerning stereotypes. The first is that a stable image is considered as a model of representations about another group, containing mostly hostile, negative characteristics. This provision is a delusion. Stereotyping in psychology is the answer to real relationships between people's groups. Stable images that arise in this case are saturated with those emotions that are peculiar to specific established interactions. In one situation, the tendency to subjectively increase the differences between groups can be reduced to almost zero. In this case, sympathy arises, attractive images of other collectives are formed, perhaps even with some shade of easy, harmless irony. In another situation, relationships are expressed in a stereotype in the form of evil sarcasm, negative and sometimes humiliating characteristics.

Dogma

The second myth relates to the perceptions of the stereotype itself. A person who thinks with sustainable images is often recognized as the bearer of meager and unpromising mental models. Stereotyping in psychology is a phenomenon that can not be characterized as bad or good. It is another matter that the possibilities of this stable image differ by locality. They are limited to the limits of the situation of role-playing, intergroup perception. When you transfer stable models to events of interpersonal understanding, replacing them with more subtle tuning tools for other individuals, there is a distortion, the destruction of communication and interaction.

Physiognomic reduction

In its essence, it is an attempt to assess the internal psychological characteristics of a person, his actions and to predict his actions on the basis of typical features of appearance inherent in his group. This mechanism is very active in interethnic interactions. Physiognomic reduction is also very successful in the simplest social relations.

Intra-group favoritism

It represents a tendency of favoring when evaluating members of their own group in comparison with other collectives. Simply put, "ours are better than not ours." This explains the fact that in a foreign city people are very happy countrymen, and in another country - compatriots. However, this phenomenon does not always take place. Favoritism is not peculiar to every group, but only to those who successfully develop, have a positive system of internal values, and are distinguished by cohesion. In teams where there are conflicts, disintegration, reorganization of goals, there may not be a favorable tendency. Moreover, the opposite phenomenon is possible. It will manifest itself in favoritism to members of another group.

The effect of stereotyping

According to Snyder, stable images can form their own reality. In this case, they direct social interaction in such a direction that the person perceived stereotypically begins by his actions to confirm the corresponding impressions of himself of another individual. Such an image, which is capable of generating a new reality, has received an appropriate name. It is called the "stereotype of expectation." The observer, according to his perceptual (sensory) researches, forms his strategy of behavior with respect to the object of observation and begins to realize it. The latter, in turn, builds its own line of activity, but is repulsed from this model and, consequently, from the subjective opinion that is formed about it. If the supervisor is an authoritative person, then the observed person will strive to fit into the proposed strategy. As a result, a subjective evaluation will begin to work.

Stereotyping, identification, empathy

The process of forming stable images within groups was considered above. There is also the phenomenon of identification. It is a likening to another individual. It manifests itself in an attempt to understand the mood, the state of a person, his attitude to himself and the world, putting himself in his place, merging with his "I". A related concept is empathy. It is the comprehension of the emotional background of the individual. Currently, this term is used in different meanings. The basis of empathy is the ability to correctly imagine what is happening in the soul of another person. And in the first and the second case, important images can also have stable images, formed in certain groups, to which the observed persons can belong.