What psychologists call installation using facts. Psychological settings. Psychological characteristics of a person

Incredible Facts

The human psyche remains one of the biggest mysteries in the world.

Although researchers have learned a lot interesting facts about the psychological characteristics of a person, and even can predict our behavior based on some rules, much remains unknown.

Did you know how wrong your memories are, how long your habits take to form, or how many friends you can make?

Here are these and other psychological facts that will help you get to know yourself better.

Psychological processes of a person

1. You suffer from "inattentional blindness"

If you haven't heard about experiment "invisible gorilla" watch the next video. You need to count the number of passes made by people in white shirts (watch the video before reading the text further).

This is an example of what is called " blindness of inattention". The idea is that we are often blind to what is literally "under our noses" if we are focused on some other task.

In this case, a man in a gorilla suit walks through a group of players, stops and walks away. Participants who are busy counting passes often simply do not notice the gorilla. Moreover, those who are aware of the appearance of the gorilla become even more inattentive and miss other changes (such as changing the color of the curtains, the departure of one girl).

Exist rule "magic number 7 plus minus 2", according to which a person cannot store more than 5-9 blocks of information at the same time. Most of the information in short-term memory is stored for 20-30 seconds, after which we quickly forget it, unless we repeat it again and again.

Although most people can keep about 7 digits in memory for a short period, almost all of us find it difficult to keep 10 digits in our minds.

Recent studies show that we are able to store even less: about 3-4 blocks of information at the same time. And although we try to group the data we receive, our short-term memory is still quite limited.

For example, a phone number is divided into several sets of numbers so that we can remember it more easily.

Although these colors are used in many national flags, red and blue are hard on our eyes when they are next to each other.

This is due to an effect called "chrome stereoopsis" which causes some colors to "pop out" while others are removed. This is causes irritation and eye fatigue.

This effect is most pronounced when combining red and blue, as well as red and green colors.

According to a study by the University of Cambridge, "the letters in each subdiacr are indistinguishable in the left.

Even if the rest of the letters are mixed up, you can still read the sentence. This happens because the human brain does not read each letter, but the word as a whole. It is constantly processing information it receives from the senses, and how you perceive information (words) is usually different from what you see (messed up letters).

©GlobalStock/Getty Images

Even if you are in a meeting, you are interested in the topic, and the person presents the subject in an interesting way, the maximum attention you can maintain is 7-10 minutes. After that, your attention will begin to weaken and you need to take a break in order to continue to maintain your interest.

Psychological characteristics of a person

Your ability to delay the immediate gratification of your desires begins in early childhood. People who were able to delay gratification at an early age did better in school and coped better with stress and frustration.

Do you like to be in the clouds? According to psychologists, we all love to dream at least 30 percent of the time. Some of us even more, but that's not always a bad thing. Researchers say that people who like to daydream tend to be more resourceful and better problem solvers.

Scientists studying how long certain actions turn into a habit found that on average it takes us about 66 days.

The more complex the behavior we want to acquire, the longer the time we need to. For example, those who wanted to get into the habit of exercising most often took 1.5 times longer to become automatic than those who developed the habit of eating fruit for lunch. Even if you skip a day or two, it won't affect the timing of the habit, but skipping too many days in a row can slow the process down.

We are not very good at predicting the future. To be more precise, we overestimate our reaction to future events, whether pleasant or negative.

Studies have shown that people believe that positive events, such as marriage or a big win, will make them much happier than they actually were. Likewise, we believe that negative events, such as losing a job or an accident, will cause us to feel much more depressed than we actually do.

10. You blame the other person, not the situation (and the situation, not yourself)

Think back to when you were waiting for another person who was late for a meeting. Most likely, you attributed his delay to irresponsibility and lack of concentration. In the same situation, you attributed your delay to external circumstances (traffic jams).

In psychology, this is called fundamental attribution error"- that is, the tendency to blame the behavior of other people on internal personality traits, and our own behavior on external factors ("I had no choice", "I was not lucky"). Unfortunately, even aware of our tendency to make unfair judgments, we still continue make this fundamental mistake.

Even though you may boast of having a few thousand social media friends, you actually have far fewer of them. Psychologists and anthropologists have identified the "Dunbar number" - that is, the maximum number of close relationships that a person can have, and it ranges from 50 to 150.

Have you noticed that people always stop to look at accident scenes. In fact, we cannot ignore the danger situation. Every person has oldest brain structure responsible for survival and asks: "Can I eat this? Can I have sex with this? Can this kill me?".

Food, sex and danger are all he cares about. After all, without food, a person will die, without sex, the race will not continue, and if a person dies, the first two points will not make sense.

Imagine that you have never seen an iPad, but they gave you one and offered to read books on it. Even before you turn on the iPad and start using it, you will already have a model in your head of how to read books with it. You will have suggestions about what the book will look like on the screen, what features you will be able to use, and how you will do it.

In other words you have a "mental model" reading a book from a tablet, even if you've never done it before. Your mental model will be different from someone who has read e-books before and who doesn't even know what an iPad is.

Our mental models are based on incomplete facts, past experience, and even intuition.

If you go to any supermarket, you will see a huge range of products, and all because people want more choices.

In one supermarket study, researchers presented participants with 6 types of jam and then 24 types of jam. And while people were more likely to stop at a 24-jam stand, they were 6 times more likely to buy jam at a 6-jam stand.

The reason for this is simple: despite the fact that we feel like we want more, our brains can only handle a limited number of items at once.

Imagine that you are at the airport and you need to pick up your luggage. However, you need about 12 minutes to reach the baggage claim area. When you approach the baggage claim, you immediately pick up your suitcase. How impatient do you feel?

Now try to imagine a similar situation, but only you get to the pickup area in 2 minutes and wait for your luggage for 10 minutes. Although in both situations it took you 12 minutes to get your luggage, in the second case you were probably more impatient and unhappy.

If a person has no reason to be active, he decides not to do anything. And while it helps us conserve energy, idleness makes us feel impatient and miserable.

Brain and psyche

While we like to think that all our decisions are carefully controlled and thought out, research suggests that everyday decisions are actually subconscious and there is a reason for this.

Every second, our brains are attacked by more than 11 million individual items of data, and since we cannot carefully check all this, our subconscious mind helps us make a decision.

We think of our memories as little "movies" that we play in our head and think they are stored just like a video in our computer. However, it is not.

Everytime, when you mentally return to some event, you change it, since the neural pathways are activated differently each time. This can be influenced by later events, and the desire to fill in the gaps in memory. So, for example, you don't remember who else was at the family meeting, but since your aunt was usually present, you can eventually include her in your memory.

If you think that you can do several things well at once, you are mistaken.

Scientists have proven that we can't do 2-3 things at once. Of course, we can walk and talk to our friend at the same time, but our brain only focuses on one priority function at any given time. This suggests that we cannot think about two different things at the same time.

Memories of exciting and dramatic events are called in psychology " flashback memories", and they, as it turned out, are full of errors.

Well-known examples of this phenomenon are the events associated with 9/11. The psychologists asked the participants to describe in detail what they were doing, where they were and other details related to this event, immediately after the attack and 3 years later. It turned out that 90 percent of the later descriptions differed from the original ones. Many people can describe in detail where and what they were doing at the moment they heard the news. The only problem is that these details are wrong, because strong emotions associated with memory distort memories.

When you sleep and dream, your brain processes and combines the experience of the whole day, creates associations from the information received, decides what to remember and what to forget.

Surely, you have often heard the advice to "get a good night's sleep" before an exam or an important event. If you want to remember what you have learned, it is best to go to bed after you have learned the material and before you need to remember it.

Any act of cognition, communication and labor is preceded by what psychologists call “setting”, which means a certain direction of the personality, a state of readiness for some kind of activity.

Faced with a person belonging to a certain profession, nation, age group, we expect a certain behavior from him in advance and evaluate a particular person according to how much he corresponds to this standard. For example, it is commonly believed that youth is characterized by romanticism; therefore, when we meet this quality in a young person, we consider it natural, and if it is absent, it seems strange. Biased, that is, not based on a fresh, direct assessment of each phenomenon, but an opinion derived from standardized judgments and expectations about the qualities of people and phenomena, psychologists call a stereotype. For example: “Fat men are usually good-natured; Ivanov is a fat man, therefore, he must be good-natured.” Stereotypes are an integral element of everyday consciousness. Not a single person is able to independently, creatively respond to all situations encountered in his life. The stereotype inspired by the individual in the process of learning and communicating with others helps him navigate his life and in a certain way directs his behavior. Its essence is that it expresses the attitude, attitude of a given social group towards a certain phenomenon.

The fact that the customs, manners and forms of behavior in which he has been brought up and accustomed to are closer to each person than others is quite normal and natural. Alien customs sometimes seem not only strange, absurd, but also unacceptable. This is as natural as the very differences between ethnic groups and their cultures, which were formed in a variety of historical and natural conditions, are natural.

The problem arises only when these real or imagined differences are elevated to the main quality and turn into a hostile psychological attitude towards some ethnic group, an attitude that divides peoples and justifies politics.

discrimination. This is ethnic prejudice.

(According to I.S. Kohn)

C1. Plan your text. To do this, highlight the main semantic fragments of the text and title each of them.

C4. In the modern world, representatives of various ethnic groups interact. Formulate two assumptions about the conditions under which ethnic differences can be perceived without prejudice.

C5. 18-year-old Tatyana met 23-year-old Vitaly, who plays professional football. Previously, she believed that all athletes had a low level of education and upbringing, and was surprised that he was an interesting conversationalist, well versed in computers and keenly interested in cultural events in the country. What psychological phenomenon manifested itself in Tatyana's judgments? Make an assumption about how the negative impact of this phenomenon on people's communication can manifest itself.

C6. What do psychologists call attitude? Using the facts of social life or personal social experience, give an example of a situation where the attitude contributes to the success of a person's activity, and an example of a situation where the attitude dooms the activity to failure.

Man and society. Text 1.

The inhabitants of the Earth are divided not only along racial, religious or ideological lines, but also in some sense and in time. When we study the current population of the globe, we find a small group of people who still live by hunting and gathering, as they did thousands of years ago. Others, most of them, rely not on bear hunting or berry picking but on agriculture. They live in many respects as their ancestors lived centuries ago. These two groups together make up about 70% of the world's inhabitants. These are the people of the past.

More than 25% of the world's population lives in industrialized countries. They live modern life. They are a product of the first half of the 20th century, shaped by mechanization and mass education, brought up on the memories of the agricultural past of their country left in the memory. They are real people.

The remaining 2–3% of the world's population cannot be called either people of the past or people of the present. For in the major centers of technological and cultural change, in Silicon Valley, New York, London and Tokyo, millions of men and women can already be said to be living in the future. These pioneers, often unconsciously, live today as others will live tomorrow.

What makes them different from other people? Of course, they are richer, better educated, more mobile than most. They also live longer. But what makes the people of the future especially different is that they have already entered a new, accelerated pace of life. They "live faster" than the people around them. Some are deeply attached to this high-speed pace of life.

But while some are energized by the new fast pace, others find it distasteful; they stop at nothing to "get rid of this merry-go-round" as they say. (According to E. Toffler)

27. What are the differences between the people of the future and the rest of humanity named by the author (name any three differences)?

28. What are the three groups of the Earth's population named in the text? On what grounds can they be separated "in some sense and in time"?

29. What, in your opinion, should be the education of a person of the future? List any two characteristics and briefly explain each.

30. Based on social science knowledge, the facts of public life and personal social experience, illustrate with three examples the increase in the mobility of people in modern society.

31. Based on social science knowledge, the facts of social life
and personal social experience, suggest why many people feel uncomfortable with the fast pace of life. (Make two guesses.)

Man and society. Text 2.

Let's start with the question: how does a person develop? People's personalities are formed in the process of their interaction. The nature of these interactions is influenced by many factors: age, intellectual level, gender and weight ... The environment can also affect the personality: a child who grew up in conditions of hunger usually lags behind peers in physical and mental development. Finally, the personality is largely formed on the basis of its own individual experience. Another important factor in the formation of personality is culture: we assimilate the culture that has developed in our society, under the influence of parents, teachers and peers.

In our society, children learn to a large extent the roles and rules of behavior in society from television programs, newspapers, films and other media (media). The content presented in the media has a profound impact on the process of socialization, contributing to the formation of certain values and patterns of behavior. Indeed, some researchers believe that the influence of television as an agent of socialization is almost as great as the influence of parents. Any school graduate has already managed to spend an average of about 15,000 hours watching TV (this includes, among other things, about 350,000 advertisements).

To what extent does the media influence behavior change? Some experts argue that they only reinforce ideas that have already gained popularity: people always seek out, perceive and remember, first of all, those facts that confirm their own thoughts. Others believe that the media has a harmful effect on young people, encouraging them to act intemperately and distracting them from useful activities such as reading and socializing among themselves.

The school teaches not only reading, writing and arithmetic, but also gives an idea of social values. The school is a society in miniature. Here the formation of the personality of the child and his behavior takes place; the school seeks to unite children, counteracts manifestations of antisocial behavior. (According to N. Smelzer)

26. Plan the text. To do this, highlight the main semantic fragments of the text and title each of them.

28. Give two explanations for the phrase: "The school is a society in miniature."

29. 12-year-old Yuri believes that in the modern world, only an aggressive demeanor allows you to succeed in business and career. He frequently watches television talk shows that are inappropriate for his age group, which reinforced such representations. Which piece of text explains this influence of the media? Bring your argument, which will help convince Yuri.

30. Illustrate with three examples the positive impact of the media on the socialization of a child.

31. The author writes that the influence of television on the socialization of the child is as significant as the influence of parents. Suggest why in modern society the socializing influence of parents on the child is reduced. (Make two guesses.)

Man and society. Text 3.

Any act of cognition, communication and labor is preceded by what psychologists call “setting”, which means a certain direction of the personality, a state of readiness for some kind of activity.

The problem arises only when these real or imagined differences are elevated to the main quality and turn into a hostile psychological attitude towards an ethnic group, an attitude that divides peoples and justifies a policy of discrimination. This is ethnic prejudice. (According to I.S. Kohn)

26. Plan the text. To do this, highlight the main semantic fragments of the text and title each of them.

29. Representatives of various ethnic groups interact in the modern world. Formulate two assumptions about the conditions under which ethnic differences can be perceived without prejudice.

30. What do psychologists call an attitude? Using the facts of social life and (or) personal social experience, give an example of a situation where the attitude contributes to the success of a person's activity, and an example of a situation where the attitude dooms the activity to failure.

31. 18-year-old Tatyana met 23-year-old Vitaly, who plays football professionally. Previously, she believed that all athletes had a low level of education and upbringing, and was surprised that he was an interesting conversationalist, well versed in computers and keenly interested in cultural events in the country.

What psychological phenomenon manifested itself in Tatyana's judgments? Make an assumption about how the negative impact of this phenomenon on people's communication can manifest itself.

Any act of cognition, communication and labor is preceded by what psychologists call “setting”, which means a certain orientation of the personality, a state of readiness, a tendency to a certain activity that can satisfy some human needs. In our country, the theory of attitude was developed in detail by the outstanding Georgian psychologist D.N. Uznadze. Unlike a motive, that is, a conscious impulse, the attitude is involuntary and is not realized by the subject himself. But it is she

determines its relation to the object and the very way of its perception. A person who collects bindings sees this aspect of the book first of all, and only then everything else. The reader, delighted by the meeting with his favorite author, may not pay attention to the design of the book at all. In the system of attitudes, imperceptibly for the person himself, his previous life experience, the mood of his social environment are accumulated.

Attitudes of this kind also exist in social psychology, in the sphere of human relationships. Faced with a person belonging to a certain class, profession, nation, age group, we expect a certain behavior from him in advance and evaluate a particular person by how much he corresponds (or does not correspond) to this standard. For example, it is commonly believed that youth is characterized by romanticism; therefore, when we meet this quality in a young person, we consider it natural, and if it is absent, it seems strange. Scientists, by all accounts, tend to be distracted; probably, this quality is not universal, but when we see an organized, collected scientist, we consider him an exception, but a professor, constantly forgetting everything, "confirms the rule." Biased, that is, not based on a fresh, direct assessment of each phenomenon, but derived from standardized judgments and expectations, psychologists call an opinion about the properties of people and phenomena a stereotype. In other words, stereotyping consists in the fact that a complex individual phenomenon is mechanically brought under a simple general formula or image that characterizes (correctly or falsely) a class of such phenomena. For example: "Fat men are usually good-natured, Ivanov is a fat man, therefore, he must be good-natured."

nie, the installation of a given social group to a certain phenomenon. Thus, the images of a priest, a merchant or a worker from folk tales clearly express the attitude of working people towards these social types. Naturally, the stereotypes of the same phenomenon are completely different among the hostile classes.

And in national psychology there are such stereotypes. Each ethnic group (tribe, nationality, nation, any group of people connected by a common origin and differing in certain features from other human groups) has its own group self-consciousness, which fixes its - real and imaginary - specific features. Any nation is intuitively associated with one way or another. It is often said: "The Japanese are characterized by such and such traits" - and evaluate some of them positively, others negatively. Princeton College students twice (in 1933 and 1951) had to characterize several different ethnic groups using eighty-four characteristic words (“smart”, “brave”, “cunning”, etc.) and then choose from these characteristics five traits that seem to them the most typical for this group. The result is the following picture2; Americans are enterprising, capable, materialistic, ambitious, progressive; the English are athletic, capable, conventional, fond of tradition, conservative; Jews are smart, greedy, enterprising, stingy, capable; Italians are artistic, impulsive, passionate, quick-tempered, musical; the Irish are pugnacious, quick-tempered, witty, honest, very religious, etc. Already in this simple list of traits attributed to this or that group, a certain emotional tone clearly shows through, the attitude towards the group being evaluated comes through. But are these features reliable, why are these features chosen and not others? In general, this survey, of course, gives an idea only of the stereotype that exists among Princeton students.

Whether people want it or not, they inevitably perceive and evaluate other people's customs, traditions, forms of behavior, primarily through the prism of their own customs, those traditions in which they themselves were brought up. Such a tendency to view the phenomena and facts of a foreign culture, a foreign people through the prism of the cultural traditions and values of one's own people is what is called ethnocentrism in the language of social psychology.

The fact that the customs, manners and forms of behavior in which he has been brought up and accustomed to is closer to each person than others is quite normal and natural. To a temperamental Italian, a slow-moving Finn may seem lethargic and cold, and he, in turn, may not like southern ardor. Alien customs sometimes seem not only strange, absurd, but also unacceptable. This is as natural as the very differences between ethnic groups and their cultures, which were formed in a variety of historical and natural conditions, are natural.

The problem arises only when these real or imaginary differences are elevated to the main quality and turn into a hostile psychological attitude towards some ethnic group, an attitude that divides peoples and psychologically, and then theoretically substantiates the policy of discrimination. This is ethnic prejudice.

Different authors define this concept in different ways. In the reference manual by B. Berelson and G. Steiner “Human Behavior”, prejudice is defined as “a hostile attitude towards an ethnic group or its members as such”3. In the textbook of social psychology by D. Krech, R. Cruchfield and E. Ballachi, prejudice is defined as “an unfavorable attitude towards an object that tends to be extremely stereotyped, emotionally charged and is not easily changed under the influence of opposite information” **. In the latest Dictionary of the Social Sciences published by UNESCO, we read: “Prejudice is a negative, unfavorable attitude towards a group or its individual members; it is characterized by stereotypical beliefs; the attitude stems more from the internal processes of its bearer than from the actual examination of the properties of the group in question.

So, from here it follows, apparently, that we are talking about a generalized attitude, orienting towards a hostile attitude towards all members of a certain ethnic group, regardless of their individuality; this attitude has the character of a stereotype, a standard emotionally colored image - this is emphasized by the very etymology of the words prejudice, prejudice, that is, something that precedes reason and conscious conviction, and finally, this attitude is very stable and very difficult to change under the influence of rational arguments.

Some authors, for example, the well-known American sociologist Robin M. Williams, Jr., supplement this definition by saying that prejudice is such an attitude that contradicts some important norms or values nominally accepted by a given culture. It is difficult to agree with this. There are societies in which ethnic prejudices had the character of officially accepted social norms, for example, anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany - but this did not prevent them from remaining prejudices, although the Nazis did not consider them as such. On the other hand, some psychologists (Gordon Allport) emphasize that prejudice arises only where the hostile attitude "rests on a false and inflexible generalization"6. Psychologically, this is true. But this suggests that there may be a legitimate hostile attitude, so to speak. And this is fundamentally impossible. In principle, it is possible, for example, inductively, on the basis of observations, to assert that a given ethnic group does not possess to a sufficient extent some quality necessary to achieve a particular goal; well, let's say that ethnicity X, due to historical conditions, has not developed enough skills of labor discipline, and this will adversely affect its independent development. But such a judgment - whether it is true or false - is by no means identical with an attitude. First of all, it does not claim to be a universal assessment of all members of a given ethnic group; moreover, by formulating a particular moment, it is thereby limited by its scope, whereas in a hostile attitude, specific features are subordinated to a general emotionally hostile tone. And, finally, considering an ethnic characteristic as historical suggests the possibility of changing it.

The judgment that a given group is not ready to assimilate any specific socio-political relations, if it is not just part of a hostile stereotype (most often the thesis about the "immaturity" of this or that people only covers up the colonialist ideology), does not at all mean a negative evaluation of this group in general and the recognition of its "incapable" of higher social forms. The point is only that the pace and forms of socio-economic development should be consistent with local conditions, including the psychological characteristics of the population. In contrast to the ethnic stereotype, which operates with ready-made and uncritically assimilated clichés, such a judgment presupposes a scientific study of specific ethnopsychology, by the way, perhaps the most backward area of modern social science.

How can one examine the prejudices themselves?

There are two ways of research.

Literary List:

http://archive.omway.org/node/253

http://lib.rus.ec/b/204506/read

http://psy.piter.com/library/?tp=2&rd=8&l=104&p=327

http://rae.ru/fs/?section=content&op=show_article&article_id=7778343

http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks/Psihol/dashina1/09.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B8%D0 %B5

http://www.psychologos.ru/articles/view/probuzhdenie_impulsa_k_podrazhaniyu

Topic No. 6 Test No. 8

Factors hindering the correct perception of people.

1. Inability to distinguish between situations according to the goals and objectives of communication; according to the intentions and motives of the subjects; predict forms of behavior, the state of affairs, the well-being of people.

2. The presence of predetermined attitudes, assessments, beliefs.

3. The presence of already formed stereotypes.

4. The desire to draw premature conclusions.

5. Lack of desire and habit to listen to the opinions of other people.

6. Once stated, a judgment does not change, despite the fact that new information accumulates.

According to Solovieva's theory, the accuracy of perception can be improved by analyzing feedback, which contributes to a more accurate prediction of the behavior of a communication partner.

Currently, the idea of developing human perceptual abilities is being actively developed. The most fruitful was the use of socio-psychological training. L. A. Petrovskaya developed scenarios aimed at increasing perceptual competence.

Widespread at the level of everyday psychology, ideas about the relationship between the physical characteristics of a person and his psychological characteristics are called illusory correlations. These stereotypes are based not only on everyday observations, but also on fragments of psychological concepts that were widespread in the past (E. Kretschmer, L. Sheldon - the relationship between types of human constitution and character traits; physiognomy, etc.). It is difficult to remove these illusions even during the training.

The idea of video training turned out to be fruitful, which allows you to learn to see yourself from the outside, comparing ideas about yourself with how others perceive you.

Prejudice, attitude, stereotype

Let's start with absolutely elementary things. People usually think that their perceptions and ideas about things are the same, and if two people perceive the same object differently, then one of them is definitely mistaken. However, psychological science rejects this assumption. The perception of even the simplest object is not an isolated act, but part of a complex process. It depends primarily on the system in which the subject is considered, as well as on the previous experience, interests and practical goals of the subject. Where the layman sees just a metal structure, the engineer sees a well-defined detail of a machine known to him. The same book is perceived in completely different ways by a reader, a bookseller, and a person who collects bindings.

Any act of cognition, communication and labor is preceded by what psychologists call "setting", which means a certain direction of the personality, a state of readiness, a tendency to a certain activity that can satisfy some human needs. In our country, the theory of set was developed in detail by the outstanding Georgian psychologist D. N. Uznadze. Unlike a motive, that is, a conscious impulse, an attitude is involuntary and is not realized by the subject himself. But it is she who determines his attitude to the object and the very way of his perception. A person who collects bindings sees this aspect of the book first of all, and only then everything else. The reader, delighted by the meeting with his favorite author, may not pay attention to the design of the book at all. In the system of attitudes, imperceptibly for the person himself, his previous life experience, the mood of his social environment are accumulated.

Attitudes of this kind also exist in social psychology, in the sphere of human relationships. Faced with a person belonging to a certain class, profession, nation, age group, we expect a certain behavior from him in advance and evaluate a particular person by how much he corresponds (or does not correspond) to this standard. For example, it is commonly believed that youth is characterized by romanticism; therefore, when we meet this quality in a young person, we consider it natural, and if it is absent, it seems strange. Scientists, by all accounts, tend to be distracted; this quality is probably not universal, but when we see an organized, collected scientist, we consider him an exception, but a professor who constantly forgets everything "confirms the rule." Biased, that is, not based on a fresh, direct assessment of each phenomenon, but an opinion derived from standardized judgments and expectations about the properties of people and phenomena, psychologists call a stereotype. In other words, stereotyping consists in the fact that a complex individual phenomenon is mechanically brought under a simple general formula or image that characterizes (correctly or falsely) a class of such phenomena. For example: "Fat men are usually good-natured, Ivanov is a fat man, therefore, he must be good-natured."

Stereotypes are an integral element of everyday consciousness. Not a single person is able to independently, creatively respond to all situations encountered in his life. The stereotype, accumulating some standardized collective experience and instilled in the individual in the process of learning and communicating with others, helps him navigate life and in a certain way directs his behavior. A stereotype can be true or false. It can evoke both positive and negative emotions. Its essence is that it expresses the attitude, attitude of a given social group towards a certain phenomenon. Thus, the images of a priest, a merchant or a worker from folk tales clearly express the attitude of working people towards these social types. Naturally, the stereotypes of the same phenomenon are completely different among the hostile classes.

And in national psychology there are such stereotypes. Each ethnic group (tribe, nationality, nation, any group of people connected by a common origin and differing in certain features from other human groups) has its own group self-consciousness, which fixes it - real and imaginary - specific features. Any nation is intuitively associated with one way or another. It is often said: "The Japanese are characterized by such and such traits" - and evaluate some of them positively, others negatively. Students at Princeton College twice (in 1933 and 1951) had to characterize several different ethnic groups using eighty-four characteristic words ("intelligent", "brave", "cunning", etc.) and then choose five from these characteristics. traits that seem to them the most typical for this group. The following picture emerged: Americans are enterprising, capable, materialistic, ambitious, progressive; the English are athletic, capable, conventional, fond of tradition, conservative; Jews are smart, greedy, enterprising, stingy, capable; Italians are artistic, impulsive, passionate, quick-tempered, musical; the Irish are pugnacious, quick-tempered, witty, honest, very religious, etc. Already in this simple list of traits attributed to this or that group, a certain emotional tone clearly shows through, an attitude towards the group being evaluated comes through. But are these features reliable, why are these features chosen and not others? In general, this survey, of course, gives an idea only of the stereotype that exists among Princeton students.

It is even more difficult to evaluate national customs and mores. Evaluation of them always depends on who evaluates and from what point of view. This requires special care. In peoples, as in individuals, shortcomings are the continuation of virtues. These are the same qualities, only taken in a different proportion or in a different ratio. Whether people want it or not, they inevitably perceive and evaluate other people's customs, traditions, forms of behavior, primarily through the prism of their own customs, those traditions in which they themselves were brought up. Such a tendency to view the phenomena and facts of a foreign culture, a foreign people through the prism of the cultural traditions and values of one's own people is what is called ethnocentrism in the language of social psychology.

The fact that the customs, manners, and forms of behavior in which he has been brought up and accustomed to are closer to each person than others is quite normal and natural. To a temperamental Italian, a slow-moving Finn may seem lethargic and cold, and he, in turn, may not like southern ardor. Alien customs sometimes seem not only strange, absurd, but also unacceptable. This is as natural as the very differences between ethnic groups and their cultures, which were formed in a variety of historical and natural conditions, are natural.

Different authors define this concept in different ways. In the reference manual B. Berelson and G. Steiner "Human Behavior. Summary of Scientific Evidence" prejudice is defined as "a hostile attitude towards an ethnic group or its members as such." In the textbook of social psychology by D. Krech, R. Cruchfield and E. Ballachi, prejudice is defined as "an unfavorable attitude towards an object that tends to be extremely stereotyped, emotionally charged and not easily changed under the influence of opposing information" In the latest "Dictionary of the Social Sciences" published by UNESCO read:

"Prejudice is a negative, unfavorable attitude toward a group or its individual members; it is characterized by stereotypical beliefs; the attitude stems more from the internal processes of its carrier than from an actual examination of the properties of the group in question"

So, from here it follows, apparently, that we are talking about a generalized attitude, orienting towards a hostile attitude towards all members of a certain ethnic group, regardless of their individuality; this setting has the character of a stereotype, a standard emotionally colored image - this is emphasized by the very etymology of the words prejudice, prejudice, that is, something that precedes reason and conscious conviction; finally, this attitude is very stable and very difficult to change under the influence of rational arguments.

Some authors, such as the well-known American sociologist Robin M. Williams, Jr., supplement this definition by saying that prejudice is such an attitude that contradicts some important norms or values nominally accepted by a given culture. It is difficult to agree with this. Societies are known in which ethnic prejudices had the character of officially accepted social norms, for example, anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany - but this did not prevent them from remaining prejudices, although the Nazis did not consider them as such. On the other hand, some psychologists (Gordon Allport) emphasize that prejudice arises only where the hostile attitude "is based on a false and inflexible generalization." Psychologically, this is true. But this suggests that there may be a legitimate hostile attitude, so to speak. And this is fundamentally impossible. In principle, it is possible, for example, inductively, on the basis of observations, to assert that a given ethnic group does not possess to a sufficient extent some quality necessary to achieve a particular goal; Well, let's say that Nation X, due to historical conditions, has not developed enough skills of labor discipline, and this will adversely affect its independent development. But such a judgment—whether true or false—is by no means identical with an attitude. First of all, it does not claim to be a universal assessment of all members of a given ethnic group; moreover, by formulating a particular moment, it is thereby limited by its scope, whereas in a hostile attitude, specific features are subordinated to a general emotionally hostile tone. And finally, the consideration of an ethnic characteristic as a historical one implies the possibility of its change. The judgment that a given group is not ready to assimilate any specific socio-political relations, if it is not just part of a hostile stereotype (most often the thesis about the "immaturity" of this or that people only covers up the colonialist ideology), does not at all mean a negative assessment this group in general and the recognition of its "incapable" of higher social forms. The point is only that the pace and forms of socio-economic development should be consistent with local conditions, including the psychological characteristics of the population. In contrast to the ethnic stereotype, which operates with ready-made and uncritically assimilated clichés, such a judgment presupposes a scientific study of specific ethnopsychology, by the way, perhaps the most backward area of modern social science.

How can one examine the prejudices themselves?

There are two ways of research.

First, prejudice as a psychological phenomenon has its specific carriers. Therefore, in order to understand the origins and mechanism of prejudice, it is necessary to examine the psyche of prejudiced people.

And second, prejudice is a social fact, a social phenomenon. A separate individual learns his ethnic views from the public consciousness. Therefore, in order to understand the nature of ethnic prejudice, it is necessary to study not so much the prejudiced person as the society that gives rise to him. The first way is psychiatry and partly psychology. The second path is the path of sociology, and it seems to us more fruitful. But in order to be convinced of this, it is necessary to consider the first approach, especially since it also provides interesting data.