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Prejudices against “outsiders” have long been rooted in society and have already become the norm: “if they think in their own way, do not share our opinions and values, then something is wrong with them”. And what exactly is wrong.
Prejudices against “outsiders” have long been rooted in society and have already become the norm: “if they think in their own way, do not share our opinions and values, then something is wrong with them”. And what exactly is wrong - it is easy to determine by sticking this "alien" label that will accompany them for centuries: "Jew", "black", "incorrect". However, this position is fertile ground for the proliferation of viruses such as extreme nationalism, racism, terrorism.
But why do we so easily form preconceived notions about people and phenomena? How does this ethnic bias arise? Are they rooted in the peculiarities of individual psychology or in the structure of social consciousness? How are they passed down from generation to generation? What is authoritarian syndrome and who is especially susceptible to it? Is each of us insured against becoming an executioner or an accomplice? What are the ways and conditions for overcoming ethnic stereotypes? All these issues are discussed in detail by the famous Soviet and Russian psychologist, sociologist and anthropologist Igor Kon in the article "The Psychology of Prejudice", which was written 50 years ago and, it seems, has not lost its relevance. We listen.
The Psychology of Prejudice: On the Socio-Psychological Roots of Ethnic Prejudice (1966)
When the knight Lancelot arrived in the city, enslaved by the cruel Dragon, he, to his surprise, heard about the kindness of the Dragon. First, during the cholera epidemic, the Dragon, having died on the lake, boiled water in it. Secondly, he rid the city of gypsies. “But gypsies are very nice people,” Lancelot was surprised. "What do you! Horrible! - exclaimed archivist Charlemagne. - True, I have never seen a single gypsy in my life. But I learned at school that these people are terrible. They are vagabonds by nature, by blood. They are enemies of any state system, otherwise they would have settled somewhere, rather than wandering back and forth. Their songs lack masculinity and their ideas are destructive. They steal children. They penetrate everywhere. " Please note: Charlemagne himself did not see the gypsies, but their bad qualities do not cause any doubts in him. Even the real Dragon is better than the mythical gypsies. By the way,
E. Schwartz's anti-fascist tale very accurately captures the connection between political despotism and racial discrimination. Prejudices against "outsiders" that have become entrenched in society and become the norm of social behavior divide people, divert their attention from fundamental social problems and thereby help the ruling classes to maintain their power over people.
What is the nature of ethnic prejudice? Are they rooted in the peculiarities of individual psychology or in the structure of social consciousness? How are they passed down from generation to generation? What are the ways and conditions for overcoming them?
These questions are very complex, and we do not claim either to be complete or to finalize our conclusions. We will take the United States of America as our main object. First, it is a leading capitalist country. Secondly, racial and national problems are especially acute in it. Thirdly, progressive US scientists have long and thoroughly investigated these problems, and the material they have accumulated is of great scientific value.
Of course, these problems are different in different countries. American authors are most interested in Negro and Jewish issues. But what is reliably established in this case can, with appropriate adjustments, contribute to understanding and more general problems.
Prejudice, attitude, stereotype
Let's start with some very basic 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, first of all, 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 very definite detail of a machine known to him. The same book is perceived in completely different ways by the reader, the bookseller and the person collecting bindings.
Any act of cognition, communication and labor is preceded by what psychologists call "attitude", which means a certain direction of the personality, a state of readiness, a tendency towards a certain activity capable of satisfying some human needs. Unlike motive, that is, a conscious motivation, the 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. The person who collects bindings sees this aspect of the book first and then everything else. The reader, delighted with a meeting with his favorite author, may not pay attention to the design of the book at all. The system of attitudes, imperceptibly for the person himself, accumulates his previous life experience, the moods of his social environment.
Attitudes of this kind also exist in social psychology, in the sphere of human relationships. When 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 generally accepted that romanticism is characteristic of youth; therefore, meeting this quality in a young man, we consider it natural, and if it is absent, it seems strange. Scientists, by all accounts, are absent-minded; Probably, this quality is not universal, but when we see an organized, collected scientist, we consider him an exception, but the professor, who constantly forgets everything, “confirms the rule”. Biased, that is, not based on fresh, direct assessment of each phenomenon, and the opinion derived from standardized judgments and expectations about the properties of people and phenomena is called a stereotype by psychologists. In other words, stereotyping means 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 people are usually good-natured, Ivanov is a fat man, therefore, he must be good-natured."
Stereotypes are an integral part of everyday consciousness. Not a single person is able to independently, creatively respond to all situations he encounters in life. A stereotype that accumulates a certain standardized collective experience and is instilled in an individual in the process of learning and communicating with others, helps him navigate in life and directs his behavior in a certain way. A stereotype can be true or false. It can evoke both positive and negative emotions. Its essence is that it expresses the attitude, the attitude 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 workers towards these social types. Naturally, hostile classes have completely different stereotypes of the same phenomenon.
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 traits from other human groups) has its own group identity, which fixes its - real and imaginary - specific traits. Any nation is intuitively associated with one way or another. It is often said: "Such and such traits are peculiar to the Japanese" - and assess some of them positively, others negatively.
Twice (in 1933 and 1951) Princeton students had to characterize several different ethnic groups using eighty-four characteristic words ("smart", "brave", "cunning", etc.) and then select five from these characteristics. traits that seem to them to be the most typical for this group. The following picture turned out:
Already in this simple list of traits attributed to a particular group, a certain emotional tone is clearly visible, an attitude towards the evaluated group appears. But are these features reliable, why are these and not others chosen? On the whole, this survey, of course, only gives an idea of the stereotype that exists among Princeton students.
It is even more difficult to assess national customs and mores. Their assessment always depends on who is assessing and from what point of view. Special care is required here. 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 respect. 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, the traditions in which they themselves were brought up. This tendency to consider the phenomena and facts of a foreign culture, a foreign people through the prism of cultural traditions and values of their own people is what is called ethnocentrism in the language of social psychology.
The fact that each person is closer to the customs, morals and forms of behavior in which he was brought up and to which he is accustomed than others is quite normal and natural. A temperamental Italian, a slow Finn may seem sluggish and cold, and he, in turn, may not like southern hotness. Other people's customs sometimes seem not only strange, ridiculous, but also unacceptable. This is as natural as the very differences between ethnic groups and their cultures, which have been 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 psychologically, and then theoretically, justifies the policy of discrimination. This is ethnic bias.
Different authors define this concept differently. In the reference manual by B. Berelson and G. Steiner Human Behavior. Summary of Scientific Evidence "bias is defined as" hostile attitudes towards an ethnic group or its members as such. " In the textbook of social psychology by D. Krech, R. Crutchfield and E. Ballachi, bias is defined as "an unfavorable attitude towards the object, which tends to be extremely stereotyped, emotionally charged and not easily amenable to change under the influence of opposite information." In the 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 stereotyped beliefs; the installation derives more from the internal processes of its carrier,
So, it follows, apparently, that we are talking about a generalized attitude, orienting towards a hostile attitude towards all members of a particular 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 preceding reason and conscious belief; finally, this attitude is very stable and very difficult to change under the influence of rational arguments.
Some authors, such as the renowned American sociologist Robin M. Williams, Jr., supplement this definition with the fact that prejudice is an attitude that conflicts with some important norms or values nominally accepted by a given culture. It is difficult to agree with this. There are known 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." Psychologically, this is true. But this presupposes that there may be, so to speak, a well-founded hostile attitude. And this is already fundamentally impossible. In principle, it is possible, for example, inductively, on the basis of observations, to assert that a given ethnic group does not have enough of some quality necessary to achieve a particular goal; well, let's say that the X nation, due to historical conditions, has not developed enough skills in labor discipline, and this will negatively affect its independent development. But such a judgment, true or false, is not at all identical with an attitude. First of all, it does not claim to be a universal assessment of all members of a given ethnic group; in addition, when formulating a particular moment, it is thereby limited by its scope, while in a hostile attitude, specific features are subordinated to a general emotionally hostile tone. And, finally, considering ethnic characteristics 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 a particular people only covers up the colonialist ideology) does not mean a negative assessment this group in general and its recognition as "incapable" of higher social forms. The point is only that the rates and forms of socio-economic development should be consistent with local conditions, including with the psychological characteristics of the population. In contrast to the ethnic stereotype, which operates with ready-made and uncritically assimilated cliches, such a judgment presupposes a scientific study of a specific ethnopsychology, by the way, perhaps the most backward area of modern social science.
How can you investigate the biases themselves?
There are two ways to explore.
First, prejudice as a psychological phenomenon has its own concrete carriers. Therefore, in order to understand the origins and mechanism of prejudice, it is necessary to investigate the psyche of prejudiced people.
And second: prejudice is a social fact, a social phenomenon. A separate individual assimilates his ethnic views from public consciousness. Therefore, to understand the nature of ethnic prejudice, it is necessary to study not so much the prejudiced person as the society that generates him. The first path is psychiatry and partly psychology. The second path is the path of sociology, and it seems to us more fruitful. But to be convinced of this, it is necessary to consider the first approach, especially since it also gives interesting data.
The inner world of a racist
So, what constitutes the inner world of the most prejudiced people - for brevity, we will call them racists, although many of them do not at all share racial theory in the generally accepted sense of the word?
Needless to say, understanding the psychology of vigilantes, pogromists, fascist thugs is not a pleasant job. But, as one writer aptly remarked, microbes do not become more dangerous because the microscope enlarges them. In the minds of a person brought up in the spirit of internationalism, it does not fit how one can hate another for the color of his skin, the shape of his nose or the shape of his eyes. When you remember the horrors of Auschwitz or the bloody anti-black terror of American racists, you involuntarily think: this cannot be, people are not capable of such things, this is some kind of pathology! And yet it was and is. And not as an exception, but as a mass phenomenon.
In his play dedicated to Auschwitz, Peter Weiss writes:
Usually people who are prejudiced against a particular ethnic group are unaware of their bias. They are sure that their hostility towards this group is quite natural, as it is caused by its bad qualities or bad behavior. They often support their reasoning with facts from personal communication with people of a certain nationality: “I know these Mexicans! We had one of this kind, nothing to eat with him! ... "
Of course, this reasoning is devoid of logic: no matter how unpleasant a familiar Mexican may be, there is no reason to think that everyone else is the same. But, despite the absurdity of this reasoning, it seems understandable - people often make unfounded generalizations, and not only in the sphere of ethnic relations. Therefore, some sociologists argue that ethnic prejudice grows primarily from unfavorable personal contacts between individuals belonging to different groups. Although this theory is rejected by science, it is widely used in everyday consciousness.
Usually the case is presented like this. In the process of communication between people, various conflicts often occur and negative emotions arise. When the conflicting individuals belong to the same ethnic group, the conflict remains private. But if these people belong to different nationalities, the conflict situation is easily generalized - a negative assessment of one individual by another turns into a negative stereotype of an ethnic group: all Mexicans are like that, all Japanese are like that.
There is no doubt - adverse personal contacts do play a role in the fact that prejudices arise and perpetuate. They can explain why this bias is more pronounced in one person and less in another. However, they do not explain the origin of bias as such. Children raised in racist families display a high degree of prejudice against blacks, even if they have never met a black man in their life.
The failure of the individual psychological explanation of prejudice was proved by the experience of the American sociologist Y. Hartley. He asked a large group of average Americans - people of not particularly high cultural level - about what they think about the moral and other qualities of various peoples. Among the peoples listed by him, three were named that never existed at all. No one has ever had any personal unpleasant encounters with the Danireans. There were no grandmother's fairy tales or history textbooks that would tell that three centuries ago there was a war with the Danireans, during which they were very atrocities, and that, in general, the Danireans are bad people. None of this happened. And, nevertheless, the opinion about these fictional groups turned out to be sharply negative. Nothing is known about them,
An individual's personal experience is by no means a cause of bias. As a rule, this experience is preceded and largely predetermined by a stereotype. Communicating with other people, a person perceives and evaluates them in the light of the attitudes already existing in him. Therefore, he is inclined to notice some things and not notice others. This idea is well illustrated by the observation of the famous Russian linguist Baudouin de Courtenay - M. Gorky quotes his words in "The Life of Klim Samgin": "When a Russian steals, they say:" A thief stole, "and when a Jew steals, they say: "A Jew stole. "Why? Because, in accordance with the stereotype (Jewish crooks), attention is focused not so much on the fact of theft as on the nationality of the thief.
Since a person chooses his own impressions, it is not difficult for a prejudiced person to find examples that confirm his point of view. When his personal experience contradicts the stereotype, for example, a person convinced of the intellectual inferiority of blacks meets a black professor, he perceives this fact as an exception. There are known cases when ardent anti-Semites had friends among Jews; the logic here is very simple: a positive assessment of an individual only emphasizes a negative attitude towards an ethnic group as a whole.
The irrationality of prejudice is not only in the fact that it can exist independently of personal experience - I have never seen gypsies, but I know that they are bad - it even contradicts it. It is no less important that the attitude as a whole is actually independent of those specific features that it claims to be a generalization of. What does it mean? When people explain their hostility to any ethnic group, its customs, etc., they usually name some specific negative traits inherent, in their opinion, this group. However, the same traits, taken without regard to this group, do not at all cause a negative assessment or are evaluated much more leniently. “Lincoln worked late into the night? This proves his hard work, perseverance, perseverance and desire to use his abilities to the end. Do the "outsiders" do the same - the Jews or the Japanese? It only testifies to their exploitative spirit, unfair competition and that they maliciously undermine American norms. "
Sociologists Sanger and Flowerman took a few traits from the usual stereotype that "explains" bad attitudes towards Jews, and began to question prejudiced people what they think about these traits - greed, materialism, aggressiveness as such. It turned out that when it comes to Jews, these traits evoke a sharply negative attitude. When it comes to non-Jews, the same traits are evaluated differently. For example, a trait such as greed was assessed positively among Jews by 18 percent, neutrally - by 22, and negatively - by 60 percent of those polled. The same trait "at home" (that is, among the Americans) caused 23 percent of positive, 32 neutral and 45 percent of negative assessments. Aggressiveness among Jews was approved by 38 percent. The same trait in relation to their own group gave 54 percent of the approving marks. The case, therefore, not at all in individual properties attributed to an ethnic group, but in a general negative attitude towards it. Explanations for hostility can change and even contradict one another, but the hostility nevertheless remains. The easiest way to show this is by the example of the same anti-Semitism. In the Middle Ages, the main "argument" against the Jews was that they crucified Christ, who was himself a Jew, and, therefore, it was not about national, but about religious enmity; many believed that the Jews had tails, and they were also considered unclean in the physical sense. Today, few people argue that Jews are unscrupulous. Lost its meaning for most people and religious strife. And the prejudice remained. Hitler's propaganda, in order to incite ordinary people on Jews, spoke of "Jewish capital",
By the way, due to the diversity of individuals making up any nation, and the inconsistency of any national culture, any feature of an ethnic stereotype can be equally easily “proven” and “refuted”.
However, stereotyped thinking does not delve into contradictions and “subtleties”. It takes one, the first feature it comes across, and through it evaluates the whole. How does it evaluate? It depends on the installation. For a Zionist, Jews are the embodiment of all kinds of virtues, for an anti-Semite, they are the embodiment of all kinds of vices. An anti-Semitic stereotype of the same formal and external features can symbolize a wide variety of social attitudes - petty-bourgeois opposition to big capital ("Jewish capital"), hostility of the ruling class to social change ("eternal troublemakers") and , specifically, anti-communism, militant anti-intellectualism (a Jew symbolizes intellectual in general). In all these cases, the hostile attitude is not at all a generalization of empirical facts,
Against any national minority, any group that causes prejudice, the same standard accusation is always brought forward - “these people” show too high a degree of group solidarity, they always support each other, so they should be feared. This is what they say about any national minority. What is really behind such an accusation?
Small ethnic groups, and especially those discriminated against, generally display a higher degree of cohesion than large nations. Discrimination itself is a factor contributing to this cohesion. The prejudice of the majority creates in the members of such a group an acute sense of their exclusivity, their difference from other people. And this, naturally, brings them closer together, makes them hold on to each other more. This is not associated with any specific mental or racial characteristics.
No wonder, after all, one of the writers said that if tomorrow they began to persecute redheads, then the day after tomorrow all the redheads would begin to sympathize and support each other. Over time, this sense of solidarity will become a habit and will be passed on from generation to generation. And this solidarity would not be cemented by the color of the hair, but by the hostile attitude from the rest of society. In this sense, ethnic prejudices and any forms of discrimination actively contribute to the preservation of national isolation and the formation of extreme forms of nationalism among small peoples.
Faced with the fact of the irrationality of ethnic prejudices, many scientists tried to explain them purely psychologically, by the peculiarities of individual psychology, by the inability of a person to rationally comprehend his own life. Such, for example, is the famous scapegoat theory, or, in scientific terms, the theory of frustration and aggression. The psychological side of it is very simple. When a person's aspiration does not receive satisfaction, is blocked, this creates a state of tension, irritation - frustration in the human psyche. Frustration seeks some kind of release and often finds it in an act of aggression, and the object of this aggression can be any object that is not at all connected with the source of the tension itself. Most often it is someone weak, unable to stand up for themselves. This is a well-known displacement mechanism such as how irritation arising on the basis of office troubles is often taken out on their own children. One of Bidstrup's caricatures can serve as a vivid illustration of it: the boss scolds his subordinate, the subordinate, not daring to answer the superiors, in turn yells at someone subordinate, he gives a slap on the head of the messenger boy, the boy kicks the dog, and when the boss leaves the office, an angry dog bites him. The circle closed, everyone took out their failure and their irritation on some object available to him. he slaps the delivery boy on the head, the boy kicks the dog, and when the boss leaves the office, the angry dog bites him. The circle closed, everyone took out their failure and their irritation on some object available to him. he slaps the delivery boy on the head, the boy kicks the dog, and when the boss leaves the office, the angry dog bites him. The circle closed, everyone took out their failure and their irritation on some object available to him.
The same mechanism, we are told, exists in social psychology. When people, society as a whole have some insurmountable difficulties, people unconsciously look for someone to take them out on. More often than not, this scapegoat is a racial or national group. It is not for nothing, as history testifies, that the problems associated with national minorities are especially aggravated during periods when society is going through a crisis.
The displacement theory is supported by both everyday experience and special experiments. Social psychologists Miller and Bugelsky conducted, for example, the following experiment. A group of teenagers, which included several Japanese and Mexicans, was taken to a summer camp. Then the leadership of the camp deliberately created a number of difficulties that caused frustration (tension) among the children. The Japanese and Mexicans had nothing to do with these difficulties, nevertheless, hostility against them grew, the comrades took out their irritation on them.
However, the displacement theory is very one-sided. First, frustration does not always lead to aggression, it can also cause a state of depression, or anger against oneself, or, finally, a struggle with the real source of difficulties. Secondly, this theory does not answer the question of why one, and not the other, is taken as a scapegoat. In particular, the experience of Miller and Bugelsky only proves that the conflict situation exacerbates ethnic strife, which was caused by a previously existing hostile attitude. Other studies, in particular the work of D. Witherly, show that people choose not the first object they come across as a scapegoat, but those to whom they have previously been most hostile. Consequently, the mechanism of displacement explains only some aspects of the operation of prejudice, but not its origin.
These remarks also apply to attempts at psychoanalytic explanations of ethnic prejudice, in particular the theory of projection.
According to Freud, in the psyche of an individual there are certain unconscious impulses and aspirations ("It"), which contradict his conscious self and the moral norms he has assimilated (superego). The conflict between It, I and the Super-I creates tension, anxiety in the human psyche, for the weakening of which there are several unconscious defense mechanisms with the help of which unwanted information is forced out of consciousness. One of such mechanisms is projection: the individual unconsciously projects his own aspirations and impulses, contrary to his self-consciousness and moral attitudes, and ascribes to others.
Prejudices against “outsiders” have long been rooted in society and have already become the norm: “if they think in their own way, do not share our opinions and values, then something is wrong with them”. And what exactly is wrong - it is easy to determine by sticking this "alien" label that will accompany them for centuries: "Jew", "black", "incorrect". However, this position is fertile ground for the proliferation of viruses such as extreme nationalism, racism, terrorism.
But why do we so easily form preconceived notions about people and phenomena? How does this ethnic bias arise? Are they rooted in the peculiarities of individual psychology or in the structure of social consciousness? How are they passed down from generation to generation? What is authoritarian syndrome and who is especially susceptible to it? Is each of us insured against becoming an executioner or an accomplice? What are the ways and conditions for overcoming ethnic stereotypes? All these issues are discussed in detail by the famous Soviet and Russian psychologist, sociologist and anthropologist Igor Kon in the article "The Psychology of Prejudice", which was written 50 years ago and, it seems, has not lost its relevance. We listen.
The Psychology of Prejudice: On the Socio-Psychological Roots of Ethnic Prejudice (1966)
When the knight Lancelot arrived in the city, enslaved by the cruel Dragon, he, to his surprise, heard about the kindness of the Dragon. First, during the cholera epidemic, the Dragon, having died on the lake, boiled water in it. Secondly, he rid the city of gypsies. “But gypsies are very nice people,” Lancelot was surprised. "What do you! Horrible! - exclaimed archivist Charlemagne. - True, I have never seen a single gypsy in my life. But I learned at school that these people are terrible. They are vagabonds by nature, by blood. They are enemies of any state system, otherwise they would have settled somewhere, rather than wandering back and forth. Their songs lack masculinity and their ideas are destructive. They steal children. They penetrate everywhere. " Please note: Charlemagne himself did not see the gypsies, but their bad qualities do not cause any doubts in him. Even the real Dragon is better than the mythical gypsies. By the way,
E. Schwartz's anti-fascist tale very accurately captures the connection between political despotism and racial discrimination. Prejudices against "outsiders" that have become entrenched in society and become the norm of social behavior divide people, divert their attention from fundamental social problems and thereby help the ruling classes to maintain their power over people.
What is the nature of ethnic prejudice? Are they rooted in the peculiarities of individual psychology or in the structure of social consciousness? How are they passed down from generation to generation? What are the ways and conditions for overcoming them?
These questions are very complex, and we do not claim either to be complete or to finalize our conclusions. We will take the United States of America as our main object. First, it is a leading capitalist country. Secondly, racial and national problems are especially acute in it. Thirdly, progressive US scientists have long and thoroughly investigated these problems, and the material they have accumulated is of great scientific value.
Of course, these problems are different in different countries. American authors are most interested in Negro and Jewish issues. But what is reliably established in this case can, with appropriate adjustments, contribute to understanding and more general problems.
Prejudice, attitude, stereotype
Let's start with some very basic 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, first of all, 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 very definite detail of a machine known to him. The same book is perceived in completely different ways by the reader, the bookseller and the person collecting bindings.
Any act of cognition, communication and labor is preceded by what psychologists call "attitude", which means a certain direction of the personality, a state of readiness, a tendency towards a certain activity capable of satisfying some human needs. Unlike motive, that is, a conscious motivation, the 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. The person who collects bindings sees this aspect of the book first and then everything else. The reader, delighted with a meeting with his favorite author, may not pay attention to the design of the book at all. The system of attitudes, imperceptibly for the person himself, accumulates his previous life experience, the moods of his social environment.
Attitudes of this kind also exist in social psychology, in the sphere of human relationships. When 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 generally accepted that romanticism is characteristic of youth; therefore, meeting this quality in a young man, we consider it natural, and if it is absent, it seems strange. Scientists, by all accounts, are absent-minded; Probably, this quality is not universal, but when we see an organized, collected scientist, we consider him an exception, but the professor, who constantly forgets everything, “confirms the rule”. Biased, that is, not based on fresh, direct assessment of each phenomenon, and the opinion derived from standardized judgments and expectations about the properties of people and phenomena is called a stereotype by psychologists. In other words, stereotyping means 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 people are usually good-natured, Ivanov is a fat man, therefore, he must be good-natured."
Stereotypes are an integral part of everyday consciousness. Not a single person is able to independently, creatively respond to all situations he encounters in life. A stereotype that accumulates a certain standardized collective experience and is instilled in an individual in the process of learning and communicating with others, helps him navigate in life and directs his behavior in a certain way. A stereotype can be true or false. It can evoke both positive and negative emotions. Its essence is that it expresses the attitude, the attitude 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 workers towards these social types. Naturally, hostile classes have completely different stereotypes of the same phenomenon.
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 traits from other human groups) has its own group identity, which fixes its - real and imaginary - specific traits. Any nation is intuitively associated with one way or another. It is often said: "Such and such traits are peculiar to the Japanese" - and assess some of them positively, others negatively.
Twice (in 1933 and 1951) Princeton students had to characterize several different ethnic groups using eighty-four characteristic words ("smart", "brave", "cunning", etc.) and then select five from these characteristics. traits that seem to them to be the most typical for this group. The following picture turned out:
- Americans are enterprising, capable, materialistic, ambitious, progressive;
- the British are athletic, capable, abide by conventions, love traditions, are conservative;
- Jews are smart, greedy, enterprising, stingy, capable;
- Italians are artistic, impulsive, passionate, quick-tempered, musical;
- Irish people are pugnacious, quick-tempered, witty, honest, very religious, etc.
Already in this simple list of traits attributed to a particular group, a certain emotional tone is clearly visible, an attitude towards the evaluated group appears. But are these features reliable, why are these and not others chosen? On the whole, this survey, of course, only gives an idea of the stereotype that exists among Princeton students.
It is even more difficult to assess national customs and mores. Their assessment always depends on who is assessing and from what point of view. Special care is required here. 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 respect. 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, the traditions in which they themselves were brought up. This tendency to consider the phenomena and facts of a foreign culture, a foreign people through the prism of cultural traditions and values of their own people is what is called ethnocentrism in the language of social psychology.
The fact that each person is closer to the customs, morals and forms of behavior in which he was brought up and to which he is accustomed than others is quite normal and natural. A temperamental Italian, a slow Finn may seem sluggish and cold, and he, in turn, may not like southern hotness. Other people's customs sometimes seem not only strange, ridiculous, but also unacceptable. This is as natural as the very differences between ethnic groups and their cultures, which have been 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 psychologically, and then theoretically, justifies the policy of discrimination. This is ethnic bias.
Different authors define this concept differently. In the reference manual by B. Berelson and G. Steiner Human Behavior. Summary of Scientific Evidence "bias is defined as" hostile attitudes towards an ethnic group or its members as such. " In the textbook of social psychology by D. Krech, R. Crutchfield and E. Ballachi, bias is defined as "an unfavorable attitude towards the object, which tends to be extremely stereotyped, emotionally charged and not easily amenable to change under the influence of opposite information." In the 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 stereotyped beliefs; the installation derives more from the internal processes of its carrier,
So, it follows, apparently, that we are talking about a generalized attitude, orienting towards a hostile attitude towards all members of a particular 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 preceding reason and conscious belief; finally, this attitude is very stable and very difficult to change under the influence of rational arguments.
Some authors, such as the renowned American sociologist Robin M. Williams, Jr., supplement this definition with the fact that prejudice is an attitude that conflicts with some important norms or values nominally accepted by a given culture. It is difficult to agree with this. There are known 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." Psychologically, this is true. But this presupposes that there may be, so to speak, a well-founded hostile attitude. And this is already fundamentally impossible. In principle, it is possible, for example, inductively, on the basis of observations, to assert that a given ethnic group does not have enough of some quality necessary to achieve a particular goal; well, let's say that the X nation, due to historical conditions, has not developed enough skills in labor discipline, and this will negatively affect its independent development. But such a judgment, true or false, is not at all identical with an attitude. First of all, it does not claim to be a universal assessment of all members of a given ethnic group; in addition, when formulating a particular moment, it is thereby limited by its scope, while in a hostile attitude, specific features are subordinated to a general emotionally hostile tone. And, finally, considering ethnic characteristics 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 a particular people only covers up the colonialist ideology) does not mean a negative assessment this group in general and its recognition as "incapable" of higher social forms. The point is only that the rates and forms of socio-economic development should be consistent with local conditions, including with the psychological characteristics of the population. In contrast to the ethnic stereotype, which operates with ready-made and uncritically assimilated cliches, such a judgment presupposes a scientific study of a specific ethnopsychology, by the way, perhaps the most backward area of modern social science.
How can you investigate the biases themselves?
There are two ways to explore.
First, prejudice as a psychological phenomenon has its own concrete carriers. Therefore, in order to understand the origins and mechanism of prejudice, it is necessary to investigate the psyche of prejudiced people.
And second: prejudice is a social fact, a social phenomenon. A separate individual assimilates his ethnic views from public consciousness. Therefore, to understand the nature of ethnic prejudice, it is necessary to study not so much the prejudiced person as the society that generates him. The first path is psychiatry and partly psychology. The second path is the path of sociology, and it seems to us more fruitful. But to be convinced of this, it is necessary to consider the first approach, especially since it also gives interesting data.
The inner world of a racist
So, what constitutes the inner world of the most prejudiced people - for brevity, we will call them racists, although many of them do not at all share racial theory in the generally accepted sense of the word?
Needless to say, understanding the psychology of vigilantes, pogromists, fascist thugs is not a pleasant job. But, as one writer aptly remarked, microbes do not become more dangerous because the microscope enlarges them. In the minds of a person brought up in the spirit of internationalism, it does not fit how one can hate another for the color of his skin, the shape of his nose or the shape of his eyes. When you remember the horrors of Auschwitz or the bloody anti-black terror of American racists, you involuntarily think: this cannot be, people are not capable of such things, this is some kind of pathology! And yet it was and is. And not as an exception, but as a mass phenomenon.
In his play dedicated to Auschwitz, Peter Weiss writes:
No, this is, of course, a poetic exaggeration! People are not puppets, and not everyone is suitable for the role of executioner. But how does a normal person become, if not an executioner, but his accomplice? Fiction has more than once revealed this process in various aspects. Let's see what he looks like in the light of psychology, and we will consider not "extreme" cases, not those who commit monstrous atrocities, but a "simple", "ordinary" racist, on whose conscience there are no crimes. He just doesn't like blacks, or Jews, or Japanese, or Irish, or all of them put together. Why? How does he understand this himself? And what does he not understand?
Usually people who are prejudiced against a particular ethnic group are unaware of their bias. They are sure that their hostility towards this group is quite natural, as it is caused by its bad qualities or bad behavior. They often support their reasoning with facts from personal communication with people of a certain nationality: “I know these Mexicans! We had one of this kind, nothing to eat with him! ... "
Of course, this reasoning is devoid of logic: no matter how unpleasant a familiar Mexican may be, there is no reason to think that everyone else is the same. But, despite the absurdity of this reasoning, it seems understandable - people often make unfounded generalizations, and not only in the sphere of ethnic relations. Therefore, some sociologists argue that ethnic prejudice grows primarily from unfavorable personal contacts between individuals belonging to different groups. Although this theory is rejected by science, it is widely used in everyday consciousness.
Usually the case is presented like this. In the process of communication between people, various conflicts often occur and negative emotions arise. When the conflicting individuals belong to the same ethnic group, the conflict remains private. But if these people belong to different nationalities, the conflict situation is easily generalized - a negative assessment of one individual by another turns into a negative stereotype of an ethnic group: all Mexicans are like that, all Japanese are like that.
There is no doubt - adverse personal contacts do play a role in the fact that prejudices arise and perpetuate. They can explain why this bias is more pronounced in one person and less in another. However, they do not explain the origin of bias as such. Children raised in racist families display a high degree of prejudice against blacks, even if they have never met a black man in their life.
The failure of the individual psychological explanation of prejudice was proved by the experience of the American sociologist Y. Hartley. He asked a large group of average Americans - people of not particularly high cultural level - about what they think about the moral and other qualities of various peoples. Among the peoples listed by him, three were named that never existed at all. No one has ever had any personal unpleasant encounters with the Danireans. There were no grandmother's fairy tales or history textbooks that would tell that three centuries ago there was a war with the Danireans, during which they were very atrocities, and that, in general, the Danireans are bad people. None of this happened. And, nevertheless, the opinion about these fictional groups turned out to be sharply negative. Nothing is known about them,
An individual's personal experience is by no means a cause of bias. As a rule, this experience is preceded and largely predetermined by a stereotype. Communicating with other people, a person perceives and evaluates them in the light of the attitudes already existing in him. Therefore, he is inclined to notice some things and not notice others. This idea is well illustrated by the observation of the famous Russian linguist Baudouin de Courtenay - M. Gorky quotes his words in "The Life of Klim Samgin": "When a Russian steals, they say:" A thief stole, "and when a Jew steals, they say: "A Jew stole. "Why? Because, in accordance with the stereotype (Jewish crooks), attention is focused not so much on the fact of theft as on the nationality of the thief.
Since a person chooses his own impressions, it is not difficult for a prejudiced person to find examples that confirm his point of view. When his personal experience contradicts the stereotype, for example, a person convinced of the intellectual inferiority of blacks meets a black professor, he perceives this fact as an exception. There are known cases when ardent anti-Semites had friends among Jews; the logic here is very simple: a positive assessment of an individual only emphasizes a negative attitude towards an ethnic group as a whole.
The irrationality of prejudice is not only in the fact that it can exist independently of personal experience - I have never seen gypsies, but I know that they are bad - it even contradicts it. It is no less important that the attitude as a whole is actually independent of those specific features that it claims to be a generalization of. What does it mean? When people explain their hostility to any ethnic group, its customs, etc., they usually name some specific negative traits inherent, in their opinion, this group. However, the same traits, taken without regard to this group, do not at all cause a negative assessment or are evaluated much more leniently. “Lincoln worked late into the night? This proves his hard work, perseverance, perseverance and desire to use his abilities to the end. Do the "outsiders" do the same - the Jews or the Japanese? It only testifies to their exploitative spirit, unfair competition and that they maliciously undermine American norms. "
Sociologists Sanger and Flowerman took a few traits from the usual stereotype that "explains" bad attitudes towards Jews, and began to question prejudiced people what they think about these traits - greed, materialism, aggressiveness as such. It turned out that when it comes to Jews, these traits evoke a sharply negative attitude. When it comes to non-Jews, the same traits are evaluated differently. For example, a trait such as greed was assessed positively among Jews by 18 percent, neutrally - by 22, and negatively - by 60 percent of those polled. The same trait "at home" (that is, among the Americans) caused 23 percent of positive, 32 neutral and 45 percent of negative assessments. Aggressiveness among Jews was approved by 38 percent. The same trait in relation to their own group gave 54 percent of the approving marks. The case, therefore, not at all in individual properties attributed to an ethnic group, but in a general negative attitude towards it. Explanations for hostility can change and even contradict one another, but the hostility nevertheless remains. The easiest way to show this is by the example of the same anti-Semitism. In the Middle Ages, the main "argument" against the Jews was that they crucified Christ, who was himself a Jew, and, therefore, it was not about national, but about religious enmity; many believed that the Jews had tails, and they were also considered unclean in the physical sense. Today, few people argue that Jews are unscrupulous. Lost its meaning for most people and religious strife. And the prejudice remained. Hitler's propaganda, in order to incite ordinary people on Jews, spoke of "Jewish capital",
By the way, due to the diversity of individuals making up any nation, and the inconsistency of any national culture, any feature of an ethnic stereotype can be equally easily “proven” and “refuted”.
However, stereotyped thinking does not delve into contradictions and “subtleties”. It takes one, the first feature it comes across, and through it evaluates the whole. How does it evaluate? It depends on the installation. For a Zionist, Jews are the embodiment of all kinds of virtues, for an anti-Semite, they are the embodiment of all kinds of vices. An anti-Semitic stereotype of the same formal and external features can symbolize a wide variety of social attitudes - petty-bourgeois opposition to big capital ("Jewish capital"), hostility of the ruling class to social change ("eternal troublemakers") and , specifically, anti-communism, militant anti-intellectualism (a Jew symbolizes intellectual in general). In all these cases, the hostile attitude is not at all a generalization of empirical facts,
Against any national minority, any group that causes prejudice, the same standard accusation is always brought forward - “these people” show too high a degree of group solidarity, they always support each other, so they should be feared. This is what they say about any national minority. What is really behind such an accusation?
Small ethnic groups, and especially those discriminated against, generally display a higher degree of cohesion than large nations. Discrimination itself is a factor contributing to this cohesion. The prejudice of the majority creates in the members of such a group an acute sense of their exclusivity, their difference from other people. And this, naturally, brings them closer together, makes them hold on to each other more. This is not associated with any specific mental or racial characteristics.
No wonder, after all, one of the writers said that if tomorrow they began to persecute redheads, then the day after tomorrow all the redheads would begin to sympathize and support each other. Over time, this sense of solidarity will become a habit and will be passed on from generation to generation. And this solidarity would not be cemented by the color of the hair, but by the hostile attitude from the rest of society. In this sense, ethnic prejudices and any forms of discrimination actively contribute to the preservation of national isolation and the formation of extreme forms of nationalism among small peoples.
Faced with the fact of the irrationality of ethnic prejudices, many scientists tried to explain them purely psychologically, by the peculiarities of individual psychology, by the inability of a person to rationally comprehend his own life. Such, for example, is the famous scapegoat theory, or, in scientific terms, the theory of frustration and aggression. The psychological side of it is very simple. When a person's aspiration does not receive satisfaction, is blocked, this creates a state of tension, irritation - frustration in the human psyche. Frustration seeks some kind of release and often finds it in an act of aggression, and the object of this aggression can be any object that is not at all connected with the source of the tension itself. Most often it is someone weak, unable to stand up for themselves. This is a well-known displacement mechanism such as how irritation arising on the basis of office troubles is often taken out on their own children. One of Bidstrup's caricatures can serve as a vivid illustration of it: the boss scolds his subordinate, the subordinate, not daring to answer the superiors, in turn yells at someone subordinate, he gives a slap on the head of the messenger boy, the boy kicks the dog, and when the boss leaves the office, an angry dog bites him. The circle closed, everyone took out their failure and their irritation on some object available to him. he slaps the delivery boy on the head, the boy kicks the dog, and when the boss leaves the office, the angry dog bites him. The circle closed, everyone took out their failure and their irritation on some object available to him. he slaps the delivery boy on the head, the boy kicks the dog, and when the boss leaves the office, the angry dog bites him. The circle closed, everyone took out their failure and their irritation on some object available to him.
The same mechanism, we are told, exists in social psychology. When people, society as a whole have some insurmountable difficulties, people unconsciously look for someone to take them out on. More often than not, this scapegoat is a racial or national group. It is not for nothing, as history testifies, that the problems associated with national minorities are especially aggravated during periods when society is going through a crisis.
The displacement theory is supported by both everyday experience and special experiments. Social psychologists Miller and Bugelsky conducted, for example, the following experiment. A group of teenagers, which included several Japanese and Mexicans, was taken to a summer camp. Then the leadership of the camp deliberately created a number of difficulties that caused frustration (tension) among the children. The Japanese and Mexicans had nothing to do with these difficulties, nevertheless, hostility against them grew, the comrades took out their irritation on them.
However, the displacement theory is very one-sided. First, frustration does not always lead to aggression, it can also cause a state of depression, or anger against oneself, or, finally, a struggle with the real source of difficulties. Secondly, this theory does not answer the question of why one, and not the other, is taken as a scapegoat. In particular, the experience of Miller and Bugelsky only proves that the conflict situation exacerbates ethnic strife, which was caused by a previously existing hostile attitude. Other studies, in particular the work of D. Witherly, show that people choose not the first object they come across as a scapegoat, but those to whom they have previously been most hostile. Consequently, the mechanism of displacement explains only some aspects of the operation of prejudice, but not its origin.
These remarks also apply to attempts at psychoanalytic explanations of ethnic prejudice, in particular the theory of projection.
According to Freud, in the psyche of an individual there are certain unconscious impulses and aspirations ("It"), which contradict his conscious self and the moral norms he has assimilated (superego). The conflict between It, I and the Super-I creates tension, anxiety in the human psyche, for the weakening of which there are several unconscious defense mechanisms with the help of which unwanted information is forced out of consciousness. One of such mechanisms is projection: the individual unconsciously projects his own aspirations and impulses, contrary to his self-consciousness and moral attitudes, and ascribes to others.
