Social stereotypes and their influence on the perception of the world

• What is a stereotype?
• What are the stereotypes?
• Gender stereotypes: women and men
• Children
• Happiness
• "Correct"...
• What are professional stereotypes: examples

We will talk about stereotypes - norms, canons, laws, customs, traditions, prejudices of society. Most people think they are correct and follow them. Here it is important to distinguish between the concept of the correctness of a stereotype and convention (far-fetchedness). But fictitious stereotypes sometimes control the collective consciousness (including us). Stereotypes of people are primarily divided into global - characteristic of the scale of the planet, and narrow - those that we follow in schools, at work, at home, etc. However, both of them become an illusion that has a lot of followers.

Male models are traditionally classified as gay

Are stereotypes and prejudices the same thing?

In the literature you can often find the statement that stereotypes and prejudices are one and the same thing. Despite the fact that they have certain common features, it is wrong to combine these concepts.

Stereotypes are characterized as stable ideas about a person or situation, which are expressed in one’s own judgments, assessments, perceptions and usually do not need evidence. For example, there is a common stereotype: a woman driving is a bad and inattentive driver.

Prejudices are expressed as certain social personal attitudes that arise from insufficient knowledge or awareness and have prejudice. A prejudice widespread abroad: everyone in Russia drinks all the time.

The difference between the concepts is that prejudices in most cases express a negative perception of the person himself, an action or a situation and do not correspond to reality. For example, ethnic and racial prejudices, when a group of people of a certain nationality are attributed the same negative characteristics.

Stereotypes are not always negative; they often set a certain image that is known to most people and arises in the same way for everyone. For example, ice is hard and cold, but an open fire can burn you. One way or another, prejudice has a narrower concept and has some limitations.

How to get rid of stereotypes

Be aware of your stereotypes

To get rid of stereotypes, you first need to understand which of them you are susceptible to. There may be such a large number of them that it will cause confusion. If so, then choose the ten strongest or those that most destructively influence your life: gender, racial, religious prejudices.

You may also have negative views of musicians, scientists, drivers, children, government officials, and many other classes or groups. But if you realize this, you will take the first step in the right direction.

Recognize the negative effects of stereotypes

This step can be combined with the first because they are closely related. You must find out what bad stereotypes bring into your life. You need to observe all areas of life, even the most unexpected ones or those that at first glance seem not very important:

• Financial sphere.
• Social sphere.
• Physical health.
• Mental health.

For example, thinking of jocks as “dumb and uneducated” may turn you off from going to the gym forever. Well, who will you make worse by this?

You may find that many of your limiting beliefs are based on stereotypes. For example, you are 50 years old and you do not create your own business because you think that you are already too old for this. Although everyone knows examples where people even at an older age achieved enormous success in business.

Lower your self-esteem

To start, reduce your bias towards this advice. Actually, don’t many stereotypes appear due to inflated self-esteem? After all, it’s all immediately clear to him who and what he is. This is a form of ignorance.

Therefore, if you have high self-esteem, admit it to yourself. If you are afraid that such an approach will reduce the quality of life, then think again about the second point and what negative consequences stereotypes have. You will understand that this is a small price to pay to expand your worldview, make a lot of new acquaintances and truly socialize.

Find out the benefits of breaking free from stereotypes

Make a detailed list of how your thinking, beliefs, and values ​​might change if you began to view every person you meet as an individual. Previously, you probably stuck dozens of labels on him, and he didn’t even have time to open his mouth. Judging a person from scratch – isn’t that more interesting?

Surround yourself with a variety of people. Yes, people who are similar to us are more pleasant, but it is so easy to become rusty in conformity. Travel more – at least to other cities.

We wish you good luck!

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We also recommend reading:

• Storytelling
• Social groups: signs, types, functions
• Culture shock and how to overcome it
• Dynamic stereotype: is it good or bad?
• Critical analysis of information: quickly and easily
• Not everything is what it seems
• Distortions of perception and understanding in the process of communication
• Interesting things about cognitive distortions
• Prejudice: mental poison
• Causes of prejudice
• Cognitive schemas

Key words: 1 Communication, 4 Self-knowledge

Types of social groups

It is known that the formation of stereotypes is influenced by the types of social groups. Representatives of a particular community of society have their own commitments and concepts. Let's look at this in more detail. Sociologists distinguish large, small, contact (or primary) and remote (or secondary) types of social groups.

1. Large groups consist of large communities that occur on a global scale. For example, groups composed of social, professional, ethnic, age characteristics. Belonging to a particular group is formed through interaction with organizations that advocate for their rights. For example, a trade union, a national community, a student club, etc.
2. Small groups - friends, neighbors, family, classroom, course. Interaction occurs at the level of personal and emotional contacts. There are specially and spontaneously created small groups, divided on the basis of joint activity, personal and social significance.
3. Contact (or primary) groups are made up of close people who have stable personal connections: relationships between family members, close friends, classmates.
4. Distance (or secondary) groups are made up of people who have formal or temporary relationships with each other - colleagues, acquaintances, connected by work matters.

It is important that in each group, depending on its character, activities and composition, its own social stereotypes are formed and prevail.

In Great Britain it is customary to eat oatmeal for breakfast and drink tea at 5 o'clock.

In fact, the traditional English breakfast is not porridge at all, as many people think, but a much more filling and less healthy dish. So, for breakfast, residents of this country prefer scrambled eggs, sausages, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes and toast with salted butter. And speaking of the notorious five o'clock, it is worth noting that this tradition is often no longer observed.

Functions of social groups

American sociologist Neil Joseph Smelser identifies the following functions of social groups:

• Socialization function: only by being a member of a social group is an individual able to survive, start a family and raise children. A person cannot live alone outside of society; he will be doomed.
• Instrumentality function : a person cannot do without work, he must carry out some kind of activity that allows him to provide himself and his family with everything they need.
• An expressive function in which members of a social group must satisfy the need for respect, trust and goodwill towards each other.
• The supporting function, which aims people to unite in groups in difficult situations and determine joint actions.

One way or another, stereotypes formed in social groups with certain functions are not always true and often interfere with living a full life. Therefore, before succumbing to this or that judgment, you should understand yourself and your own concepts.

Features of social attitudes

If you think that your parents gave you some idea and it has been with you all your life, this is somewhat wrong. We live in a constantly changing world. Therefore, social attitudes are changeable and adapt well to environmental conditions. Society changes and attitudes change too. Information changes and attitudes also change. They do not disappear, but transform into slightly different ones to accommodate the changes. All elements of the structure of a social attitude are closely interconnected, and a change in one of them entails a change in the others. Social attitudes sometimes protect people from intrapersonal conflicts and unpleasant or unacceptable information. They are one of the factors that shape our personality, such as environment, upbringing, mythological thinking. They mean our involvement in a certain group of people in which we lived and were raised.

Types of social attitudes

Social attitudes can be personal, group or public. Personal - which belong only to the individual and are developed as a result of his experience. Group attitudes belong to a group of people and are transmitted to its members, others and children. Public - belonging to the majority of society, at least several countries.

An interesting feature of social attitudes : social attitudes of society become personal, and personal ones turn into group and public ones. By communicating, you learn attitudes from your parents, friends, and they are also learned from you. Only in close communication are attitudes learned.

From a psychological point of view, it is easier to think in terms of social attitudes and stereotypes. Social attitude is a state of psychological readiness of an individual to think and behave in a certain way . It is conscious, based on past social experience and regulates the social behavior of the individual. Social attitudes make it possible to determine what other members of society think about the same issue. Attitudes organize our internal values, our knowledge about the world, about ourselves, they contribute to the resolution of internal conflicts, as a rule, in favor of the attitude.

With their help, we filter information coming from the outside world. They form a filter for the perception of reality. Those. a person does not accept what contradicts his social attitudes. Psychologists and sociologists say that social attitudes do not disappear or appear instantly, they fade away gradually and/or are replaced by others. And at the same time, they greatly influence the mental processes of the individual.

For example, the effect of a personal attitude (perhaps someone has a stereotype), “blacks are worse, stupider than whites.” Individuals in the United States had this attitude, then it became universal. But one day they passed a law that everyone was equal, and after 35 years it became possible for Halle Berry to receive an Oscar, and 40 years later for a black president. Society's attitudes have changed, even if individuals do not think so, public attitudes prevail. And gradually the whole society accepts them, although perhaps with some exceptions. However, they accepted the original attitude towards blacks in the same way. It must be said that social attitudes and thinking stereotypes are understood practically as one and the same thing.

Social stereotypes are standardized inflexible thinking and behavior.

The concept of attitude was introduced to describe the selectivity and direction of human perception. This is an unconscious state that precedes and determines the deployment of any forms of mental activity, a certain readiness of a person to do something. And not just readiness as a predisposition to action (since it can be completely passive), but it is easy to awaken. The presence of a certain attitude indicates the individual’s interest, in this very thing, in doing something important for him. But it's not always bad.

In English, a social attitude corresponds to the term attitude “... a state of consciousness that regulates a person’s attitude and behavior in connection with a certain object in certain conditions, and his psychological experience of the social value, the meaning of the object.

Stereotype is a stronger social attitude, more associated with negativity

Functions of social attitudes

Social attitudes do not appear just like that; their essence is manifested in their functions.

• Adaptive
• Protective
• Self-realizing
• Organizational
• Cognitive

The adaptive function allows you to get used to conditions, to changes, and to select objects to achieve goals. Make decisions faster when integrating into a new society. Social attitudes protect the individual’s psyche and reduce the load on the brain. The cognitive function of social attitudes helps to understand the world and contributes to the choice of certain behavior. The protective function of social attitudes helps in resolving personal and interpersonal conflicts. The organizational function is the ability to organize life and knowledge. Attitudes can also help in a person’s self-realization, bringing hidden, deep-seated motives to life.

Stereotypes: examples from life

Stereotypes: examples from life that have different directions and judgments:

Stereotypes about women

• A woman must obey a man, run a household, give birth and raise children, and care for her husband.
• A woman should not strive for career growth and should not contradict her husband.
• If a woman is divorced, then she is either a bitch, or unhappy, or a prostitute.
• If a woman is successful at work and wealthy, then she is also a bitch, a careerist, someone’s mistress.
• If a woman suddenly began to take care of herself (play sports, eat right, visit a cosmetologist, dress beautifully), then she has a lover, this is all done exclusively for him.
• If a woman is blonde or a blogger, she is stupid.
• A woman driving is a disaster, a source of stupidity and a cause of accidents.

In the Netherlands everyone loves and uses intoxicating substances

Well, this opinion is mutual: the Dutch also believe that all tourists come here just for the weed. At the same time, they themselves do not use drugs, and many even consider it beneath their dignity to smoke weed. According to official data, only 5.4% of the country's residents regularly use intoxicating substances, which is lower than the European average of 6.8%.

Stereotyping

Stereotyping (the formation of social stereotypes) occurs in all people in its own way, therefore, despite its commonality, it has individual characteristics. The process of stereotyping depends on factors such as social influence, environment, family attitudes, and personal perception. When forming a stereotype, the following is taken into account:

• Place of residence: stereotypes of people in small towns are different from stereotypes of residents of big cities.
• Standard of living: stereotypes of poor and rich people differ. The poor believe that the rich did not earn money, but stole it. The rich think that the poor are lazy and stupid.
• Age. The traditional conflict between “fathers and sons” can also be attributed to stereotypes.
• Political views: older people see many advantages in the Soviet system and say that “it was better then.” Young people have a stereotype that it is unproductive to praise everything Soviet now.
• Religious inclinations.

Stereotyping is not a quick process, but it has been very common in recent decades. The imposition and formation of stereotypes is actively taking place through social networks, television, and the Internet. New stereotypes are not always negative, although there are cases where stereotyping causes significant harm.

A striking example of the formation of a positive stereotype can be the stereotype of a girl leading a healthy lifestyle with proper nutrition and exercise. With the right approach, followers may develop a desire to imitate such a stereotype and follow her advice, achieving a beautiful figure. The wrong approach will lead to anorexia, and the girl will get a serious illness in pursuit of her dream body.

Therefore, we emphasize once again that all stereotypes, their formation and perception are individual, they must be followed using a reasonable approach and relying on one’s own experience.

Originally Russian question

The victim of a stereotype can be either the relay of the misconception or the receiving party, a seemingly uninterested party. It’s funny, but in the vast expanses of our vast homeland there are wandering unique ones - two in one. This often occurs among teenagers who consciously choose a socially correct profession, throwing their natural abilities and abilities into the farthest corner of the darkest ideological closet.

The drama of intrapersonal contradiction is the active imposition of one’s own self-criticism on rigid parental stereotypes. The criteria of success, correctness, relevance - in general, the phenomena are very ambiguous, and then there is external pressure. Absolutely trouble! Indeed, in the modern world, such people sooner or later wash up on their “native” shores, but how much time is wasted!?

Before it’s too late, let’s look for the answer to the notorious classic question. What to do with all this mess? What to do if, among all of the above, you found your portrait or an example from your own life?

Naturally, the very first step is awareness of the problem . The second is the creation of a new model of the world . That model that will become your guiding star, a new map with which you can achieve peace and harmony in your own soul.

And the final, final and, perhaps, the most difficult step is accepting yourself as new, on the still old map of the world . Your brain, psyche, soul and even body will need some time to adapt. A somewhat mechanical formulation, but any process of learning and adoption of innovations has a biological nature. Even in such seemingly rather abstract things. This is by no means a five-minute process. Be patient and the boundaries of your world will become wider