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We laugh at jokes about Chukchi and blondes, we doubt the right of sexual minorities to hold a gay parade on our streets, or we are looking for employees “under 40”. This is how our stereotypes work. How do they arise, what is their meaning and why is it better to be aware of them?
Recently my car broke down. In the middle of an intersection, at half past one in the night, in one of the sleeping areas, in the pouring rain. Five or six passing cars did not respond to my pleas for help. And I was already wondering how much it would cost to call a tow truck when a battered Lada slowed down next to me.
“What happened dear?” asked a heavyset Caucasian from the driver’s seat. I explained. “Yeah,” he drawled. – That’s bad. Are you far from home?” “Very,” I answered honestly. The Caucasian sighed and said: “Listen, you wait ten minutes, I will take my wife and come, right?” And left. Of course, I called a tow truck, but exactly ten minutes later the same Zhiguli stopped near me, and the driver got out into the rain, holding a tow rope. “Let’s go, huh?” – he said, as Yuri Gagarin would probably say if he happened to be born in the Caucasus. And we went.
He towed me home on a slippery road to the other side of town. He shook hands and was indignant when I tried to give him at least some money: “Why are you offending me, dear? If we don’t help each other, how will we live, right? And while I stood with my mouth open, my savior suddenly nimbly jumped into the car and was like that. What shocked me most of all was not even the disinterested help of a stranger, but my reaction. I confessed to myself with shame that it was from a Caucasian that I least of all expected such an act. But why? I was absolutely sure that I was free from such stereotypes.
Who came up with the stereotypes
The word “stereotype” was coined in the 1920s by the American journalist Walter Lippman. More precisely, he borrowed from printers, who designate them a ready-made printing form that allows you to reproduce the text many times. Lippman believed that stereotypes have four main properties: they simplify reality, they are false, they are acquired from the outside, and not developed by the person himself, they are very tenacious. He wrote about this in the book “Public Opinion”.
Since then, psychologists’ ideas about stereotypes have changed, as have the ways in which they are assessed. The desire to find out the degree of my own bias led me to the website of Harvard University (USA), where you can take tests of implicit (hidden, implicit) associations, including in Russian. I was offered to complete simple tasks as quickly as possible, grouping images of different people with words describing basic concepts: “good-bad”, “joy-sadness”.
The speed of reaction makes it possible to judge the existing stereotypes and the degree of their severity. The test results only confirmed my unpleasant discovery. “You automatically prefer fair-skinned people,” the computer told me dispassionately.
How persistent are stereotypes
“If we are constantly confronted with information that contradicts them, they are destroyed. – comments social psychologist Hakob Nazaretyan. But sometimes the stereotype can turn 180 degrees. Let’s say my generation thought that all black people were the nicest people. But in 1957, the Festival of Youth and Students was held in Moscow. A lot of blacks came to it: carriers of a completely different culture, other values. They were different. But what conclusion did many of my peers draw? “Yes, they are all wild, and they are rightly crushed there!” The stereotype has turned over… Everyone has stereotypical thinking, but for some it is peripheral, while for others it is dominant. In the latter case, it is very difficult to part with stereotypes.”
Stereotype functions
“I don’t think you should worry too much about the test results,” social psychologist Hakob Nazaretyan reassured me. – Stereotypes are characteristic of everyone, and we must take it for granted. Moreover, initially stereotypes allowed people to save mental effort, and their absence could be a serious danger. Historically, the division into friends and foes according to belonging to the same tribe, skin color, language or religion was absolutely necessary. Stereotypes made it possible to automatically perceive non-self as a source of threat – and for many centuries this was most often the case. Therefore, it is completely pointless to be upset that we have stereotypes.
According to the psychologist, stereotypes, like robots, carry out the most primitive sorting of information that continuously enters our brain: round parts to the left, square parts to the right. Light-skinned to their own, dark-skinned to strangers – or vice versa. “Stereotypes were just unlucky,” says psychologist Galina Soldatova. – Lippman initially spoke about public consciousness, in particular about the stereotypical perception of people of other nationalities. Therefore, the word immediately acquired a negative connotation.
Sometimes prejudices and stereotypes act like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But stereotypes are also our ability to categorize the world. For example, we enter a room and see a chair. We immediately understand that this is a chair, and people are sitting on chairs. We don’t have to puzzle over what this thing is and what it is for.”
But if in the case of the chair our “robots” operate flawlessly, then the program of dividing the world into friends and foes seems to be very outdated. After all, today there is no benefit from national stereotypes. Or is there anyway? “It is difficult to answer this question unequivocally,” says Hakob Nazaretyan. – In Israel, for example, there are a number of religious fanatics who can crash a neighbor’s car for starting it on Saturday. 90% of the country’s inhabitants treat them with antipathy. But everyone understands that it is thanks to them that the state of Israel exists.
Thanks to these fanatics, that is, the most convinced and irreconcilable bearers of national and religious stereotypes. This is true for any community of people: when the bearers of radical beliefs disappear, the community inevitably dissolves. But it is possible that by the middle of our century, many of the communities familiar to us will simply disappear – then the stereotypes associated with them will die out by themselves.
When stereotypes become negative
Perhaps this will all happen, but so far we are faced with prejudice at every step – and this is already the negative side of stereotypes. Announcements like “A young Russian couple will rent an apartment” appear from time to time at any entrance: tenants are well aware that many will not want to rent an apartment to “foreigners”.
And this is not only the case with national stereotypes. Sociologists showed employees of recruitment agencies a selection of photographs of recruits from the American military school West Point and asked them to guess which of them later went on to a good military career, and for which there was no future in the army. Most coped with the task in a few seconds and gave exactly the same answers.
The path to the general’s shoulder straps was opened, in their opinion, by a square chin and a relatively low forehead. But the most surprising thing is that the real career of these men has developed exactly as stereotypes suggest. It seems that our prejudices act like a self-fulfilling prophecy: based on what facial features suggest, we create favorable or, conversely, unfavorable conditions for people.
The Russian data no longer speaks of prejudice, but of discrimination. An analysis of the published vacancy announcements showed that about 60% of them contain requirements for gender, age, nationality of candidates and other wishes that are directly contrary to the law. And in the course of a survey of the heads of Russian companies on the Superjob.ru portal, it turned out that 25% are categorically not ready to hire an employee, knowing that he is gay. Another 21% found it difficult to answer. This means that only 54% of employers do not take into account the sexual orientation of candidates at all.
Stereotypes are also designed to protect us from others – from their experiences, pain, grief.
At what point do stereotypes stop just sorting information and push us towards injustice? And why is this happening? “We have the same stereotypes,” explains Galina Soldatova, “but they are only the first link in the chain “stereotypes-prejudices-prejudices”. As you move to each next link, a negative emotional charge grows.
In stereotypes, it is relatively small, although any heterostereotypes that determine the attitude towards “strangers” are usually negative. In prejudices, the emotional charge is maximum, it requires an outlet – often in offensive, aggressive behavior. The growth of emotional charge depends on the different history of each of us, our temperament, the environment in which we were formed.
Stereotypes and the “Lapierre Paradox”
“In the 1930s, a flood of emigrants from China poured into the United States. In many states, their numbers grew so rapidly that it caused discontent among the locals. Psychologist Richard Lapierre decided to test the sincerity and strength of this discontent. He sent letters to hundreds of hotels asking them to book a room for a Chinese couple. 90% of hotels refused.
Lapierre then went on a long journey, accompanied by a pretty young Chinese couple. The trinity traveled to all the hotels to which the letters were sent, and never received a refusal. An experiment known as the “Lapierre paradox” proved that stereotypes do not always influence our actions. Fortunately, we can behave better than we used to think about ourselves.
When a stereotype becomes an excuse
There is a great temptation to regard stereotypes as innate. How else to explain, for example, our wary attitude towards representatives of nationalities whom we have never met? And yet it is not so. “Probably, we can talk about some genetic basis for the division of the world into friends and foes,” suggests Galina Soldatova. – This is the foundation, which then allows you to so easily and quickly erect the building of a stereotype. But the stereotypes themselves arise from the information that comes to us from parents, friends, and TV shows.
Stereotypes are also intended, the psychologist explains, to protect us from others – from their experiences, pain, grief. “They allow you not to think, not to sympathize, not to see. They act like blinders that narrow the field of view.” In a sense, living with stereotypes is calmer, but they limit our perception of the world.
“You realize the world is not what you thought when you find out that the best rapper is white, the best golfer is black, the tallest basketball player is Chinese, and the Germans don’t want to fight in Iraq.” I really like these words of the American basketball player Charles Buckley. And one more thing: to the person who helped me out that rainy night on the road, I want to once again say a big thank you.