The term stereotype comes from the Greek, where the stereós means solid, hard, and typos. Stereotype

Transcription

1 1.4.2 Stereotypes

2 Stereotypes

3 The term stereotype comes from the Greek, where the stereós means solid, hard, and typos - a pattern, imprint. Initially this term was used to define a copy of the original form of printing, which is prepared to duplicate cast typesetting. In 1932, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov formulated the concept of dynamic stereotype, understanding it as a mutual matching excitatory and inhibitory processes responsible for complex sequences of conditioned reflexes that make up the habit. Definition of the stereotype in the modern socio-psychological sense was first used by sociologist Walter Lippman. Since then, most theorists dealing with social issues, whether within psychology, sociology or philosophy take into account the issue of stereotyping in their deliberations. Stereotype the word means assigning identical characteristics to each person belonging to a group, without taking into account existing reality, the differences between the members of the group. In other words The STEREOTYPE is a simple, often irrational image of things, institutions, people, made up of the features considered as characteristic for them. It is formed by the environmental into awareness of members of a group, social layer or class. Stereotypes define the world, present limited vision, based on ignorance and unfair reviews. These difficult to eradicate beliefs determine people's attitudes e.g. towards certain social, religious groups or other nationalities that formulate lasting, often unfair judgments. Such unjust beliefs are formed in childhood. Fairy tales and cartoons for children, though often beautiful and enriching imagination, give children a good dose of unfair judgments that affect their ideas about the world. We can simply mention the example of insensitive and ugly stepmother (Cinderella) or a beautiful princess (Snow White).

4 Sources of stereotypes Stereotypes are created as a result of many factors and they appear at various levels. Socio-political and socio-cultural level: Factors resulting from the historical development of political relations between the homeland and another country or other countries, where the "others" come from (national stereotypes). Institutional level: Factors related to the image of the "other" - the views, beliefs and personal experiences passed through the institution, family, social environment, peer group, workplace, school, the media. Individual level: factors relating to the individual, such as age, sex, general knowledge of the world, expertise, professional experience, intellectual ability, interests and motivations. The student starting school has already experienced these factors that shaped his perception of the "others" (cf.. Byram and Esarte-Sarries 1991; Hufeisen and Lindemann 1998; Barrett 2007). Perhaps their influence is stronger than the effects of school. Therefore, starting educational activities, there should be take into account the stereotypes that occur in student environment.

5 The process of categorization and abstraction When we assimilate previously unknown phenomenon, expanding our knowledge and evaluating new experiences, there is a need to categorize and abstract a lot of information, including of our own world. There is no doubt that our idea of the world is subjective. Therefore we choose, categorize and generalize what we perceive through the senses. In doing so, we develop means of communication with the outside world, and abstracting experience helps us to find ourselves in it. Cognitive psychology shows how to transform stimuli from the outside world into concepts and theorems. We store knowledge and experience in various ways, such as: frames - abstract way of organizing knowledge; schemes - systematized concepts; script - specific sequences of actions; prototypes - examples of best practices (Aitchison 1994; Kleiber, 1993; Taylor 2003). What we get to know or what we experience in our own world: things, values, attitudes and individual behaviors - appears "normal" to us, while it is known to us. When we cross the border of our socio-cultural field of experience and encounter "otherness", we use the same categorization schemes, to which we are accustomed to from our culture. This means that, at first glance, we can not perceive the "otherness" differently than (...) through our own socio-cultural prism (Neuner 2003: 42). It should be noted, however, that the experience and categorization processes of "otherness" is just an extension of the same process that we experience during experiencing our own world.

6 Selective perception According to research in social psychology it is much more likely to record and memorize the information that confirms our views. Moreover, we choose such an interpretation of the perceived facts that fits our current picture of the world, so we notice what we expect or what we want to note. Every second is bombarding us with milion news. Every second our brain is reached by millions of impulses with information on what we hear, what we see, what we feel. From the sheer volume of information you can be crazy, but fortunately the brain is able to filter out what is important for our body and what is not important, and to convey only what is important to our consciousness. Unfortunately, this selective perception makes us to selectively perceive also our life, on the basis of our needs, motivation, experience, environment from which we come from.

7 And what is the end? When we are alone, we see only couples in a park (even though the park is full of children, adolescents, solitary walkers, etc.). When we can not afford to buy our dream Mercedes, we encounter this very car brand on the street (though streets are full of Fiat, Opel, etc.). When we choose wrong road in our life, we meet only those people who behaved like us and benefited from it (although, in fact, more people who regret such decisions). Remember: Before we make judgment, in the style of "all have mamba, and I do not have it, "let's see whether "all" is not the result of our selective perception, because the reality can be quite different.