Stereotypes During the Decline and Fall of Communism

Gyorgy Hunyady

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134659784
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Unique among the satellites of the Soviet Union, Hungary has data from a series of fourteen substantial surveys from the mid-1960s through to 1994. How do Hungarians think about themselves, their history, their society and other countries and their peoples? Hunyady provides an excellent summary of investigations examining these questions, analysing them against the background of the social psychology literature of stereotypes.

1 Stereotype systems research

Stereotype research on this and that side of the information processing paradigm

We made the first attempt to reveal the content of a Hungarian national autostereotype in the early 1970s. At that time, the international literature on stereotypes was virtually at a standstill, but in fact the conditions for its radical renewal and rapid growth were maturing. The data on Psychological Abstracts reported by Ashmore and Del Boca (1981) are interesting in this respect: according to this report, after a few years of stagnation, the number of publications on stereotypes rose above 50, 100 and 200 in 1971, 1975, and 1977, respectively, and this number has probably been increasing ever since.

The traditions of the research field

The concept of stereotype was still linked to one specific procedure in the 1970s: the method of measurement introduced by Katz and Braly in the early 1930s. In order to characterize a category respondents are asked to choose traits from a given list; traits that are considered as stereotypes about which there is a general agreement (Katz and Braly, 1933, 1935). For many generations of social psychologists this procedure determined how the concept ‘stereotype’ should be understood and used. This is true, even if at the end of the 1960s the fixed measurement method of bipolar trait scales was introduced—primarily to study dichotomous gender stereotypes (Rosenkrantz et al, 1968)—and Brigham (1971) was asking for the judgements of the relative frequency of traits in groups, although this method did not produce essentially different results from those of Katz and Braly (Stapf et al., 1986).

Katz and Braly referred to Walter Lippmann (1922), who introduced the term ‘stereotype’ into the investigation of individual and public thinking in his excellent book on public opinion. They found it important that, according to Lippmann, there are emotionally tinted general presuppositions that precede, direct, and filter information, and they applied this definition to widespread assumptions about the traits of national-ethnic groups, some of which could probably not be based on experience—the American students questioned were unlikely to have met Turks, for example. Thus, the stereotyped description of groups was closer to prejudice, a mostly negative attitude. The pioneering technique of Katz and Braly was able to demonstrate that there is a certain degree of consensus about the traits that belong to a given group, which is also manifested in the characterizations as an evaluative orientation towards that group. The method of investigation was unsuited for revealing how people apply these characterizations of categories when they form impressions about individual members of the group in question. They assumed that the mere existence of such group characterizations would exclude or at least distort the objective cognition of the members of the group. There are two marked characteristics of Katz and Braly’s stereotype concept, namely, consensus as a criterion, and negative evaluation of the mere existence of group characterization (Miller, 1982).

The concept of stereotype itself can be an object of attitude, and Katz and Braly seem to be prejudiced about it. Many arguments have emerged over the decades about their interpretation. On the one hand, it cannot be excluded that groups of people do have differentiating features (Vinacke, 1957; Brown, 1965; Campbell, 1967; Brigham, 1971; Peabody, 1985). It is improbable that any group will form such a united cultural community that every member of the group shares generalizable traits or attitudes, but some preference of values, psychological traits or even physical characteristics can be more frequent among members of one group than in other groups. In this, there can be some truth in the global trait judgements.

On the other hand, highlighting essential information about a group as a whole is not worthless even if it is done by projecting it onto a typical representative of its members. Past experiences may be accumulated and fixed in this way, too, providing elaborate knowledge for use in new situations, when perhaps there is no possibility and/or need to ascertain every detail personally. Of course, group membership entails only the probability that an individual will possess any typical trait, not a certainty. This probability, however, is a valuable piece of information as long as it is not distorted into the absolute and unchangeable judgement that any member of a group must necessarily be like that.

It is obviously wrong to indulge in emotionally overheated and unfounded generalizations about certain groups, and there is always a risk that despite contrary evidence some people will judge individual members of a group on the basis of such generalizations. This does not mean that group stereotypes have no basis and function whatsoever, and that they necessarily damage objective information processing in a prejudiced way, but there can be no doubt that in the long history of the investigation of inter-group relationships, a number of individual and group factors that distort the recognition and interpretation of real group differences have been identified by social psychologists.

Thus, historically, three typical views have developed about the origin and nature of the characterization and evaluation of groups. The first registers stereotypes as a cultural heritage passed on by society. The second traces back prejudiced thinking that leads to the rigid application of stereotypes to internal tensions and a distorted development of the personality. The third sees the categorization of people and the general characterization of categories as an inevitable part of the process of cognition. Retrospective analyses in the history of science demonstrate that these three contexts (culture, personality, and cognition) have been continuously present in stereotype research (Ashmore and Del Boca, 1981; Pettigrew, 1981; Miller, 1982; Rothbart and Lewis, 1994).

All three approaches are justified and fertile. Our own investigations, reported in this volume, are not far from the first one, which conceives of stereotypes as a peculiar type of knowledge produced and maintained by society. In this respect, we counted on two differentiating factors. First, we counted on the fact that the effect of different historical constellations on the content of stereotypes may cross each other and may be superimposed on each other. Second, we relied on the fact that as with other elements of culture, the provision, acquisition and further development of stereotypes are not distributed uniformly in society, but vary across situations and groups.

The investigation of the Authoritarian Personality’ belongs to the second trend in stereotype literature (Adorno et al., 1950), which combined prejudice and stereotype in one unit, and revealed a personality type that is prone to both. This line leads further to the investigation of individual cognitive style, among others, through Rokeach’s (I960) and Harvey’s (1967) works to Tetlock’s analysis today (1993). Even if their roots are not common, the investigation of cognitive complexity-simplicity runs parallel with this, although we ourselves also used its aspects and means in our investigation.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to understand and follow the flourishing of stereotype literature if insufficient attention is paid to the third, cognitive approach and to the related changes in the history of science. This approach cast light on the psychological nature of stereotypes, and the mechanism of their creation and operation when it linked stereotype to categorization. The radical cognitive turn that took place in psychology and social psychology only later enhanced and widened the tendency to determine and to look for the position and role of stereotypes in the process of information processing.

Categorization

Allport characterized stereotypes in the mid-1950s as an exaggerated view associated with a category. He offered no definition of a category, but it was evident from his examples that he meant a linguistically marked class into which everyday thinking classifies events, things, and people, and, relying on this, forms (or explains) its relationship or behaviour towards these categories (Allport, 1954).

It was soon recognized that classification into a category has consequences in the field of cognition as well: first, we draw boundaries on the variables that form the basis of classification regardless of continuous transitions (Secord et al., 1956; Secord, 1959); second, the division radiates to the judgement of other variables, and we tend to perceive parallel similarities and differences in these respects (Bruner and Goodman’s classical coin size estimation experiment, 1947; see Tajfel’s summarizing paper about the abundant related literature, 1957). Contextual effect was demonstrated in the perception of physical stimuli (Tajfel and Wilkes, 1963) and humans (Tajfel, Sheikh and Gardner, 1964; Taylor et al., 1978; Taylor, 1981): the differentiation by individuals is decreased within categories, but differences between categories are enhanced. The latter effect has been demonstrated repeatedly and more powerfully. In accordance with this, if somebody represents a category alone within a large group, s/he will play a marked role and will be better remembered (Taylor et al, 1978; Taylor, 1981).

The boundaries of ‘natural categories’ used in everyday life are far from being logically pure, and overlap is especially great at the lower levels of logical hierarchy. Rosch’s analysis (1978) of the mental arrangement of the world of objects also inspired researchers of social categorization to investigate the hierarchy of categories for the most effective ‘base level’ of information processing, preservation, and application for each object circle (see Brewer et al, 1981). It is worth noting in this respect that features differentiating and characterizing sub-types are more informative in the formation of judgements and impressions than classifications into broader categories.

In social perception, many things can serve as a basis for categorization: striking external physical features and the strong evaluative categorizational aspects of the evaluating person may compete with each other in this. On the one hand, there seem to be ‘primitive categories’ into which we place other people automatically, without consideration: gender, race and age appear as the most frequent aspects of categorization (Bruner, 1957; Brewer, 1988; Fiske and Neuberg, 1990). On the other hand, personal systems of values and attitudes certainly influence which categorizations of people are more emphatic and more memorable for us when persons can be or are categorized from other points of view. Also, the frequent use of a particular category increases its availability, and may give a quasi-automatic nature to its use. The so called ‘white male norm’ found in the United States may be a common effect of primitivity, evaluative presumptions, and frequency: it serves as a reference background against which the differentiating category of ‘deviant’ target persons is emphasized in one or two respects (Zarate and Smith, 1990). When the target persons are black males, the conception and identification of race evokes the fastest cognitive reply, in the case of white females it is gender, and in the case of black females it is the compound category of race and gender to which we give the fastest replies. We meet again the question of general interest here (upon which we can find implications of world view): what is the relationship and, if combined, what will be the relationship between the categories formed on different bases (race and gender, or gender and occupation in Eagly’s series of studies (Eagly and Wood, 1982; Eagly and Steffen, 1984), or gender and nation (Eagly and Kite, 1987)). We have to be prepared for the relations of categorizational aspects to be clarified by results reflecting the features of certain compound categories, rather than by undifferentiated general results.

We generally differentiate between the basis of the categorization of people (these are often demographic and social variables) and the connected attributes. Nevertheless, one can find examples of the fact that we categorize people on the basis of some psychological feature of the personality (e.g., extroversion in the important paper of Cantor and Mischel, 1979).

It is a handy starting point of categorization when the people forming the object of cognition are members of a group linked by personal interactions or by a system of social institutions (such as family or nation). Nevertheless, it is not certain that a specific ‘group’ forming a unit in some sense, and an abstract ‘category’ generalizing the features of its own members are identical and interchangeable concepts (cf. Rabbie and Horwitz, 1988).

The relationship between the individual and a group is dependent on whether the person is a member of that group (ingroup) or is a separated external observer (outgroup). Tajfel’s ‘minimal intergroup paradigm’ studies emphasized that even a single boundary of category drawn at random may lead to a difference in evaluation between the ingroup and the outgroup, to the advantage of the former and disadvantage of the latter (Tajfel et al., 1971; Billig and Tajfel, 1973). In her 1979 review Brewer concluded from the large collection of research that the basic motif of differentiation is not the rejection of the foreign group, but the positive emphasis on the ingroup (ingroup bias). Lemyre and Smith (1985) revealed a lot about the dynamics of categorization affecting self-evaluation, when they demonstrated that it leads primarily to a decrease in self-esteem, while the preference of the ingroup contributes to the restoration of self-esteem. After Tajfel, Turner worked out a theory of social identity, according to which ‘social comparison’ in the service of self-esteem is complemented or replaced by inter-group social comparison under certain conditions (Tajfel and Turner, 1986; cf. self-categorizational theory, Turner et al., 1987; Oakes et al., 1994).

Self-esteem and self-definition may affect another difference between the conception of the ingroup and that of the outgroup. As has been demonstrated by McGuire and McGuire (1988), there is a strong tendency for those features to come to the fore in our spontaneously organizing self-images which differentiate us from other people in the given social situation. An opposite, mirror image process is assumed by Park and Rothbart (1982) with the background that the ingroup is seen to be more heterogeneous than the outgroup. According to this logic, the characterization of the members of the outgroup is confined to the features that differentiate them from the ingroup, while in the case of the ingroup, it is not sufficient to emphasize the similarities, we also have to make more and more internal differentiations, until the ‘self seems to be unique. The same phenomenon, the heterogeneity of the ingroup and the homogeneity of the outgroup, was deduced from the quantitative difference of knowledge based on personal experience and the expressed richness of aspects by Linville (1982, 1995; Linville et al., 1986). She also assumed that outgroups are not only devalued, but are also more simply judged. Thus, they are more extremely judged than the ingroup.

The paradigm of information processing

The most significant development of stereotype research in the history of science in the period between the early 1970s and mid-1990s was the appearance of the ‘information processing paradigm’. Actually, the revived interest in the topic arose from this method or approach, since stereotypes as a product and means of getting to know groups were particularly suited to enforce, to demonstrate, and to make use of this approach. ‘Stereotype’ received a new meaning in this paradigm, and was put in a new context: the conceptual link to prejudice and the presumption of its rigidity became weaker, and before long it became a synonym for group perception. Research in this field and the investigation of person perception developed together: the difference, and the functional relationship between them remained the focus of attention. The more flexible and functional concept of stereotype was no longer pejoratively evaluative, but interpretative and explanatory in character. At the same time, the social aspect was left out not only from the psychological interpretation and explanation, but also from the definition and investigation of the phenomenon itself: social consensus as to the content was no longer a criterion, and the social conditions of differences in content were no longer subjects of analysis either.

This paradigm is excellently represented by David Hamilton, who prepared his first summarizing review in this spirit (1979), published the first collection of works in this field (1981), and repeatedly reviewed and commented on the state of the field together with his colleagues (Hamilton and Troiler, 1986; Hamilton and Sherman, 1989; Hamilton, 1990; Hamilton, Stroessner and Driscoll, 1994). His summarizing work with Sherman in 1994, provides an almost complete description of the results and conclusions of studies on the paradigm. His central position in the field is also due to the fact that illusory correlation, the consistently studied and thoroughly investigated object of his empirical research, can be considered as a basic mechanism in the development and function of stereotypes. Other members of the generation that introduced and extended the paradigm (S.Taylor, S.Fiske, M.Rothbart, A.Eagly, or P.Linville), on the other hand, do not concentrate primarily on this circumscribed area, although they contributed very inventively to stereotype research. Naturally, there were others who also prepared summarizing and systematizing works which put the last few decades of stereotype research into the broader perspective of inter-group relationships (Brewer and Kramer, 1985; Stephan, 1985; Messick and Mackie, 1989), and that of social cognition (Fiske and Taylor, 1984, 1991; Stephan, 1989; Fiske, 1993; Leyens et al, 1994). This rich background literature makes it easier to outline the most typical features of the application of the information processing paradigm without going into the details of the large number of results.

This paradigm, as indicated by its name, grasps ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• 1. Stereotype Systems Research
• 2. The Cognitive Domain of Nations: I. National Categories and Attitudes
• 3. The Cognitive Domain of Nations: II. National Stereotypes
• 4. The Domain of Societal Categories: Perception of Occupational Groups and Class Relations
• 5. The Domain of Historical Periods: Beliefs About 20th-Century History
• 6. Stability of and Changes In Stereotypes: Results
• Appendix
• Bibliography