The role of social stereotypes in the management of personality behavior (Beginning)

This article is devoted to an urgent problem — social management of personal behavior, in which a significant role is assigned to social stereotypes, which are based on the real psychological phenomenon of generalization, generalization, and schematization of data from individual and social experience. The author analyzes the origin of the word stereotype, which originally referred to a flat or cylindrical metal plate representing an exact reproduction of a typographic set, substantiates the reasons for its metaphorization of our ideas about the world, ourselves and other people. In everyday speech, the word stereotype means a generalized, simplified and sometimes biased idea of a group of people or a phenomenon that is formed on the basis of life experience or transmitted through the cultural environment and various media, which emphasizes its widespread impact on social processes and phenomena. In social sciences, the concept of a “social stereotype” is increasingly common — “a schematized, standardized image or representation of a social object, usually emotionally colored and highly stable”. This concept was introduced into wide scientific use by W. Lippman in his work “Public Opinion”. In the article, the concept of stereotypes by W. Lippman is revealed in a systematic and consistent way, as well as modern research on stereotypes is differentiated, which is based on several diverse approaches. Representatives of the first approach emphasize the negative aspects of stereotypes. Within the framework of this approach, a stereotype is often identified with preconceived judgments, prejudices, and even pathological phenomena in the public consciousness. Proponents of the second approach emphasize the importance of constructive cognitive properties and aspects of stereotypes and give the latter a functional meaning.

According to the author, the inconsistency of such approaches is based on the ambivalent nature of both the stereotype itself and the process of stereotype formation — stereotyping, which is consistently justified in the article. The mechanism of stereotyping is based on a human trait, which consists in the fact that a phenomenon is subject to preliminary categorization, after which it is observed directly. In fact, this mechanism differs significantly from scientific schemes for ordering the world, which are expressed, for example, in the processes of “typing” or “modeling” — stereotyping always involves an assessment, often emotional, of an object or phenomenon. This assessment, in turn, depends on a number of factors, is biased, and has the property of unambiguity. On the one hand, stereotypes perform certain social and psychological functions, helping people quickly navigate the social world and save cognitive resources. On the other hand, they not only contribute to a distorted, incomplete perception of reality, but can actually influence individual behavior towards representatives of certain social groups, and ultimately significantly determine social behavior.

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