Stereotypes and stereotyping

Stereotyping is a simplification and generalization process. It helps people categorize and understand their world, but at the same time it often leads to errors.

Stereotypes can be positive or negative, such as when various nationalities are stereotyped as friendly or unfriendly. We often find people stereotyped around characteristics of age(“All teenagers love rock and roll and have no respect for their parents.”), sex (“men want just thing from a woman.”), race (“All Japanese look and think alike.”),religion(“All Catholics love the Pope more than their country.”), profession(“All lawyers are greedy.”) and nationality(“All Germans are Nazis”).

Objects can be stereotyped around characteristics of places (“All cities are corrupt and sinful.” “Small towns are safe and clean.” “In England, it rains all the time.”) and things (“All Korean cars are cheaply made.”).

The term “stereotype” initially referred to a printing stamp which was used to make multiple copies from a single model, but the great journalist and commentator Walter Lippmann adopted the term in his 1922 book “Public Opinion” as a means of describing the way society is set about categorizing people – “stamping” human beings with a set of characteristics – as well. In his pioneering work, Lippmann wrote that stereotypes are:

1) Simple: certainly more simple than reality, but also often capable of being summarized in only two to three sentences.

2) Acquired secondhand: people acquire (and absorb) stereotypes from someone else rather than from their own experience. The culture “distills” reality and then expresses its beliefs and values in stereotypical images.

3) Erroneous: all stereotypes are false. Some are less false than others, and (more importantly) some are less harmful than others: But all are false by their very nature. They are attempts to claim that each individual human being in a certain group shares a set of common qualities. Since an individual is different from all other individuals by definition, stereotypes are a logical impossibility.

4) Resistant to change: during the last twenty-five years the difficulties with racial and gender inequalities in American life have alerted most people to the tragic consequences of popular stereotypes.

Despite the fact that stereotyping is a natural method of classification and despite the fact that stereotyping has useful functions under certain circumstances, it can be problematic.

Stereotypes can reduce a wide range of differences in people to simplistic categorizations, transform assumptions about particular groups of people into “realities”.

As a stereotype in psychology understand simplified, schematized, often distorted or even false, characteristic for the sphere of ordinary consciousness, idea of any social object (the person, group of people, a social community, etc.).

Sometimes as stereotypes understand steady, regularly repeating forms of behavior.

There is a huge set of the most different stereotypes, including gender stereotypes - cultural and socially caused ideas of qualities and standards of behavior of men and women.

Characteristic features of the man: strong, it is inclined to sports activities; worries about the appearance less and almost isn't afraid of an old age; carries out a role of the supporter of a family; has experience of sexual life; it is not emotional, resistant; it is logical, rational, objective, possesses the developed intelligence; aspires to the power and leadership; it is independent, free; it is active; aspires to success, it is ambitious.

Characteristic features of the woman: weak, it is not inclined to sports activities; worries about the appearance and is afraid of an old age; shows attachment to a family; it is virtuous; it is emotional, gentle; it is thoughtless, inconsistent, possesses a keen intuition; it is compliant, obliging; it is dependent, to a great extent needs protection; it is passive; shy, timid.

Now the tendency to weakening of similar stereotypes is noted. And psychological researches showed that there is no "purely" man's or female personality; and gets both in scientific, and into ordinary consciousness idea that stereotypes aren't something natural more and more, and are created by society.

There is a considerable coherence of gender stereotypes in many cultures. Men are perceived as aggressive, avtokratichny, impudent, dominating, inventive, strong, independent, rough, clever; women - as emotional, pensive, sensitive, obedient and superstitious.

Thus, gender stereotypes are very strong and are accepted even by those groups concerning which they are created. Existing stereotypic ideas of feminity and courage are rather close in different cultures. Stereotypes tend to be acquired early and they change with great difficulty.

 

PHOBIA

The term phobia, which comes from the Ancient Creek word for fear (fobos), denotes a number of psychological conditions that can range from serious disabilities to common fears. Phobias are the most common form of anxiety disorder. An American study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found that between 5.1 and 21.5 percent of Americans suffer from phobias. orth Broken down by age and gender, the study found that phobias were the most common mental illness among women in all age groups and the second most common illness among men older that 25.

Most psychologists and psychiatrists divide phobias into three categories. Social phobias – fears to do with other people and social relationships such as performance anxiety, fears of eating in public, etc. Specific phobias – fear of a single specific panic trigger, like dogs, flying, running water and so on. Agoraphobia – a generalised fear of leaving your home or your small familiar safe area, and of the inevitable panic attacks that will follow. Agoraphobia is the only phobia regularly treated as a medical condition.

Many specific phobias, such as fears of dogs, height, spider bites, and so forth, are extensions of fears that everyone has. People with these phobias treat them by avoiding the thing they fear. Many specific phobias can be traced back to a specific triggering event, usually a traumatic experience at an early age. Social phobias and agoraphobia have more complex that are not entirely known at this time. It is believed that heredity, genetics and brain-chemistry combine with life-experiences to play a major role in the development of anxiety disorders and phobias.

Phobias vary in severity among individuals, with some phobics simply disliking or avoiding the subject of their fear and suffering mild anxiety. Others suffer fully- fledged panic attacks with all the associated disabling symptoms. It is possible for a sufferer to phobias about virtually anything.

The name of a phobia generally contains a Greek word for what the patient fears plus the suffix-phobia. Greating these terms is something of a word game. Few of these are found in medical literature, e.g. cancerophobia is a fear of cancer, neerophobia is a fear of death or dead things or cardiophobia is a fear of heart disease.

Some therapists use virtual reality to desensitize patients to the feared thing. Other forms of therapy that may be of benefit to phobies are graduated exposure therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Anti – anxietly medication can also be of assistance in some cases. Most phobies understand that they are suffering from an irrational fear but are powerless to override their initial panic reaction.

Graduated Exposure and CBT both work towards the goal of desensitizing the sufferer, and changing the thought patterns that are contributing to there panic. Gradual desensitization treatment and CBT are often extremely successful provided the phobic is willing to enduresome discomfort and to make a continuous effort over a long period of tame. Proctitioners of nearo- linguistic programining (NLP) claim to have a procedure that can be used to alleviate most specific phobias in a single therapeutic session though this has not yet been verified scientifically.

In some cases a fear or hatred is not considered a phobia in the clinical sense because it is believed to be only a symptom of other psychological problems or the result of ignorance, or of political or social beliefs. There are phobias in a more general, popular sense of the word:

· Xenophobia, fear or dislike of strangers or the unknown, often used to deseribe nationalistic political beliefs and movements.

· Homophobia, fear or dislike of homosexual people.

· Islamophobia, fear or dislike of Muslims or Islamic culture.

Furthermore, the term hydrophobia, or fear of water, is usually not a psychological condition at all, but another term for the disease rabies, referring to a common symptom. Likewise photophobia, is a physical complaint aversion to light due to an inflamed or painful eye or excessively dilated pupils.

 

BIOGRAPHY OF ABRAHAM MASLOW

Abraham Harold Maslow was born April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the first of seven children born to his parents, who themselves were uneducated Jewish immigrants from Russia. His parents, hoping for the best for their children in the new world, pushed him hard for academic success. Not surprisingly, he became very lonely as a boy, and found his refuge in books.

To satisfy his parents, he first studied law at the City College of New York (CCNY). After there semesters, he transferred to Cornell, and then back to CCNY. He married Bertha Goodman, his first cousin, against his parents wishes. Abe and Bertha went on to have two daughters. He and Bertha moved to Wisconsin so that he could attend the University of Wisconsin. Here, he became interested in psychology, and his school work began to improve dramatically. He spent time there working with Harry Harlow, who is famous for his experiments with baby rhesus monkeys and attachment behavior.

He received his BA in 1930, his MA in 1931, and his PhD in 1934, all in psychology, all from the University of Wisconsin. A year after graduation, he returned to New York to work with E. L. Thorndike at Columbia, where Maslow became interested in research on human sexuality.

He began teaching full time at Brooklyn College. During this period of his life, he came into contact with the many European intellectuals that were immigrating to the US, and Brooklyn in particular, at that time - people like Adler, Fromm, as well as several Gestalt and Freudian psychologists.

In 1951, Maslow served as the chair of the psychology department at Brandeis for 10 years, where he met Kurt Goldstein (who introduced him to the idea of self-actualization) and began his own theoretical work. It was also here that he began his research in humanistic psychology - something much more important to him than his own theorizing. He spent his final years in semi-retirement in California, until, on June 8, 1970, he died of a heart attack after years of ill health.

 

BIOGRAPHY OF CARL ROGERS

 

Carl Ransom Rogers was a psychologist who was instrumental in the development of non-directive psychotherapy (Rogerian psychotherapy).

Carl Rogers was Born in Oak Part, Illinois. His father was an engineer, his mother was a housewife and devoted Christian. Following an education in a strict, religious and ethical environment, he became a rather isolated, independent and disciplined person, and acquired a knowledge and an appreciation for the scientific method in a practical world. His first career choice was agriculture, followed by religion. At age 20, following his 1922 trip to Beijing for an international Christian conference, he started to doubt his religious convictions; to help him clarify his career choice, he attended a seminar entitled ‘Why am I entering the ministry?’, after which he decided to change career.

He signed up to the psychology program in Chicago, and obtained his Ph.D. He taught and practiced at Ohio University, the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin. However, following several internal conflicts at the department of psychology of Wisconsin, Rogers became disillusioned with academia. He received an offer at La Jolla for research, where he remained, doing therapy, speeches and writing until his sudden death.

Rogers also made a significant impact upon Education Psychology. He developed a theory of experiential learning, which he contrasted to what he called “cognitive learning”. Rogers’ idea of the ‘fully functioning person’ involved the following qualities, which show marked similarities to Buddhist thinking.

Computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum’s famous computer program, Eliza tried to simulate a therapy session with a human Rogerian therapist. It works by applying simple transformation rules to the users input in order to construct questions and reflect the content of the statements that the user makes. Some people are impressed by Eliza’s performance in such situations, especially when this performance is compared to the simplicity of the program. Others have noted that Eliza’s responses become noncoherent when users make nonstandard statements, and that Eliza does not understand anything of what the user says. Weizenbaum described Eliza as providing a “parody” of “the responses of a nondirective Rogerian psychotherapist in an initial psychiatric interview.

BIOGRAPHY OF IVAN PAVLOV

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was born on September 14,1849 in Ryazan, where his father, Peter Dmitrievich Pavlov, was a village priest. He was educated first at the church school in Ryazan and then at the theological seminary there. In 1870 be enrolled in the physics and mathematics faculty to take the course in natural science. Pavlov became passionately absorbed with physiology, which in fact was to remain of such fundamental importance to him throughout his life. In 1875 Pavlov completed his course with an outstanding record and received the degree of Candidate of Natural Sciences. However, impelled by his overwhelming interest in physiology, he decided to continue his studies and proceeded to the Academy of Medical Surgery to take the third course there. He completed this in 1879 and was again awarded a gold medal. After a competitive examination, Pavlov won a fellowship at the Academy, and this together with position as Director of the Physiological Laboratory at the clinic of the famous Russian clinician, S.P Botkin, enabled him to continue his research work. In 1883 he presented his doctors thesis on the subject oh “The centrifugal nerves of the heart”. In this work he developed his idea of nervism, using as example the intensifying nerve of the heart which he had discovered, and furthermore laid down the basic principles on the tropic function of the nervous system. In this as well as in other works, resulting mainly from his research in the laboratory at the Botkin clinic, Pavlov showed that there existed a basic pattern in the reflex regulation of the activity of the circulatory organs.