The story of snakes and national stereotypes

[muthu kumar]

The following study is an interesting contrast to what Rajan
Sankaran mentions in his Substance of Homeopathy as "The specific
quality of each species of snake seems to come in part from the
country it is indigenous to e.g. Lach which comes from South America
where people are extroverted, expressive, communicative and have a
strong ego - Lach has these qualities, whereas Naja which comes from
India where people are subdued, suppressed and wronged but yet are
known to be spiritual, responsible and duty conscious".
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Submissive Canadians? Efficient Germans? Yeah, Right
Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
Thu Oct 6, 3:00 PM ET

Americans are assertive, Italians are very passionate, and Germans
are the picture of efficiency.
Right?
Such national stereotypes are common, but they are highly mistaken,
a new study shows.
There's an old joke that goes something like this: How do you get
three Canadians out of a swimming pool? The answer: You ask
them. "Meaning they'll do what they're told," says researcher Robert
McCrae, a psychologist at the National Institute of Aging.
Yet the stereotypes of Americans as assertive and Canadians as
submissive are illusions, McCrae said. Both groups scored almost
identically on measures of assertiveness in the study.
Another stereotype that was debunked was that of Czechs being
antagonistic and disagreeable. Not only was this how other groups
described Czechs, it was how Czechs describe themselves. Yet in the
study by McCrae and his colleagues, Czechs scored higher on altruism
and modesty than most people from other countries.
We don't even know ourselves
In the study, nearly 4,000 people from 49 cultures were given
surveys and asked to describe a typical member of their own culture.
The surveys measured five criteria that many psychologists believe
are accurate measures of an individual's personality:

How outgoing someone is (extroversion), How cooperative and
altruistic they are (agreeableness), Whether they're disciplined and
structured (conscientiousness), How often they experience negative
emotions like anxiety or sadness (neuroticism), How open they are to
new ideas and experiences (open-mindedness).

When the reports were compared to another survey that asked
participants to rate themselves and people they knew who were of the
same nationality, the two reports didn't match.
"It seems likely to me that if those are incorrect—if you don't even
know the people you live among are like—it isn't likely that your
stereotypes [of other groups] are going to be correct," McCrae said.
The research is detailed in the Oct. 7 issue of the journal Science.
Imaginary differences
Past studies have shown that the stereotypes one group has about
another generally agreed with the stereotypes people within that
group harbor about themselves. For example, Germans think of
themselves in ways that are similar to what the Italian, French and
British think of Germans.
But if what Germans think of themselves is not an accurate measure
of reality, as the current study shows, presumably what the French
think of the Germans is also not trustworthy, McCrae said. "Both
groups create differences that are essentially imaginary."
"National stereotypes can provide some information about a culture,
but they do not describe people," McCrae said.
Instead, the researchers suggest that national stereotypes are
social constructs that emerge from the historical experiences of a
people, their mythology, literature, social values and policy.
Different groups can also use negative stereotypes to discriminate
against one another. History is filled with tragic examples of this,
such as the Holocaust and the roundup of Japanese-Americans during
World War II.

National stereotypes can be damaging for another reason, McCrae said.

"Wherever it is we get these stereotypes, once we have them we're
biased in the way we evaluate our experiences. So if you meet a very
assertive Canadian, you say 'Oh, he's an exception,' and you simply
discount any information that conflicts with the stereotype."

The first step toward overcoming national stereotypes is to
acknowledge that they are stereotypes and that they are pretty much
unfounded, McCrae said. "That's not really a new message but it's
one we need to keep being reminded of."