THE HUNGARIAN SELF-IMAGE AND THE HUGARIAN IMAGE OF AMERICANS AND RUSSIANS* BY RADIO FREE EUROPE Findings, in part, indicate, but do not prove conclusively, that stereotypes cannot be changed by a radio station's efforts alone; however, at least to some extent, the young and the better-educated are less given to extreme national stereotyping. INTRODUCTION This report investigates the Hungarians' image of themselves and of two other nationalities: the Americans and Russians. It is part of a research series examining national Auto- and HeteroStereotypes in Eastern Europe and follows the study "The Polish SelfImage and the Polish Image of Americans, Russians, Chinese, Germans, and Czechs," published in January 1969. Like the previous study, this one is based on the Buchanan-Cantril "Adjective Check List." The respondents are handed a list of adjectives and asked to select those that in their opinion apply to their own countrymen. They are then asked to do the same for each of the foreign nationalities. The Buchanan-Cantril "Adjective Check List" consists of twelve adjectives: For this study the list had to be slightly adjusted: "Self-controlled" was eliminated because pre-test results showed that the interviewees were not sure just what it denotes. "Progressive" was replaced by "Advanced" because of the tendentious connotations of "Progressive" in Communist countires. The idea underlying the employment of the "Adjective Check List" is based on the observation that people tend to ascribe to their own social or national group a set of characteristics generally different from the character traits they ascribe to other groups or nations. The resulting selfimage ("Auto-Stereotype") is predominantly flattering, while their picture of "others" ("Hetero-Stereotype") is strongly influenced by how much they imagine those others to be like themselves. *Excerpts from "The Hungarian Self-Image and the Hungarian Image of Americans, Russians, Germans, Rumanians, and Chinese," Radio Free Europe, Audience and Public Opinion Research Department, February 1970. Thus the relative "similarity" or "dissimilarity" between group stereotypes is a useful indicator of the degree of friendliness or dislike between groups or nations. Extensive research in this field has led to three conclusions: (a) Hetero-Stereotypes are seldom based on objective assessments; as a result the tendency to extreme stereotyping reveals the existence of strong emotions between social or national groups. (b) Established social Hetero-Stereotypes resist change. Even the recognition of individual differences among members of the "other" group rarely affects the Hetero-Stereotypes of the group as a whole ("Some of my best friends are ......., but ......."). (c) National Hetero-Stereotypes are sometimes less rigid, especially when formed as the result of specific and extraordinary situations and if they are of recent origin. As Cantril and associates noted, the temporarily positive American Hetero-Stereotype of the Russians deteriorated significantly between the joint-war-effort year of 1942 and the cold-war year of 1948. This sharp change occurred because the Russian actions during the cold-war period were contrary to U.S. policy and the American self-image.2 However, long established national Hetero-Stereotypes are as difficult to change as social ones. They are almost immune to change when this is attempted by a government which does not have the support of its nation. It is known that the policy of the Hungarian regime toward most Western nations conflicts with popular sentiment. The survey findings will be analyzed in two ways: (a) All eleven adjectives will be treated as an entity and the overall findings for one nation or social subgroup will be compared with the overall findings for another. (b) The adjectives will be grouped into and analyzed in the following four categories: The first section of the report compares the Hungarian self-image with the Hungarian image of the other nations in toto. [Other] sections will treat each nationality in greater detail with special emphasis on how age and educational background affect the attitudes. SAMPLE AND METHOD This report is based on a survey of 1,055 Hungarian nationals interviewed... by independent opinion research institutes in seven West European countries. The interviewers were not identified with Radio Free Europe. Most of the respondents were visiting the West as tourists (41%) or as guests of families living in the West (36%). Regime officials and members of regime-sponsored groups accounted for 8%. Fifteen percent were refugees or legal emigrants. Certain population groups (people with lower educational and occupational attainments and rural residents) were underrepresented in the sample. Other groups (urbanites and the educational and occupational elites) were overrepresented. To bring the sample results into line with the population at large, these disproportions were corrected ex post facto: the weights of the underrepresented groups were appropriately increased and those of the overrepresented groups decreased to conform with their distribution in the entire population. The COMPARATIVE AND CONTINUAL SAMPLING method was applied. This method stipulates that analysis can be undertaken only if all findings based on the different and independent samples obtained in the various interviewing areas agree to a significant extent. ***** I. How the Hungarians Compare Themselves to the Americans and Russians The respondents were handed the list of eleven adjectives and told: Here is a list of words by which one can describe people. Please go through this list carefully and select all the words from it which apply to your countrymen. The process was then repeated separately for . . . Americans, Russians, Germans, Rumanians, and Chinese. Table 1 lists the findings for all six nations: As Table 1 shows, there were side differences in how the Hungarians looked at the five foreign nations. To assess relative degrees of sympathy or antipathy, the Hungarian Auto-Stereotype was correlated with each of the five HeteroStereotypes. The correlation coefficients had a potential range from +1.00 (total identity) to -1.00 (total contrast). The resultant correlation can be interpreted in terms of the basic theory outlined in the introduction, namely that the degree of similarity or dissimilarity between a national Auto-Stereotype and a national Hetero-Stereotype is indicative of the character of feelings between nations. Table 2 : American Hetero-Stereotype Hungarian Auto-Stereotype Hungarian Auto-Stereotype : Chinese Hetero-Stereotype The Hungarian Auto-Stereotype correlates positively only with the American Hetero-Stereotype (+0.71) and, to a lesser degree, with the German (+0.40). In other words, the Hungarians ascribe to the Americans many, and to the Germans some, of the characteristics they ascribe to themselves. The three other correlation coefficients were negative: the Russians (-0.67), the Chinese (-0.76), and the Rumanians (-0.92); they showed a marked contrast to the Hungarian self-image and thus antipathetic sentiments. However, a more qualitative analysis of the assessments reveals that the correlation coefficients fail to tell the whole story. Because emotionality is probably the major determinant of stereotyping, an attempt was made to isolate the emotionally charged adjectives in the "Adjective Check List" and consider them separately-i.e., to compare Their prevalence in the Hungarian self-image with their prevalence in the five Hetero-Stereotypes. An average score was computed for the three positive emotional adjectives in the list ("brave," "peace-loving," and "generous"), and the three negative emotional adjectives ("conceited," "domineering," and "cruel"). Graph 1 shows the following results: The high "positive emotional" score for the Hungarian AtuoStereotype indicates that the traditional national virtues of bravery and generosity and also love of peace continue to stir the Hungarians. Scrutiny of the various Hungarian Hetero-Stereotypes gives the following picture: (1) The Hungarians' emotional attitude toward the Americans was the only positive one, the ratio between "positive emotional" evaluation and negative being 2.75: 1. In all other Hetero-Stereotypes the Degree of Emotionality in the Hungarian Self-Image and in the Hungarian Hetero-Stereotype of Five Other Nations. negative emotionality exceeded the positive, with variations from nationality to nationality. = (2) Hungarian sentiments toward the Germans were ambivalent (ratio of positive: negative 1:1.4), but the degree of emotional involvement was considerable: 71% (positive score = 30; negative score= 41). (3) The Hungarian attitude toward the Russians was predominantly negative (ratio positive: negative = 1:2.4), but it was marked by the same high degree of emotional involvement as the German Hetero-Stereotype was, 71% (positive score = 21; negative score = 50). |