Ethnocultural and gender stereotypes about intelligence: Chinese and Russians

The article presents the results of a cross-group sociolinguistic experiment aimed at analyzing the features of the expression of Chinese and Russian stereotypes about intelligence, as well as at identifying the influence of ethnic and gender factors on the stereotypical perceptions of Chinese and Russian women and men about the intelligence of the same social groups (the experiment involved four groups of informants - Chinese women, Chinese men, Russian women, and Russian men - 30 people in each group). During the experiment, the informants were asked to name five words characterizing the intelligence of the social groups under study. As a result, there were received 1,050 responses from the Chinese informants and 845 responses from the Russians. For the processing and analysis of reactions, semantic as well as quantitative analyses were used: all the reactions obtained were combined into semantic groups, the volume of which was considered as an indicator of the stereotyping of a particular feature. The study showed that the structures of stereotypes regarding the intelligence of different social groups differ depending on the ethnic group and gender of the evaluating and assessed groups. The core of the stereotype among Chinese is formed by three features - ‘Mind', ‘Quick-wittedness', and ‘Talent', while the core of the stereotype among the Russians is formed by five features: ‘Quick-wittedness', ‘Mind', ‘Sanity', ‘Education', and ‘Evaluation'. Thus, the stereotype structure among Chinese is more compact than that among the Russians. At the same time, Chinese give higher marks to their intellect than to the intellect of the Russians; for the Russians, the ethnic factor does not have a significant impact on the assessment of a group. Ideas about intelligence in women do not depend on the gender factor of the group being assessed, while in men auto and hetero stereotypes differ to a greater extent. Analysis of the interaction between ethnic and gender factors shows that in-group favoritism is characteristic of only one of the considered groups - Chinese men, with the gender factor being more important for them than the ethnic one.