Suchergebnisse

Since 1948 UNESCO has initiated several studies of common ideas about people in other countries. The project reported here is an attempt to identify & examine the national stereotypes of the Germans & the French as held by other peoples & by themselves. It is the 1956-1957 follow-up of a somewhat similar study done in 1948 by UNESCO in Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Mexico, Norway & the US. More important than the identification of stereotype traits, this study lends support to the idea that stereotypes tend to be modi. fied through educ & through foreign contact & acquaintance. Foreign contact & educ seem to be interrelated, yet each factor is autonomous as well. The educ factor is the weaker of the two. Moreover, the educ factor seems to be ambivalent. Thus negative as well as positive att's may increase or diminish for either R's of higher educ or those of lower educ. This means that educ may be more closely integrated than foreign contact with the cultural controls of the country or locality. One surprising outcome of this study is that it seems to make little diff whether the foreign acquaintance & contact was gained before or since 1945. Foreign contact before WWII, during WWII, or since 1945 in similar degree tends to encourage a favorable opinion of another people & more critical opinion of one's own people. This is true even in the present instance, where the self-images & the national stereotypes being examined are those of the French & the Germans. IPSA.

The data obtained from 3 successive polls taken during municipal elections in the ciy of Lodz show that the majority of voters were well informed about the municipal council's activities in the sphere of community life & held the municipal council responsible for bad living conditions. However there was little knowledge about, & presumably little interest in, pol'al aspects of the candidates or the method by which candidates were chosen. The preponderant majority declared their interest in the municipal council's activities. From the reasons given for interest or lack of interest, one can conclude that dissatisfaction with & negative attitude toward the council were accompanied by lack of interest ('passive negativism'), while only a very few people combined their negative attitude with a hostile interest in the council. The most important motivation for taking an interest in the council's activities was the hope of improvement in city living-conditions, accompanied by the feeling of dependence on the council's performance. The most common reason for the lack of such an interest was disillusionment about the prospects of improvement. Only a small number of R's thought of themselves as voters in terms of the theory of pol'al representation. AA-IPSA.