How Trust Based On Personal Experience Builds Social Representations Of Austrian Neighbors Among Czech Adolescents Living Near The Czech – Austrian Border
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| Year of publication | 2006 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Objective The Czech and Austrian country had been connected for more than three hundred years. As it is frequent among European nations, the coexistence was sometimes difficult in the past and some queries arise in the present. The Czech social representations of the neighbors follow from the past as well as from daily experience of the people in the present, especially them who live in the border area. We can see that the experience varies from the very negative to positive both among the people and within one man. We aimed to explain this difference. We theorize the evaluation of Austrians based on causal or formal contact, when compared to the intimate contacts among friends, results more from shared social representation. The evaluations of the second one result more from trust and personal experience with Austrian partners. Sample and Method The sample of 135 Czech secondary school students living in border-line town and sample of 125 Austrian secondary school students living in Austrian border-line town were asked to present a personally important contact with Austrian/Czech people. The situations were analyzed with respect to the type of contact (causal e.g. in the street, formal e.g. a holiday job shop assistant with Austrian customer or Czech customer in Austrian shop, close personal e.g. friend), frequency of previous contacts, perceived equality and reasons why the equality between partners has been violated, emotional evaluation of this contact etc. Results The Czechs evaluate causal contacts: positively 20% and negatively 47%, formal contacts 15% vers. 55% and close personal contact 58% vers.10%. When the situations were more analyzed, we found out, that the criticized behavior of Austrians is in many cases common for both Czechs and Austrians. The two nations have been compared too. Conclusions Our results support our expectation. The Czechs utilize social representations when attribute arrogance to the Austrians in the case of causal or formal contacts. On the other hand, they do not so in the case of trust-based personal contacts. |
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