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Jews and Hungarians: Group stereotypes amongHungarian university studentsAndras Kovacs aa Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology , ELTE University , BudapestPublished online: 19 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Andras Kovacs (1993) Jews and Hungarians: Group stereotypes among Hungarian university students, EastEuropean Jewish Affairs, 23:2, 51-59, DOI: 10.1080/13501679308577751

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ANDRAS KOVACS

Jews and Hungarians: GroupStereotypes Among HungarianUniversity Students

Sociological research on contemporary Hungarian Jewry frequentlyconfronts a curious paradox. The character of the Jews of Hungary,

now numbering some 80,000 to 100,000, has been shaped by the processesof assimilation over the 125 years that have passed since the Emancipationof 1867. Yet Hungarian Jews are seen as a distinct social group by Jew andnon-Jew alike. Studies of this paradox have pointed out that perception ofJews as a reference group in society is not primarily a problem of assimila-tion; that is to say, it does not follow from a perception of social distancethat can be demonstrated by the so-called hard indicators employed insocio-statistical work.1 Rather, it is a consequence of the fact that the as-similatory process, willingly accepted by the majority of the Jews of Hun-gary since the Emancipation, took place in an environment permeated byantisemitism, often of an extreme kind. This tension has spawned mecha-nisms which have created a special kind of Jewish group identity.

From this it may well be imagined that, if the survival of the Jews asa reference group in Hungary today is in many ways a consequence ofantisemitism, then those in whose eyes the Jews are seen as an outgroupare all antisemitic. Such a conclusion is also suggested by the assimilatoryparadigm that came to be dominant in the final decades of the last cen-tury. This regarded Jews as a distinct group in society only in the reli-gious sense, if at all. Anyone using the terms 'us' and 'them' in this con-nection is bound to be an excluder.

However, we know very little about the extent to which publicopinion today actually regards the Jews as an outgroup, or about thestereotypes used to demarcate an 'own' group from an outgroup, orabout the role played by antisemitic prejudice in this stereotyping andcategorizing process. Answers to these questions, among others, were the

This article first appeared in the August-September 1993 issue o/Vilagossag (Budapest).

1 Viktor Karady, 'The Holocaust, the end of Communism, and the crisis of Jewish identityin Hungary' in Maria M. Kovacs, Yitzhak M. Kashti, Ferenc Eros (eds.), Zsidosag,identitas, tortenelem (Jewry, Identity, and History) (Budapest: T-Twins Kiado, 1992), 23-49; Andras Kovacs, 'Identity and ethnicity: Problems of Jewish identity in postwar Hun-gary', ibid., 97-114.

EAST EUROPEAN JEWISH AFFAIRS, vol. 23, no. 2, 1993/1350-1674/51-9

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52 Group Stereotypes

goal of a research project on antisemitism carried out in Hungary in late1992 and early 1993 on a representative nationwide sample of 1,000 uni-versity and college students, that is to say, of the intellectual elite of thenext generation.2

The results suggest that for the majority of those interviewed thereare indeed attributes that clearly identify both Jews and Magyars and thusdistinguish them from each other. To the question 'Are there characteris-tic Magyar attributes?' 69 per cent said yes, while 29 per cent disagreed.The same question about Jews brought an even more decisive 75 per centwho said yes, with only 19 per cent in disagreement. According to 68 percent of those interviewed, both Jews and Magyars have characteristic at-tributes; 12 per cent thought only the Jews had such attributes, while 4per cent thought only Magyars possessed these, not Jews. Finally, some17 per cent considered neither Jews nor Magyars to have characteristicattributes. On this evidence, the majority of Hungarian university stu-dents today regards Jews in Hungary as an outgroup delimited on thebasis of characteristic attributes.

But what are these 'characteristic attributes'? As part of the survey,those questioned had to decide whether twenty stereotypical attributeswere rather characteristic or rather not characteristic of Magyars andJews. The replies, expressed as a percentage of all those interviewed, areseen in Table 1:

By subtracting the 'rather untypical' figure from the 'rather typical'in each column and calculating the difference between the two results, wecan say which attributes are seen as most clearly distinguishing betweenthe two groups and obtain a picture of the distance of the auto- andheterostereotypes of those interviewed. We conclude that in the opinionof Hungarian university students today the Jews of Hungary differ fromMagyars in being much more meticulous, clannish, purposeful, educated,hard-working, cunning and dutiful, and much less lazy.3 It is clear fromthe second most clearly differentiating attribute of clannishness that Jewsare regarded as an outgroup. However, it is notable that the differentia-tion does not follow traditional antisemitic stereotypes since only one ofthe eight most clearly differentiating attributes—cunning—carries an ob-viously pejorative connotation. Traditional antisemitic stereotypes, suchas wheeler-dealer, materialistic, greedy, and vengeful, did not come highon the list and played no significant role in the delimitation of the groupauto- and heterostereotypes.

2 The project was supported by the Hungarian Research Foundation and the AmericanJewish Committee. The face-to-face interviews were carried out by the Szonda-Ipsos In-stitute of Public Opinion Research. The research was conducted by Gyorgy Fischer andmyself.

3 Taking all 20 attributes into account the average deviation of the auto- andheterostereotypes was 33.26, while for the 8 attributes mentioned it was 76.67.

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A. KOVACS 53

Table 1Frequencies of Sterotypical Attributes

Rather Rathertypical untypical

of MAGYARS

Rather Rathertypical untypical

of JEWS

6249101663723854482382493557525032385235

3139857827235638447014395631404261543956

63614718178888059407578395983691361745

2018831361138243611741174166823881

ambitioushonestdirtymeticulousintelligentwheeler-dealerclannishindustriouspushytemperatematerialisticeducatedgreedytrustworthypurposefulcannyvengefulcunningdutifullazy

The picture changes, however, if we examine the most clearly dif-ferentiating attributes not individually but en masse. Duiker and Frijdalong ago pointed out that stereotypes which do not in themselves expressvalue judgements take on negative or positive value according to theother, inherently value-loaded stereotypes with which they co-occur.4

So, although seven out of the eight stereotypes distinguishing mostclearly between Jew and Magyar (meticulous, clannish, not lazy, pur-poseful, educated, industrious, and dutiful) are positive or neutral, theeighth (cunning) is negative and this changes the complexion of the arrayas a whole. If a group believes that these eight attributes as a whole dis-tinguish them from another group, at least some of the first group mayfeel threatened by the other, whose members are more clannish andmore cunning, and are believed to possess many attributes important forthe achievement of their goals. This hypothesis is supported by a furtherobservation.

If we divide the interviewees into 'antisemites' and 'non-antisemites', it can be seen that these two groups demarcate their owngroup ('Magyars') from Jews according to different arrays of stereo-

4 H. C. J. Duiker and N. H. Frijda, National Character and National Stereotypes (Amster-dim: North Holland Publishing Company, 1960), 115-16.

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54 Group Stereotypes

typical attributes. According to our survey, 48 per cent of Hungarian uni-versity and college students are not antisemitic, a further 45 per cent are'moderately' antisemitic, with some anti-Jewish prejudices, and 7 per centof those interviewed form an antisemitic hard-core, with an inclination todiscriminate against Jews.5 In these three groups the eight most clearlydifferentiating stereotypical attributes are, in decreasing order of differen-tiating ability:

Table 2Stereotypical Attributes of Jews According to Antisemites and Non-Antisemites

Notantisemitic1 meticulous2 not lazy3 clannish4 purposeful5 educated6 industrious7 dutiful8 honest

Moderatelyantisemiticmeticulousclannishnot lazypurposefulcunningcannyeducatedindustrious

Hard-coreantisemiticmeticulousclannishnot lazycunningpushypurposefulcannygreedy

These results are not surprising. The 'non-antisemites' characterizeJews as a distinct group by means of positive and neutral stereotypicalattributes, while the more antisemitic the interviewee the more likely heis to employ negative stereotypes to distinguish Jews from his own group.As regards the antisemitic stereotypes, what is striking is that in theirview among the attributes distinguishing the two groups the so-called'Shylock stereotypes' have relatively little weight, primarily because at-tributes expressive of the striving for wealth in the business sphere (mate-rialistic, wheeler-dealer) were seen as characterizing both groups equally.Thus antisemites and non-antisemites demarcate the boundaries of theMagyar and Jewish groups with stereotype-arrays of differing meaning.This does not, however, indicate that it is much more characteristic of theantisemites than of the non-antisemites to regard the Jews as an outgroup.As we have seen, the majority of those interviewed said that there wereattributes which were characteristically Magyar and ones which werecharacteristically Jewish. If we look at the replies from the point of viewof hard-core antisemites, 'moderate' antisemites and non-antisemites, wesee that although there are differences between the three groups regardingthe proportion of each that sees Jews as definitely an outgroup, it must benoted that even of the non-antisemites more than two-thirds think thatthey indeed are.

5 Three independent scales were used to measure antisemitism. Independently of each otherwe measured inclination to prejudice, the emotional intensity of anti-Jewish attitudes and

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Table 3Existence of Group Attributes According to Antisemites and Non-Antisemites

Non- 'Moderate' Hard-coreantisemites antisemites antisemites

(as a percentage of those interviewed)

Both Magyars and Jewshave characteristicattributes 59 63 77

Only Jews havecharacteristicattributes 10 14 11

Only Magyars havecharacteristicattributes 6 2 1

Neither havecharacteristicattributes 21 12 4

We might sum this up by saying that for the majority of the Hun-garian elite of the future, Hungarian Jews represent a social group whichcan be described by an array of certain properties. Although non-antisemites are less inclined to stereotype than are antisemites, the major-ity of the former also hold this view. The difference between antisemitesand non-antisemites lies not, primarily, in the fact of stereotyping, but inthe stereotypes employed to distinguish between Magyar and Jew. Whilethe non-antisemites think that Jews are distinguished from Magyars bymainly positive and neutral attributes, antisemites see Jews as a danger-ous, rival group. The attributes the latter select as those most clearly dis-tinguishing the two groups are relatively uninfluenced by traditionalstereotypes of the moneygrubbing Jew—and this is a sign of the (new)times. What has happened is not that the majority of those interviewedno longer regards materialism or wheeling-dealing as characteristic ofJews, but rather that the majority sees stereotypes expressive of makinggood in the free market as characteristic of both Jews and Magyars. Thischange in the prejudicial stereotypes distinguishing the groups almostcertainly reflects the modernization process in Hungarian society overthe last few decades, which some have ironically labelled the 'judaization'of the Magyars.

The results and lessons of our investigations are broadly in line with

perceived social distance from Jews, and the readiness to accept discrimination againstJews. Those obtaining high scores on all three scales were placed in the antisemitic cat-egory, while those who obtained low scores on all three were labelled non-antisemitic

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56 Group Stereotypes

research carried out elsewhere over the last fifty years. The most thor-ough longitudinal surveys of the changing nature of stereotypes and theirrelation to prejudice have been carried out in the United States. Katz andBraly (1933) were the first to study the stereotypes of students atPrinceton relating to ten different ethnic and national groups. The studywas repeated by Gilbert (1951) and Karlins, Coffman and Walters(1967).* This study of three generations of Princeton students suggeststhat stereotypes of Jews changed fundamentally in the forty-four yearsbetween the first and the last survey. First of all, the stereotypes attrib-uted to Jews moved markedly closer to attributes thought typical ofAmericans. Second, although the 'Shylock features' did appear even in1967 on the list of attributes deemed characteristic of Jews, they werevery much in the background: less than 20 per cent of those interviewedthought them typical, while of the negative stereotypes only the relativelyneutral 'cunning' was chosen by more than 25 per cent. Finally, the as-sessment of the attributes regarded as typically Jewish improved signifi-cantly in this period, while those perceived as typically American de-clined: in 1967 those interviewed assessed the array of attributes typicalof Jews more positively overall than the array, of attributes typical ofAmericans.7 Although our survey is not comparable with these earlierstudies, our results suggest that the changing shape of stereotypes inHungary has much in common with what American researchers found,even if the explanation for them must be sought elsewhere.

All three surveys at Princeton examined the uniformity of stereo-types, that is, the extent to which the interviewees found identical at-tributes characteristic of the group studied. The results showed that be-tween 1933 and 1951 the uniformity of stereotypes declined, but unex-pectedly this process did not continue in 1967. Rather, the uniformity ofstereotypes increased in every group, with the exception of blacks. In theevent, the relative uniformity of stereotypes changed little over thirty-fiveyears and during each study a significant proportion of those interviewedchose the same attributes as characteristic of each group.8

In view of the stubborn persistence of stereotypes and their uni-formity, the authors of the Princeton studies wondered whether this im-plied that the interviewees were prejudiced. However, Katz and Braly

6 Daniel Katz and Kenneth W. Braly, 'Racial stereotypes of one hundred college students'in Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, no. 28, 1933, 280-90; J. M. Gilbert, 'Stereo-type persistence and change among college students' in Journal of Abnormal and SocialPsychology, no. 46, 1951, 245-54; Marvin Karlins, Thomas L. Coffman, Gary Walters, 'Onfading of stereotypes: Studies in three generations of college students' in Journal of Per-sonality and Social Psychology, vol. 13, no. 1, 1969, 1 -16, reprinted in W. Bergmann (ed.),Error Without Trial. Psychological Research on Anlisemkism (Berlin-New York: W. deGruyter, 1988), 302-30.

7 Karlins et al., 320.8 Ibid., 317-18.

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already concluded that the homogeneity of stereotypes used to describe aparticular group was not, in itself, linked to any prejudice towards thatgroup. They found the greatest degree of prejudice towards blacks andTurks; but while the majority of interviewees opted for the same at-tributes in describing blacks, their view of the characteristic attributes ofTurks was less homogeneous than the array for any other group.'Edwards (1940), a study of Communist stereotypes in the United States,came to a similar conclusion about the relationship between stereotypingand prejudice. In this study there is no difference between pro- and anti-Communist groups as regards the uniformity of stereotypes, although inactual content their stereotypes differed significantly from each other.10

Karlins et al. confirmed the earlier results. They found that preju-diced and unprejudiced interviewees were equally prone to stereotype.Furthermore, they found that those groups of which the interviewees hada positive image had greater uniformity in stereotypes than those charac-terized by negative stereotypes. In comparing stereotypes and ethnocen-tricity, they noted that the stereotypes applied to one's own group werenot necessarily more positive than those applied to an outgroup. Thus,stereotyping may be ethnocentric, but is not invariably so; there is nonecessary connection between the two."

Karlins et al. explained the waning of traditional and prejudicestereotypes and the simultaneous maintenance, at the same level of inten-sity, of the tendency to stereotype by claiming that a new social consen-sus had emerged as regards the.social norms (social stereotypes) in thedescription of certain groups.12 This hypothesis can be used to explain thegreat similarity between the findings of our own survey and those of theAmerican scholars.

In Hungary it has been assumed, since at least the 1867 Emancipa-tion, that anyone opposed to the emancipation of Jews must beantisemitic. Though there were aritisemites who argued that 'if we haveto live with them, we must try to assimilate them totally', the majority inthis particular camp were philosemitic. On the other hand, those whoregarded assimilation as impossible and therefore hypocritical (or possi-ble but fatal to the essence of nationhood) were all representatives of oneor other of the antisemitic political or intellectual trends. Nonetheless,the majority of the nineteenth-century liberal, philosemitic supporters ofassimilation fully expected the Jews to make serious efforts to assimilatecompletely into the receiving body in return for their emancipation. Evenas radical a democrat as Istvan Bibo, author of the most influential post-

9 Katz and Braly, passim.10 A. L. Edwards, 'Four dimensions in political stereotypes' in Journal of Abnormal and

Social Psychology, no. 35, 1940, 566-72, cited in Karlins et al., 305.11 Karlins et al., 323-4.12 Ibid., 305.

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58 Group Stereotypes

war essay on the Jewish question, did not consider that the adoption ofcitizenship and language was enough to render someone assimilated;rather, in a healthy community the assimilating group must merge com-pletely with the majority, in a 'global' assimilation permitting, at most,the preservation of some residual elements, such as religious identity andan awareness of one's origins.13 Bibo held the same rigid view of assimila-tion as the nineteenth-century liberals: he saw the healthy nation as a cul-turally homogeneous community, and the national community as an or-ganic unit whose communal character is manifest not only in its institu-tions and language but also in the rules whereby its elite is selected, itscultural customs, and its standards of morality and of taste. He thoughtthat if a healthy national community preserved its organic unity it wouldapply these standards to those it accepted.14

Adherents of the liberal ideology of assimilation which prevailedfrom the mid-nineteenth century in Hungary considered that if it wasgenerally held that the Jews differed from the majority of society in anyrespect other than religion, then this general belief either reflectedantisemitic prejudice, or represented a response to some anomaly in theevolution of society. The former view was expounded by the official rep-resentatives of the Jews.15 The latter view was adopted by Bibo: he heldthat the distorted evolution of Hungarian society was to blame for thefailure of global assimilation to take place. He regarded the phenomenonas anomalous and used it as a partial explanation for the stubborn persist-ence of antisemitism in Hungary.

Thus the consensus view of assimilation (which evolved in the lib-eral era, was maintained in the decades after World War II, and only rein-forced by Marxist ideology) held that anyone who regarded Jews as anoutgroup describable in terms of social stereotypes was either antisemiticor believed that antisemitism was the product of distorted generalizationsof de facto social experience. In this view, Jews had to progress further on

13 Istvan Bibo, 'The Jewish question in Hungary after 1944' in his Democracy, Revolution,Self-determination. Selected Writings (Boulder: Social Science Monographs—HighlandLakes: Atlantic Research and Publications, 1991), 155-322 (Hungarian original first pub-lished 1948).

14 Andras Kovacs, 'Bibo's "The Jewish question": Some reflections forty-five years on' inIvan Zoltan Denes (ed.), A hatalom humanizalasa. Tanulmanyok Bibo Istvan eletmuverol(The Humanization of Power: Studies in the Work of Istvan Bibo) (Pecs: TanulmanyKiado, 1993), 198-207.

15 There is a Jewish question, if the non-Jews want there to be one; if they don't, there isn't.It's entirely in their hands. There is nothing the Jews can do about it. There is no objectivefoundation: the Jews are completely assimilated.' This was the response of Lajos Blau,director of the Franz Josef Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest, when the editors ofthe sociological journal Huszadik Szazad (Twentieth Century) interviewed a number ofprominent Hungarians about the Jewish question in 1917. See Peter Hanak (ed.),Zsidokerdes, asszimilacio, antiszemitizmus (The Jewish Question, Assimilation and Anti-semitism) (Budapest: Kozgazdasagi es Jogi Konyvkiado, 1984), 21.

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the path of assimilation in order that prejudiced generalizations shouldhave nothing to feed on, so that there should never again be any 'empiri-cal basis' for antisemitism.

From the results of our survey we may assume that this consensusno longer exists. A section of the majority of those who categorize Jewson the basis of social stereotypes no doubt continues to express itsantisemitic prejudices in this way. But it is unlikely that the 70 per cent ofthose non-antisemites who employ stereotypes are doing so as a responseto a faltering in the assimilation process, if only because the stereotypeswhich they think distinguish Jews most clearly from Magyars are almostall positive or neutral in content. The survey therefore shows that stere-otyping does not necessarily imply antisemitism, and also that it is worthinvestigating the relationship between antisemitic prejudice and attitudesto assimilation. The responses suggest that among antisemites today thereare both strong supporters and firm opponents of complete assimilation,just as in the century preceding World War II. Even among non-antisemites inclined to stereotyping there will be some who still regardthe process of assimilation as incomplete. A comparatively new feature isthat although some of those interviewed are free of antisemitic prejudice,they still regard Jews as a group with characteristic attributes; at the sametime, they do not expect Jews to shed these attributes and thus assimilatetotally to the majority. Those holding such views may think that Hungar-ian Jews must be considered a national minority. Alternatively, suchviews may indicate that at least some of the intellectual elite of the Hun-gary of the near future are not averse to a more modern conception ofnationhood built on multicultural foundations.

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