Changes in ethnic stereotypes in the context of social mythology

This article is dedicated to the topic of transformation of ethnic stereotypes (view of themself as an ethnic representative, view of others as ethnic representatives) as an example of identity forming. The creation of stereotypes, including ethnic ones, is one of the manifestations of a mythological worldview. Stereotype consists out of the stale core and ever-changing views. Researching those «stale cores» and «ever-changing views» as a part of the structure of views about themself and others gives a possibility to construct an example of a way of identity forming. Following this, the goal of this article is to research «ever-changing views» in ethnic stereotypes during the 2006-2017 years. Such analysis became possible due to comparing two quizzes, taken among the students of Odesa city. The first quiz has taken place during the 2006–2007 years, the second one — during 2016-2017. Both of them consist of the same methods — method of projective drawing, method of open questions, method of ranking of ethnic groups (Bogardus’ scale), method of associations. The most important conclusion of this research is that the result of the second quiz, in comparison to the first, shows the increased quantity of students who view themselves as Ukrainian; change in the general view of Ukrainian towards wholesomeness and positivity; decreased «ethnographic» factor in the view of Ukrainian (decrease in the culturally-mundane symbols in the drawings); parallelly increased «ethnographic» factor in the view of Russian (increase in the culturally-mundane symbols in the drawings). Alongside that is necessary to admit the preservation of a relatively large quantity of archaic qualities in the modern Ukrainian urban culture which saves a lot of traditional features, which can be seen in the preservation of the view of roms («gips») as «scary foreigners». Also can be stated that the place of the high-status group, which was claimed by the Russian (according to the 2006–2007 years quiz), in the 2016–2017 years quiz gotten claimed by American, which shows the increase in the feeling of threat from Russia and consecutive decrease in the feeling of threat from America.