ABSTRACT
The category of one’s own nation and the related stereotypes have outstanding psychological character and significance. Group selfcharacterization, which is a collective work in itself, emerges as a collective product, while it is also an extremely simplified and biased mirror of collective functioning and culture. Its bias is inevitable, since it plays a role in group cohesion, in the acceptance and facilitation of group existence, while each member of the group develops, expresses, supports, and emphasizes his or her own self-image. In the present stage of national states and increasingly broad international relations, it is of both ideological and practical significance what image a national community develops and communicates about itself, and how and what it contributes to the self-consciousness of its members.
