GROUP INFLUENCE ON NATIONAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND ETHNICAL SELF-IDENTIFICATION
The article deals with the process and characteristics of social perceptions under group influence as well as analyzes such concepts as ethnos, ethnical environment, ethnical self-identification and national self-consciousness, which are closely connected with group perception of the social realm. Thus, the authors apply to the organic connection theory between social perception and a group and consider the possible variants of social perception building: fixation of certain aspects of perceiving phenomena; acceptance or denial of some information; frequency of social perceptions usage. All the above-mentioned aspects assist a group in building its own “groupist” self-consciousness, defining itself as a system element with common views of the world. These processes are the basis of the concepts under the study, namely, ethnical self-identification and national self-consciousness.