Social representations, group affiliation, and projection: Knowing the limits of validity

European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 25,125-139 (199.5)

Social representations, group affiliation, and projection: knowing the limits of

validity

WOLFGANG WAGNER lnstitut fur Psychologie, Universitat Linz, Austria

Abstract

It is argued that social representations and similar constructs can only be conceived of as mental structures containing meta-information about the group, within which the representation was formed and where it is part of social identity. The most important information will be to know the limits of its validity, that is, to know to which social group a representation pertains. Experiments on social projection have shown that people tend to project their opinions onto others, if they are perceived as being similar in background values. Such projection cannot be expected with idiosyncratic attitudes and beliefs. Consequently it is hypothesized that idiosyncratic and private attitudes, opinions, etc., are not attributed to specific social groups, whereas knowledge pertaining to social representations the subject subscribes to is projected onto the ingroup and less on the outgroup. This effect is expected to be independent of the relative number ofpeople holding this opinion, This is what was found in a quasi-experimental questionnaire study. Implications of the findings are discussed with regard to the definition and criteria ofsociul representations and to the structure of the theory.

INTRODUCTION

From its historical roots to the present the family of theoretical concepts related to our current understanding of social, collective, and cultural representations has encompassed clearly social processes - a collective plurality - in contrast to individual processes (e.g. Durkheim, 1984/1985). In much social psychological work, however, the term ‘social representation’ is specifically conceived and applied as a process within the individual without emphasizing the social process as such (cf. Ibriiiez, 1992; Potter and Billig, 1992). Collective plurality is transformed into a distributive property of social groups (HarrC, 1984, 1985). This tendency deviates from the first comprehensive presentation of the theory of social representations (Moscovici, I96 l),

Addressee for correspondence: Wolfgang Wagner, Institut fur Psychologie, Universitat, 4040 Linz, Austria. The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments by Nick Ernler, Serge Moscovici, Jonathan

Potter, Annamaria deRosa, and an anonymous reviewer on a preliminary version of this paper.

CCC 0046-2772/95/020125-15 0 1995 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 6 November 1992 Accepted 3 February 1994

126 W. Wagner

which included results of documentary and media analysis as a source to tap a process not restricted to individuals'.

The present paper attempts to reconsider some of the more macro-social aspects of the socio-genesis of social representations and to look at their consequences for distributed representations. In order to develop the hypothesis underlying the empirical investigation I need to elaborate first on the basic socio-genetic issues of representation theory. Then I shall present some findings from research on social projection and value similarity.

Socio-genesis of social representations

In the collective plurality view, social representation is conceived on the one hand as a communication process taking place in social groups, and on the other hand as the result of this process. Social representation as process can only occur in groups and societies where social discourse includes communication of both shared and divergent points of view on many topics. No such process is conceivable in traditional monodoxic ethnic groups where objective and subjective principles of the organiza- tion of experience in the ideal case coincide (Bourdieu, 1976). Only modern industria- lized societies open the space of beliefs which can potentially be negotiated. These heterodox societies include and accept the possibility of antagonistic experience as a basis of conversation and collective opinion formation. But even officially orthodox countries - such as dictatorships - indirectly acknowledge the possibility of oppos- ing evidence by their continuing efforts to outlaw and suppress subcultures of media which attempt to sustain a multifaceted discourse.

It is exactly this contradictory experience and knowledge that enables the kind of collective discourse, which creates what we call ordinary knowledge and common- sense in modern societies. In the processes of conversation and mass media communication social objects are created and elaborated by social actors who can join in the communication process by whatever means they possess (Moscovici, 198 1, 1984). Rhetorical analyses have persistently emphasized the important role contradiction and argument play in this process which unceasingly recreates the ideological and cultural forms of modern life (Billig, 1987, 1988; Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell and Potter, 1992; Windisch, 1990).

This elaboration process of common-sensical knowledge, however, rarely comes into being in the absence of practical necessities. Most often it will be a change in the conditions of life within a society that gives rise to re-elaborations and changing conceptions of social objects. Flament (1 987), for example, has shown, how changes in everyday practice implied by the introduction of new methods of agricultural production of rise in a traditionally millet growing society lead to the introduction of a new social representation that split from the original representation within one generation. Similar processes were illustrated by Guimelli (1989; see also Guimelli and Jacobi, 1990), who observed a continuous change in the social representations of forestry and hunting between two generations of forest wardens due to new aspects that were introduced into the field by the ecological debate.

I I presuppose an understanding of the term 'social representation' as well as of the related theoretical framework. Readers not acquainted with the theory are referred to Doise (1990), Ibaiiez (1988), Jodelet (1989a), Moscovici (1982, 1984, 1988), Wagner (1994).

Knowing the limits of validity 127

Reflexive groups, social identity, and everyday knowledge

Discourse and communication which create social representations take place within ‘reflexive’ groups. A reflexive group is understood here as a group which is defined by its members, where the members know their affiliation and have criteria available to decide who else is also a member. Membership figures consciously in the mind of the people belonging to the group. If a group is delimited by an arbitrary criterion introduced by an external observer which does not figure within the group members’ consciousness, we talk about a nominal group. Introvert neurotics, for example, form a nominal group, as long as the people in this category do not form, e.g. a political party or a self-help group of ‘anonymous introvert neurotics’. Thus it is not so important that non-members know about the existence of some definite reflexive group. The group of freemasons, for example, can be called a reflexive group despite their ritual secrecy, because members certainly have criteria available to recognize co-members.

The term ‘reflexive group’ characterizes the collective side of that coin whose individual side is approached by self-categorization theory (Tajfel, 1982; Turner and Oakes, 1986). If people categorize themselves and others as belonging to a specific social unit, this unit, in turn, constitutes a reflexive group. That is, the group results from the self-categorization activity of its members. Reflexivity refers to the fact that group membership is an essential part of the self-system of the people (cf. Turner, 1987).

The members of a reflexive group collectively elaborate the rules, justifications, and reasons for beliefs and behaviour within their group-relevant daily practice (cf- Boltansky and ThCvenot, 1991; Bourdieu, 1980). Among the results of thesecommuni- cative and discursive processes are social representations. They characterize the style of thinking of the group’s members. Conversation between friends and acquaintances as well as mass-media communication provide people with elements of new knowledge, images, and metaphors which are ‘good to think’, but not necessarily ‘true’ in any strict sense of the term (cf- Billig, 1993; Wagner, Lahnsteiner and Elejabarrieta, 1993). In this way ‘individual’ thinking turns into a social practice (Arendt, 1987; in Moscovici, 1988, p. 215). Put loosely, one may speak of thinking groups or thinking societies (Douglas, 1986; Jodelet, 1989a). In this sense social representation theory ‘encompasses . . . a view of communication and everyday thinking in the world of today . . .’ (Moscovici, 1988, p. 213; Wagner, 1994).

Collective ‘thinking’ and reflexivity of groups complement each other and they are fundamental prerequisites for what we call social identity. Such identity involves knowing to which group one belongs, on the one hand, and it involves the group giving rise to common background knowledge, common sense, and justificatory pat- terns, on the other hand. This background knowledge is specific to the group and allows the members to locate themselves within a common discursive space. Without this communication would be virtually impossible (e.g. Breakwell, 1992; Jodelet, 1989a; Moscovici, 1982, 1984).

To take effect, discourse in groups elaborating social representations as common- sensical knowledge needs to be public. That is, discursive processes have to extend potentially across all members of a group, involving them as producers as well as recipients of the knowledge system. The minimum requirement is that the results of the collective elaboration of knowledge be accessible to all members of the group.

128 W. Wagner

Without being public, the collectively elaborated wisdom could not fulfil its function as a basis for communication, nor form the core of social identity.

The required public character of collective ‘thinking’ implies that social representations must contain meta-information about their reference group. I propose to call this meta-information in social representations ‘holomorphy’, or the ‘holomorphic’ characteristic of a representation. The term is supposed to encompass a class of characteristics of social representations which follow directly from the premise that social representations are elaborated in a reflexive and ‘thinking’ group’s public discourse (Wagner, 1994). The term refers to relevant aspects of a social group - the whole - being present in an individually represented, but shared knowledge system.

I would primarily expect a holomorphic characteristic within the class of ‘polemical’ representations (Moscovici, 1988, p. 221 f ) , where group divisions and associated everyday ideologies are much more salient than with common-sensical knowledge in general. Polemical representations are generated in the course of social conflict. They characterize subdivisions of a society, they are mutually exclusive, and they determine antagonistic relationships between groups. Di Giacomo’s (1980) investigation of the rise and decline of a student protest movement is a striking example of the functioning of polemical representations. Holomorphic meta-knowledge will be much less explicit within ‘emancipated’ representations, which simply result from the exchange and sharing of a set of interpretations or symbols in a group without the context of social struggle.

There are reasons to suspect that the characteristic of holomorphy may not apply to some of the research conducted under the heading of social representations. Sub- jects in these studies may not be aware of the social limits of their everyday theories. The social representation of mental illness in children and adults (De Rosa, 1987) is unlikely to exhibit holomorphic characteristics. If this is the case, such representations may not have evolved in a group-specific social environment or process. Neither will they be elements of social identity. Consequently the socio-genesis of this class of non-holomorphic representations, which is probably large, must look different to the one proposed here. It would be worthwhile to examine whether these investigations tap ‘emancipated’, ‘hegemonic’ or cultural representations.

In addition to public knowledge, individuals also hold private knowledge. This knowledge system, however, will not contain information relating it to a social group. Such personal knowledge or subjective theories may be called ‘idiomorphic’. Any kind of idiosyncratic knowledge, personal attitudes, etc. can be comprised within this category. Subjective theories (e.g., Scheele and Groeben, 1988), or individual cognitive representations (e.g. Mandl and Spada, 1988), for example, will usually be idiomorphic representations. They are devices to define and categorize individually relevant situations, they explain and justify subjective experience, and thereby stabi- lize feelings of self-esteem (Flick, 1991). If we consider, for example, AIDS-victims (e.g. Lucchetti, 1991) or functional psychotic patients (Angermeyer, 199 I), investigations have shown that the explanatory strategies and subjective theories developed by these patients reflect only their personal experience and personal behaviour. It is a knowledge system justifying private experiences and behaviours, independent of other people who could consensually validate their ‘theories’ and also independent of any reflexive group, where their ‘theories’ would be accepted as a social representation.


Of course, subjective theories and personal knowledge will also be based upon, embedded within, and related to pre-existing cultural and social knowledge. No individual thinks and creates his or her ideas without reference to culturally and socially formed mental foundations. The question, however, is not whether idiosyncratic ideas can be traced to some basic common denominator in the substratum of the social mind, but whether these ideas play a role in the coordination of a reflexive group’s practice. It does not make much theoretical sense to call all the theories and knowledge an individual may hold socially represented theory or knowledge, even if some people share them. The question is rather whether individuals have reasons to expect that others will share them and that this sharing will coordinate their mutual behaviour relative to some relevant social object. An isolated func- tionally psychotic patient, on the one hand, is unlikely to find his or her explanation of the illness shared by others; hence his or her representation can be called ‘idiomorphic’. A native inhabitant of a rural village hosting mentally ill people, on the other hand, can and will do exactly this: expect of his or her co-inhabitants consensus and coordinated behaviour relative to the socially relevant object ‘mentally ill guests’ (Jodelet, 1989b). Their representation must include holomorphic meta-information. Taking the argument from the other side; if there was no room for idiosyncratic ideas in social psychological thinking, creativity and innovation would be unex- plained.

Similarity and projection

I have argued that group members will usually be able correctly to attribute social representations or socially shared elements of knowledge to their own group, if these form part of the reflexive group’s identity system. Research on social projection provides some experimental evidence for this process.

Gerard and Wagner (1981) have shown that subjects tend to project their own opinion upon similar others. The experiment involved ad-hoc groups of four or five same-sex subjects, who filled out a questionnaire in the same room about some socially relevant value statements. After finishing this task the subjects received false feedback about the average value-questionnaire scores within this group. The feedback implied either high similarity or low similarity. A control group received no feedback at all. Subsequently they read the story of a delinquent boy. At the end they were required to judge the punishment the boy should receive. Additionally subjects had to indicate how many of the other persons present would share their own judgement. This task of projecting their own opinion upon others was given either before or after they filled out their own judgment, providing a kind of priming manipulation. This priming was intended to raise the salience of similar or dissimilar others present with the subjects.

The results proved that judgments are more extreme, are given with higher confidence, and projected upon more of the other people present in the situation, the more similar the group as a whole was perceived. Priming, that is thinking first of the number of others probably sharing one’s own judgment, further increased its extremity and confidence. Similarly, Holtz and Miller (1985) demonstrated that contents perceived as important by subjects are projected upon the members of an ingroup and also increase subjects’ own confidence. Projection is particularly effective in polarizing one’s own opinion when value laden contents are involved.

130 W. Wagner

The effect is smaller if the judgment involves factual contents (Wagner and Gerard, 1983).

The specific explanation these authors give for their findings need not concern us here. In the present context it is interesting to note that people do project their own opinions upon others, if these are perceived as similar in their value background. That is, people tend to assume that others who share some elements of their own value system also will share beliefs and arrive at similar judgments as themselves. They generalize manipulated similarity. Although the experiments cited were not conducted with the concepts of social identity and social representations in mind, the effects seem to illustrate the kind of projection I hypothesize for socially shared knowledge: similarity relates to the value systems which reflexive groups share, and projection of one’s own opinion onto similar others resembles social meta-knowledge, that is to know or to assume, who - or which group - is likely to share these opinions.

Hypotheses

The present investigation is based upon the concepts of ‘singular’ and ‘representational’ statements. By ‘singular’ is meant a statement reflecting idiosyncratic preferences or opinions. ‘Singular’ does not exclude the possibility that such statements may be shared within a population. If it is shared, however, this sharing has no further relevance for the subject’s identity system or for a group. As mentioned above, the number of people holding a common view is not sufficient for this view to constitute a social representation. A social representation, on the other hand, is still a social representation, even if it is not shared by a large number of people, as long as a group -- more or less consensually - stands for it. The characteristic of ‘holomorphy’ underlines exactly this relationship.

I expect that singular statements - idiosyncratic opinions, private knowledge, personal attitudes, etc. - will not be attributed to specific social groups, whereas representational opinions - i.e. opinions pertaining to polemical social representations - will be attributed to or projected upon the correct social group, specifically if the subject him or herself subscribes to this opinion. Representational opinions subscribed to should be highly projected onto the ingroup and significantly less on the outgroup. Representational opinions not subscribed to should be less projected upon the ingroup, but more so upon the respective outgroup. This effect should be independent of the total number of people one may expect to hold this opinion, i.e. independent of their being majority or minority opinions.

It is frequently argued by researchers on social representations that even seemingly idiosyncratic attitudes and beliefs (e.g. De Rosa, 1993; Doise, 1989; Echebarria Gonnzales and Luis, 1992; Fraser, in press; Moscovici, 1988) or attitudes and beliefs which are context dependent (Flament, no date) are also determined by the system of underlying social representations, being part of the representations’ peripheral belt of secondary beliefs. Even if we accept this view, the present hypothesis is still a valid assumption. If widely distributed attitudes and opinions in a society depend on some social representation, this ‘hegemonic’ representation must be very extensive and will be common to a very large group, society, nation, or cultural unit. It is not unreasonable to assume that the larger a social unit, the less its members will be able to delimit the space of a representation’s validity. Though the rationale

Knowing the limits of validity 13 1

would be somewhat different in this case, the differential effect of holomorphic meta- knowledge should still occur as hypothesized: attitudes and opinions pertaining to large social units will discriminate much less between ingroup and outgroup attribution than polemic representational opinions pertaining to smaller social groups, particularly if they are in conflict.

METHOD

Subjects

A total of 237 males were approached by interviewers in the cities of Linz and Vienna to achieve a sample of 160 subjects. Age varied between 19 and 53 years. Due to the design of the investigation, which included majority as well as minority opinions, it was necessary first to probe the opinion of the people approached to decide whether they fulfilled the criteria for inclusion in the sample. Those finally included are therefore not representative, but resemble a layered sample, in which majority and minority opinions are presented by the same numbers of subjects.

Material

The questionnaire was introduced to subjects as a kind of opinion poll. Subjects were asked for socio-economic characteristics, their closeness to a political group, their opinion on either a set of singular statements or a set of social representational opinions, the proportion of people to whom they would attribute their own opinion, and the characteristics of those people they think would share their opinion.

The questionnaire contained a set of 10 statements, with which the subjects could agree or not. Five of the statements were attitude-like singular statements (e.g. ‘Strained spinach is a tasty food’, ‘Pets in a home make life more worthwhile’, ‘I like sweets’, ‘Regularly eating meat is healthy’, ‘I like young children’), and five were representation-related or ideology-related statements that could be attributed to one or another politically active group or party (e.g. ‘Our country needs to be in the Common Market to succeed economically’, ‘Income should only be related to achievement’, ‘Preservation of nature must have priority before our economic wellbeing’, ‘Immigration of foreigners must be restricted’, ‘If women raise children this should be honoured by a higher pension in retirement’). Initially these statements were selected by experts and checked by a brief pretest. With half of the sample the statements were used in a positive formulation, with the other half they were formulated negatively. Thus each statement became either a minority or a majority position according to the percentage of agreement. Table 1 depicts the relative fre- quencies of opinions in the sample.

Political ideologies are often treated as distinct from or superordinate to social representations (cf. Aebischer, Deconchy and Lipiansky, 1991). However, for the present purpose the two concepts can be considered as reasonably similar in function, structure, and, most important, in socio-genesis. Therefore, ideologies and opinions

132 W. Wagner

Table 1. Relative frequency of agreement and disagreement with statements by positive versus negative formulation

Positive formulation Negative formulation Agreement Disagreement Agreement Disagreement

Attitudinal statements Spinach 0.3 1 0.69 0.78 0.22 Pets 0.76 0.24 0.35 0.65 Sweets 0.85 0.15 0.10 0.90 Meat 0.73 0.27 0.32 0.68 Children 0.88 0.12 0.09 0.91

Common Market 0.72 0.28 0.35 0.64 Income 0.59 0.41 0.33 0.67 Nature 0.23 0.77 0.62 0.38 Immigration 0.22 0.78 0.64 0.36 Women 0.26 0.74 0.30 0.70

Representational statements

N = 8 0 for each type of formulation.

specifically related to political groups and parties are regarded as a sub-category of ‘polemical’ social representations (Moscovici, 1988) in the present context2.

Finally subjects were requested to think of their politico-ideological affiliation and the group they felt close to. This request was thought to make their social and political identity more salient to them and provided the mental context for the measures which followed. Subjects were then asked to indicate what percentage of people in general, what percentage of people within their political ingroup, and what percentage of people within their political outgroup they think would hold the respective opinion. These projections were indicated on a scale ranging from 1-none to 7-all.

Procedure

Subjects were approached and asked to participate in a short opinion poll. If they agreed to participate they filled out the demographic questions as well as the set of statements by indicating their agreement or disagreement with each opinion. Then the interviewer cross-checked the design and decided if the respective subject fulfilled the conditions to be assigned to one of the cells of the design. Many subjects had to be rejected because they fell into a cell which was already full. This happened most often, of course, within the cells of agreement to majority positions. It was an additional rule to include only those subjects who felt affiliated to a group to which one of the statements was clearly related either positively or negatively. If this was the case, the subject received the second part of the questionnaire asking for the projection scores of the respective statement. It was taken care that each statement entered about equally often in each cell.

’ It is virtually impossible to construct equivalent sets of singular and representational statements. This is a consequence of their intrinsic differences. Singular statements most often do not deal with social issues in general, while representational do; the former reflect idiosyncratic preferences, the latter ideological values, etc.


RESULTS

The investigation was designed as a 2 x 2 x 2 ANOVA. The independent variables were: type of statement (singular versus representational statement), frequency (minority versus majority position), and agreement (disagreement versus agreement). The results are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2. General, ingroup, and outgroup projection by type of statement, frequency, and agreement

Projection: General Ingroup Outgroup M S.D. M S.D. M S.D.

Singular statements Minoritarian

Disagreement Agreement

Majoritarian Disagreement Agreement

Minoritarian Disagreement Agreement


Representational statements

2.15 1.53 2.40 1.43 2.60 1.60 3.25 1.71 3.50 1.93 3.20 1.67

4.45 1.73 4.45 1.99 4.30 1.78 6.15 0.99 6.00 0.97 5.90 1.07

1.95 1.15 1.90 1.29 4.75 2.00 1.95 0.95 5.70 1.17 2.45 1.28

5.95 1.10 2.05 1.10 3.20 1.70 6.20 0.95 4.80 1.96 2.45 1.28

The higher the means, the higher the percentage of people projected upon. (Scale range 1-7, N per cell=20).

General projection

General projection provided a kind of manipulation check. As can be seen in Table 2, the dependent general projection differentiates on the one hand between minority and majority opinions (41,152) = 266, p I 0.00). Minority opinions receive lower projection scores ( M = 2.33) than majority opinions ( M = 5.69), irrespective of type of statement, i.e. if the statement was singular or representational. Although the interaction of type of statement with frequency is significant (F( 1,152) = 13.71, p I O.OO), it is not a crossed interaction effect. For both types of statements the minority position receives lower general projection scores than the majority projection. Additionally, confirming the false consensus effect (Ross, Green and House, 1977), opinions agreed with were projected onto significantly more people ( M = 4.39) than opinions not agreed with ( M = 3.63, F(1,152) = 13,72, p 5 0.00). This effect is, however, only evident with singular (Ms = 4.70 versus 3.30) and not with representational statements (Ms =4.08 versus 3.95). The interaction type of statement by agreement is significant (F(1,152) = 9.58, p I 0.00).

Ingroup versus outgroup projection

Ingroup and outgroup projection were hypothesized to differentiate between singular and representational statements. It was expected that with singular statements

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ingroup and outgroup projection should not differ; with representational statements ingroup projection should be high if the statement was agreed with, and low if the statement was not agreed with. This is confirmed by a significant second-order interaction of type of statement with agreement with ingroup versus outgroup projection (within subjects) (F( I , 152) = 51.55, p 5 0.00). The marginal first-order interaction of agreement with ingroup versus outgroup projection (within subjects) is significant only for representational statements (F( 1,76) = 68.75 p < 0.00).

For the dependent variable ingroup/outgroup projection it is interesting to note that none of the interactions involving the independent variable 'frequency' ~ that is if a statement was minoritarian or majoritarian - turned out to be significant. The ingroup and outgroup projection scores for representational statements only do not significantly differ between minoritarians ( M s = 3.80 versus 3.60) and majoritarian opinions ( M s = 4.43 versus 2.83; F(1,76) = 0.48, n.s.). Hence, projection of representational statements does not depend on whether a statement is shared by a minority or by a majority of people.

Additionally this fact is indicated by the correlation between ingroup and outgroup projection scores (Table 3). This correlation is significantly negative for representational and significantly positive for singular statements, indicating that high ingroup projection is always accompanied by low outgroup projection and vice versa, but only for representational statements.

Table 3. Correlations between ingroup and outgroup projections by type of statement, frequency, and agreement

Singular statements Representational statements

Minoritarian Disagreement Agreement


0.76* 0.83*

0.78* 0.15

-0.75* -0.68*

-0.56* -0.73*

*I, 5 0.01. N per cell =20.

Only one correlation is not significant. This may be due to a ceiling effect. The difference between this correlation for singular statements and the respective correlation for representational statements, however, is highly significant (p < 0.01).

DISCUSSION

It was expected that ingroup projection and outgroup projection should not be different for singular, but highly different for representational statements, such that statements agreed with receive a high ingroup and a low outgroup projection and vice versa for statements disagreed with. This was illustrated by the data. Thus, people are able to differentiate representational and singular statements. Being asked about


who would share a given statement, they seem to be aware that representational knowledge always has a social quality, such that not every group is equally likely to share this knowledge.

Criteria for subjective and social representations

Despite a considerable amount of research conducted under the heading of social representation theory, there is not much unanimity between researchers as to which criteria suffice to define social representations. A number of functional and structural attributes have been used to characterize social representations. These are (a) their theory-like structure of hierarchically organized propositions forming a central core and a set of peripheral elements (e.g. Abric, 1987; Flament and Moliner, 1989); (b) their metaphorical form as figurative schema (e.g. Moscovici, 1961; Wagner et al., 1993), which results (c) from objectivation (e.g. Doise, 1990; Moscovici, 1984); (d) their function in anchoring new experiences (e.g. Doise, 1992; Moscovici, 1984); and finally (e) their tendency to be collectively shared. The problem with these characteristics is that they are not unique attributes of social representations, but can be expected also with singular representations and cognitive structures, like, e.g. subjective theories, individual cognitive schemata, scripts, plans, prototypes, and attitudes. All of these social psychological constructs can be attributed one or another, if not all of the aforementioned structural and functional criteria; schemata exhibit anchoring properties, subjective theories are complexly organized, both may be considered to possess nuclear and peripheral elements, and all may be shared by a number of people. This fact has attracted a considerable amount of criticism to the concept of social representations (e.g. Billig, 1993; Ibaiiez, 1992: Jahoda, 1988; McKinley, Potter and Wetherell, 1993; Potter and Billig, 1992).

While such criticism points to some real problems, social representation theory itself, I think, has not yet fully developed the theoretical consequences of its founda- tion. Some of these consequences refer to what I want to call external or non-structural attributes. External attributes are attributes which are imprinted onto social representations as a consequence of specific socio-genetic processes. If socio-genesis is charac- terized by public discourse in reflexive and ‘thinking’ groups, this implies, as I have tried to show in the Introduction, a holomorphic characteristic of probably polemic representations. Such a characteristic relates a representation with the group which elaborated and maintains it, and provides meta-knowledge about the representation’s limits of validity. The role of meta-knowledge was illustrated by the present investigation where subjects differentiated between representational and singular opinions. They correctly assigned representations to ingroups or outgroups, whereas with attitudes this projection did not differ for ingroups and outgroups, despite the fact that in many cases they also are shared by a large number of people, hence fulfilling the criterion of collectivity. But, and this is the point I want to stress, a certain number of people sharing an opinion is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for a social representation. Additionally members of groups have to know the limits of their validity; that is to say, they need to be able to attribute a given representation to their ingroup, if they subscribe to it. The data showed that they may also attribute representations foreign to them personally more or less correctly to an outgroup. In modern societies this ability to know what the relevant outgroups think is no surprise. Mass media, discussions, and conversations with partners in the family,

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with people at the workplace, or in the street, render other groups and their ideologies transparent. This is what reflexivity of groups in modern society is about: first, to know what my group knows and second to have an idea of other groups’ identity systems.

Emancipated, hegemonic, or cultural representations (Shweder, Mahapatra and Miller 1990) may evolve under quite different socio-genetic conditions, which also may leave their specific traces as an external attribute. If we accept that coordinated and concerted interaction, instead of erratic action and ’interaction’ based on trial and error, is a prerequisite for social objects and institutions to be socially constructed, group members need to know what their set of correct actions in a given situation is. That is, they will know their socially rational behaviour vis-d-vis social objects, persons, and institutions. But they also will need to know what behaviour or actions they can expect from their co-actors in most everyday situations. Social interaction only is reasonable and intelligible to the actors if all co-actors have an idea of each other’s action alternatives. If this was not the case, interaction would shatter into an uncoordinated sequence of trial and error. Such holomorphic meta-knowledge of others’ coordinated inter-action is a necessary assumption for social objects and institutions to be constructed and preserved. This is true even if meta-knowledge about the social limits of validity may not be explicitly represented. No such other- action related meta-knowledge can be presupposed for idiomorphic subjective theories and personal everyday beliefs (Wagner, 1994). I am aware that researchers in social representations will often tacitly presuppose such meta-knowledge. But making such holomorphic meta-knowledge explicit in empirical research might add a useful attribute to discriminate (a) different types of social representations, and (b) inter- subjective social representations from subjective knowledge, if we do not want to resort to the weak argument of numerical consensus.

An additional consequence of the socio-genetic foundations of social representation theory concerns the problem of sharedness and consensus. Specifically the assumption of consensus was attacked as being unwarranted (e.g. Jahoda, 1988). This argument is certainly true if one interprets consensus in numerical terms, since no representation will be consensually shared by 100 per cent of the members of a group. However, socio-genesis of representations - as outlined in the Introduction - does not imply numerical, but functional consensus. Consensus in this sense is necessary to maintain the group as a reflexive social unit and to keep group life going in an organized way by standardizing the self-system, the self-categorization processes, and the interactions of a qualified majority of group members. If the system of social representations in a reflexive group underlies the members’ coordinated interaction relative to social objects, ‘social loafing; by some ignorant fellow travellers will not interrupt the group’s everyday practice. Hence, rather than numerical consensus, functional consensus is required by social representation theory and it needs to be qualified enough to keep the process going.

Theoretical interdependence of concepts

The rationale for the present investigation makes the point that social representation theory involves a set of mutually dependent concepts: a social group will construct and elaborate a system of representations at the collective level, aiming at explanation and justification of its practice. This system of everyday knowledge will be represented


distributively within the mental systems of its members, thereby giving rise to social affiliation and social identity. Social identity, via the holomorphic characteristic of the representational system, in turn, defines a reflexive group and here we come back to our starting point.

Such circularity was seen as a serious drawback of the theory by Potter and Litton (1985). However, I do not think that this necessarily hampers the theory’s utility. We do have in science a number of theories whose terms and related measurement rules depend either mutually upon each other or upon the validity of the theory itself. Sneed (1979, according to Stegmiiller, 1986) calls such conceptual structures, e.g. in physics, ‘T-theoretical’. A T-theoretical term is a term, whose measurement depends upon the validity of the theory, within which it is embedded. Sneed illustrates this relationship by the law of levers. As long as there were no other balances available than balances employing levers of different length and counter-weights, there was no other empirical way to establish the truth of the law of levers than by presupposing its validity. And nobody would deny the law’s utility in mechanical physics.

Although it is not the place here to discuss this argument in full, the analogy with our present theory is evident. If we apply the idea of ‘T-theoreticity’, we may say that the concepts ‘social representation’, ‘reflexive and reflective group’, etc. are ‘softly’ T-theoretical. The mutual fixing of meaning can be seen as analogous to the example of the law of levers. As weight can only be measured by using a balance, if the validity of the law of levers itself is presupposed, the meaning of concepts in the theory of social representations presupposes circular reference. Such a theoretical structure necessarily restricts the applicability of those concepts outside the original theory. Their context defines the meaning of the concepts. The theory as such, however, can provide a useful framework for social psychological research.

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Documents

Social representations, group affiliation, and projection: Knowing the limits of validity