The question of how political ideology influences the perception of others is central for an understanding of relations between political groups. To characterize how political positions shape social perception, 106 students were selected according to political affinity and asked to describe political groups using either psychological or sociological qualifiers. Right-wing subjects were more likely to use psychological terms to describe political groups, whereas left-wing ones preferred sociological descriptors. Students with a right-wing position reported greatest satisfaction with psychological descriptors, while those with a left-wing position were more concerned with the relevance of qualifiers for constructing an`objective' perception of reality. These observations confirm the existence of differing inclinations in the perception of social facts and social groups. Such perceptive/cognitive processes, linked to ideological patterns, seem to be inseparable from the contents to which they apply, and express the social positioning and the ideological orientations of their authors.
ResumeLa question de 1'influence de 1'ideologie sur 1'apprehension d'autrui est centrale pour comprendre les relations entre les groupes politiques. Pour de'crire la fa9on dont les positionnements politiques structurent la perception sociale, on a demande a quatre-vingt quinze etudiants franc.ais de decrire quatre groupes politiques, different sur des dimensions de proximite 1 et de valorisation. Les profils descriptifs fournis sont analyses a partir des differences de frequences des descripteurs utilises et d'une Analyse Hie"rarchique Descendante. On verifie 1'hypothese d'une liaison entre le positionnement ideologicopolitique des sujets et le type de descripteurs ("dispositionnel" vs "situationnel") qu'ils utilisent. Les sujets de Droite privilegient un mode d'apprehension psychologisant, alors que ceux de Gauche font plus volontiers appel a une grille de lecture sociologisante. On avance que ces grilles de lecture, erudites comme processus perceptivocognitifs, ne peuvent pas etre considerees comme de simple "biais", mais sont inseparables des contenus sur lesquels elles operent et expriment les positionnements sociaux ainsi que les orientations ideologiques de leur auteurs.
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