A Method for Studying Social Representations

Abstract

analytical suggestions, formal method of study, free associations, innovative questionnaire, research design, social representations,

Representation of Cruise: Cruisers and Noncruisers Cross Views

“…Social representations are made of organized cognitions (Moliner & Tafani, 1997) that require simultaneous consideration of the information, attitude and structure of a representation (Moscovici, 1961). Social representations are a respectable investigation field and a healthy and robust tradition of social psychology research (Tsoukala, 2006) in many countries around the world (Farr, 1987;Wagner, Valencia, & Elejabarrieta, 1996;Moscovici, 2001;Howarth, 2002;Quenza, 2005). Social representations that received great attention from scholars all over the world (Deaux & Philogene, 2001;Moscovici, 2001) were used to study knowledge and knowledge production in its various forms (Sammut & Gaskell, 2009), and they were developed within many fields of social psychology (Farr, 1987;Jodelet, 1991;Moscovici, 2001).…”

A Kernel of Truth? The Impact of Television Storylines Exploiting Myths About Organ Donation on the Public's Willingness to Donate

“…Interestingly, the informal communication that happens within these communities introduces distortions to help make new explanations compatible with preexisting commonsense understandings (Tsoukalas, 2006). Therefore, if the public believes hit men can be paid to murder people, then the public would question whether physicians would be motivated to let some people die so that their organs can be procured for lucrative transplants.…”

Mapping the central structure core in social representation of pain

“…Central elements were categorized into two types (qualitative and quantitative) with four properties: (1) qualitative symbolic value (holds a privileged relationship with the object of social representation, i.e., “pain” in the present study); (2) qualitative associative power (has an inherent capacity for connections); (3) quantitative saliency (frequent occurrence regarding the object of representation); and (4) quantitative connectivity (has high degree, i.e., has a large number of connections with other elements of social representation) (Abric, ; Molinari & Emiliani, ; de Sa, ). Previous studies developed several traditional methods of finding a “central core” by identifying these four properties of central elements (Abric, ; Guimelli, ; Molinari & Emiliani, ; de Sa, ; Tsoukalas, ; Wachelke, ). This suggested that such traditional “qualitative and quantitative” approach treated the “central core” as a collection of central elements rather than a structure composed of central elements and their interrelations.…”