Social Representations
The concept of social representations was first introduced by Serge Moscovici in 1961 in an attempt of a renovation of the Social Psychology (Moscovici, 1976). Later, this big theory was decomposed in three other theories: the closest to the original, presented by Denise Jodelet (Jodelet, 1989); a more sociological outlook proposed by William Doise (Doise, 1985); and the one introduced by Jean-Claude Abric that highlighted the dimension of the cognitive structure of social representations. The last one, proposed in 1976, is a structural approach that can really help us understand the complex amount of meanings prevailing in social processes and practices. For this chapter, we have decided to adopt this last approach (Abric, 1994a, 1994b; Parreira et al., 2018).
According to the structural approach, the central core theory is the most entrenched theoretical development in the field of social representations. In this theory, a social representation is formed by a central core and a peripheral system, which are two qualitatively distinct component systems. The central core is formed by stable and consistent group values and by the collective memory, having a common and consensual basis which defines the homogeneity of the social group. The peripheral system is formed by the further elements of the social representations, coming from here the flexible and individualized expressions of them, being the one that is sensible to the immediate context, allowing the integration of the individual backgrounds and experiences, and supporting the heterogeneity of the social group. Briefly, the central core gives the basic meaning and definition to the social representations and the peripheral system allows the central core to adapt to the actual reality, distinguish the content of the representations (Abric, 1994a, 1994b; Sá, 1996; Wachelke, 2012).
Social representations regulate how we perceive the world and how we act towards it, but simultaneously are developed by the interactions of the individuals. They can be described as complex structures of knowledge, actions and effects that come up from speaking about socially significant objects, individuals, ideas or behaviors (Vallaster & Mühlbacher, 2012). This construct has opposite characteristics like being rigid and flexible and being universal and inter or intra individually different (Abric, 1994a, 1994b; Vallaster & Mühlbacher, 2012). With social representations that are collectively formed, people can create their own ideas of how the world works and communicate them with other individuals. They are social constructions and not individual ones, so we can say that there is no real world or just a one-way interpretation of how it works, and social representations are useful as a system of reality perception (Morera et al., 2015).