ANSWERS AND QUESTIONS*

SERGE MOSCOVICI

I am greatly impressed by the wealth and diversity of viewpoints that have

been expressed by colleagues who were kind enough to study the theory of
social representations. Andrew Wells, who is more knowledgeable than I
about philosophy, rightly states in his article that there is a very close link
between this theory and a certain way of envisioning social psychology. So
I must note in this respect my procedure is in harmony with the accepted
tradition. I believe in any case that for social psychology to be worthy of its
name, it must first of all be a social science and that it must rank as a
major science, alongside of anthropology, economics, and sociology. As a
major science, it has the task of studying the problems of our times and of
dealing with them in their historical dimension. We do not need to go far
afield to discover that these are the problems of communication, collective
action, symbolic power, the making of mass movements and of minorities,
as well as of ideological and religious currents shaping our modern
culture. No other discipline examines them as a whole and in the light of
their specific characteristics.
Furthermore, any science devoted to the study of thoughts and beliefs in
the society of our times must come to terms with an obvious epistemo-
logical problem: the relationship between scientific and non-scientific
thought, or what one refers to as popular thought, common sense, the
thinking of lay men and women, ideological thought, etc. This problem
has been with us since the birth of the social sciences. It has been studied
indirectly, I would say, by child psychologists, anthropologists, and mass
psychologists. However, for the first time in history, for the last fifty years,
science has become part of collective life. It has been transforming life,
people’s way of thinking and acting. It has changed the earth on which
they dwell and the sky to which they raise their eyes. This has made itself
felt in the sphere of the physical and biological sciences, as it has in the

* Translated by Grete Heinz.

5’4 Serge Moscovici

sphere of the behavioral sciences, with Marxism, psychoanalysis, beha-

viorism, and certain economic models as notable illustrations of this
process. Medicine, where the two modes of thought and the two methods
inevitably find a common ground, contributes significantly to the inter-
penetration of science and popular thought. If, as I am convinced, social
psychology is best equipped to study this cultural phenomenon, it is also
in a particularly favorable position to clarify this epistemological problem.
I have never changed my mind on these two points in the past and shall
not do so in the future. It is unfortunate that a narrower conception of our
discipline and its tasks has prevailed. Surely Rob Farr or Carl Craumann
know this better than I, but I imagine that originally the founders had far
more ambitious plans. As a result, social psychology in a way is relatively
out of touch with the other behavioral sciences and its studies do not
receive the attention they deserve. And as another result, each of the
behavioral sciences, economics, political science, history, child psycho-
logy, linguistics, etc., creates its own social psychology. There is no doubt
that a large part of social psychology research is being done outside the
discipline of social psychology.
With this conception of social psychology as my staring point, envi-
sioning the field as a sort of anthropology of modern culture, I looked for a
phenomenon or a concept that would epitomise it. It was certainly rash on
my part to believe that the concept of social representations would serve
this purpose adequately. But I do believe that it starts us on the right road
and opens a window in the right direction. I therefore strongly disagree
with Ian Parker on this score. There is little hope that the study of social
representations will become paradigmatic for social psychology as it is
conceived today. This research is considered too metaphysical, too
cumbersome, and it would not result in this “instant science” to which we
have become addicted. Aside from their seeing themselves as the defend-
ants of “international science in just one country,” our American collea-
gues show no inclination, as far as I can see, to revise their way of looking
at social psychology. Had they been able to make up their minds to do so,
they would have taken the gamble when dissonance theory broke out of its
narrow limits and began to spill over from the usual phenomena into
history, economics, and even sociology. So why worry about the epis-
temological and practical implications of social representations?
Let us go one step further. Several articles blamed me for my vagueness
and my refusal to define the meaning of social representations. I could
surely cite a number of texts, from Bacon to Freud, which would uphold
the value of my position. But my refusal also represents a way of taking a
stand against a tendency to give easy definitions. When you think of the
concepts of schemas or attribution, would you say that they have been
properly defined? O r would you say that by taking these supposed
 Answers and Questions 5'5
definitions as a starting point, we can deduce a true theory about
attribution phenomena for example? Or that this theory was experimen-
tally confirmed according to a heuristic criterion, in the same way that
dissonance theory or social facilitation theory were confirmed? In truth, we
should reject easy definitions as vigorously as misleading precision. I do
not know what convinced us that we are one of the physical sciences. We
know the nature of the phenomena we are studying and the very
approximate character of the instruments on which we rely, yet the levels
of significance required in our journals give the reassuring impression that
our accuracy rivals the accuracy of optics. This very comparison makes us
realize the illusory and artificial character of this reassurance.
What is even more annoying is the fact that the same degree of accuracy
is expected in the exploration of new and unknown phenomena as in the
study of old, well-known ones. Not content, like biologists and historians,
to make sensible conjecture, we insist on attaining the sacrosanct .05 level
of significance by confining ourselves to a multitude of narrow hypotheses.
I believe, however, that it would be unfair not to recognize that I have done
my best to delineate the outlines of the social representation phenomenon
and to indicate what is at stake. And I would go further.
You must have noticed in reading the articles that the theory of social
representation studies epistemological and cognitive processes at different
levels, both at the interpersonal level and at the explicitly collective level.
I t allows us, in principle, to study cooperation or competition between two
persons, as well as to broach the study of mass religious fervour, the
development of a representation of mental illness in a community or the
popularization of a scientific theory in the press. One might claim, in a
way, that, were it not for the existence of a social representation, if only in
the incipient state, it would be impossible to make the transition from an
informal relationship to an institutionalized arrangement, from an
aggregate of individuals to a social movement. Here too, as for all concepts
of this sort, it is reasonable to leave a certain margin of variability that
allows movement from one level to another and makes it possible to
convert the various levels, as defined by Willem Doise, to a common
reality. We are faced with an entirely different situation when we refer to
social cognition, which generally involves the processing of information by
one or two persons.
Several authors rightly emphasize the fact that there appears to be a
concept that is more or less comparable to the concept of social represen-
tation in the work of a number of sociologists. I have noted the same fact in
the course of some recent research. But I must add that these sociologists
expect and encourage social psychology to take the responsibility for
studying this matter. This is what they urgently wish social psychology to
undertake. As I see it, we are dealing with a concept that makes it possible
5’6 Serge Moscovici
to study collective phenomena, that is, phenomena resulting from a large
number of interactions and revealing common features that no single
individual can have. That applies to mass phenomena, to communication,
to bargaining, to conversations, and so on. That is the meaning I attribute
to social representations. The concept of collective representations, as
well as other concepts that had been suggested at one time, such as group
mind, mass soul, Volksseele, charisma, etc., actually refer more to a
collective individual or entity. They assume a homogeneous and closed
group and some degree of group coercion, which is intrinsic to Durkheim’s
theory. Whereas our point of view is closer to the idea of exchange, of
variable degrees of group “uniformity” or “chaos” structuring the same
representations in a variable fashion along these or other analogous
dimensions.
In short, one of the main reasons for replacing the term “collective”
with the term “social” was to look at phenomena as interactive processes
and to avoid the ‘Lreification’’of social links and their product into a
“collective individual.” Upon further reflection, the critical comments by
Andrew McKinlay and Jonathan Potter on the contrary tend to highlight
certain essential aspects of our theory. They rightly point out that my
“curiosity” is first and foremost aroused by the shaping of reality. This has
always seemed to me such a basic and mysterious phenomenon that it has
always fascinated me. I have broached it of course in my social psychology
studies, but I have also shown my interest in the subject in my works on
science and technology, as can be seen in my book, Essai sur l’histoire
humaine de la nature. Professor Markova is right in noting the influence
exerted on me in this respect by Hegel and Marxism. I have always been
struck by the inventive and creative character of social thought in every
realm.
Another fascinating thing is the fact that we can do so many and such
different things not only with so little information but even with informa-
tion that we do not understand or that is erroneous. There is the true
enigma. And it is an enigma that should be addressed by a social
psychology of knowledge. Comparatively speaking, how we learn and
organize things in given categories seems much less exciting and myster-
ious. It may seem commonplace, yet our ability to create so many different
kinds of representations from the same information on several levels -
science, religion, art, common sense - increases the scope of possible
combinations, which is both the instrument and the result of this
unceasing creativity of social life. Well, it seems to me that most of the
concepts on which we usually rely to explain cognitive phenomena
concern themselves with more or less routine activities. In a way, those
places where social representations take shape - the market place, coffee
houses, meetings - are workshops where the art of conversation is
 Answers and Questions 517
learned, where events are placed in imaginary stage settings, where
oratorical effervescence is deployed, as Michael Billig has described it all
in a very fine book.
Practically speaking, “creating reality” has three meanings. First of all,
it means that the group’s self-representation or its representation of the
social setting to which it belongs is an integral part of the group’s identity,
of its concrete existence. We cannot separate the “subjective” from the
“objective” aspect of social phenomena. We have shown this in several
studies, which many have taken to be a criticism of Marxism. There may
be some truth to this, but I must add that the English Marxist historian
E. P. Thompson considers one of the criteria of class identity the nature of
their subjective experience of living, their consciousness. And, to my
mind, this experience and this consciousness must be based on represen-
tations that shape them.
Secondly, social representations always have a “mental” and a “mater-
ial” side to them. In other words, they are never exclusively “in here” but
also “out there”. Money is one of the most striking examples. T o be sure,
its function is to represent values and wealth. In this light, it creates a
system of symbols and methods of calculation. But it also has the function
of circulating and stimulating circulation. In that light, it is represented in
turn in the shape of metal, paper, etc. Its way of objectifying the world of
values and its linkage with exchange relations constitutes one of the most
intriguing chapters of human history. A social psychological history of
money would reveal the social representations that have accompanied
each representation of money, which in their turn very accurately reflected
these representations. Examples of this sort abound. Let me stop here.
And third and last, there is the fact that we mostly live in “virtual”
worlds. By this I mean that we live in worlds in part composed of
recollections, nostalgias, of things that linger on while they have actually
changed. And another part of our worlds consists of anticipations, of
probabilities and alternatives that might come to pass in a more or less
predictable length of time. Take a person living in a big city. Most of the
time that person will live as people do elsewhere. But because a big-city
dweller can imagine doing a certain number of things - going out, going
to plays when it suits him, move to a different part of the city - the city
dweller attributes a different meaning to the space he occupies and has a
special representation of big cities. One might say that the transformation
of these virtual worlds is another way of creating reality. Obviously I am
simplifying things, but that is unavoidable.
Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that all social represen-
tations contain part “truth” and part ‘‘illusion’’ or error. In his very acute
and insightful article, Nicholas Emler helps us understand why this is the
case. We are dealing here with information exchanges and influence
518 Serge Moscovici

trading, with mutual stimulations that invariably introduce a certain

amount of “effervescence”, as Durkeim might have written. One might say
that this is the price we have to pay for living in a world of human
exchanges and for the possibility of thinking and acting in common with
other men, But even beyond that point, when we shape these represen-
tations together by a certain give and take, we rely on anticipations and
idealizations that outstrip what we can observe or corroborate. Science
allows us within limits to verify their objective value, but science is only
one of several participants in intellectual and social life.
It is even more astonishing how little care is taken to check the
information we receive and to apply accepted rules in this verification.
One often explains this state of affairs by saying that people are passive or
that they behave irrationally. In this respect, too, Nicholas Emler’s
observations are enlightening and deserve attention. The common expla-
nation is erroneous because it disregards a factor that underlies the
shaping of reality, just as it underlies many social arrangements: the
feeling of trust. If we wish to communicate and to create representations
together with other men, we must have a feeling of trust, just as we need
trust to carry on operations behind the counters of a big bank, where paper
money, bills of exchange, checks, and other symbols keep changing hands.
The more prosperous the economy, the less inclined we are to worry about
all these operations that take place under a thin fictitious cover, which is
created by transactions. And yet these papers are intrinsically without
value, their value is a function of something else, of something usually
invisible. When we take paper money, we do not insist on looking at the
gold in the vault for which the paper money stands. We are so unconcer-
ned about it that we do not even want to know whether the gold is there or
not. Most people who hold a mortgage have not even been inside the
house on which the mortgage is based.
In short, as long as they are shared and circulate, social representations
have aflun’ary truth value which manifests our mutual trust in terms both
of information content and of judgments. This type of truth is diametri-
cally opposite to the legalistic truth of science, which keeps asking for proof
and replications and which has more confidence in rules than in people.
This might explain why social representations are more difficult to
change, why they are biased towards verification and impervious to
falsification, and so on. The article by Campbell and Muncer makes some
interesting points on this score. It shows to what extent certain topics are
“permanent” and serve as a sort of evidential network that exerts an
irresistible attraction. What, you may ask, is the usefulness of this concern
with the creating of reality in general? In my opinion, its usefulness lies in
forcing us to envisage a social object from a generative point of view. Take
the case of AIDS. There are many who are interested in information about
 Answers and Questions 5’9
AIDS, in the revival of certain feelings of fear and discrimination, or in the
experiences of those threatened or amicted by the disease. But if we carry
the matter a step further, we realize that gradually this abstract ‘‘concept’’
induces us to reshape our way of looking at illness, our way of speaking
about sexual behavior and our sexual morality. At the same time, the
concept brings with it, as Markova and Wilkie demonstrate in their article,
a revival of politico-moral “myths” about plagues, foreigners, etc. If we
think of it in this light, AIDS is not just an “illness” like any other, it acts
as a syncretizer of several layers of our culture. And it would be interesting
to know how and why we have given it that function.

The theory of social representations took shape over a period of years as

an outgrowth of research undertaken by myself or my colleagues. Certain
concepts were added subsequently to the field of investigation. Among
them is the conversion of the unfamiliar to the familiar and the passage
from the consensual world to the reified world. Numerous comments made
in a number of articles show that the importance of the concepts is clear,
but that there is need for further elaboration. I fully agree on this point,
However, I cannot accept McKinlay’s and Potter’s contention that we can
dispense with social representations if we accept the existence of the
“non-familiar.” What I have in mind with the “non-familiar” is not
something that is unknown or invisible, something completely cut off from
the world, social relations, or even language. Something is unfamiliar to
me just because it is part of my world, my relations, and my language, but
at the same time has some feature about it that escapes me. A paradoxical
way of expressing it would be that I am visualizing something because I
cannot yet visualize clearly, either because it has not yet materialized or
because I have had no direct contact with it.
I imagine that for workers in the nineteenth century and even for
workers today the concept of socialism had this character. O r take the case
of black holes or charisma. There is no dearth of images or ways of talking
about these concepts, nor even of certain values. Black holes are related to
a certain “vacuum,” a LLdeficit,’’ from the cosmological point of view, and
these expressions have caught the public imagination, though actually, in
“reality,” we are dealing with a prison where matter is trapped. Charisma
has some connection with “charm,” a magic “power” that used to have a
fairly clear connotation and that has been revitalized and made respecta-
ble by a term whose meaning few people understand. Yet a chain store
recently advertised a dress for large-sized women under the label charisma.
What a loss that no social psychologist has concerned himself with the
remarkable propagation of certain astrological, psychic, etc. practices.
520 Serge Moscouici
One might also take a closer look at the relations that establish themselves
between the familiar and non-familiar versions of the same activities or
beliefs. When this transition between the non-familiar to the familiar
occurs, we can observe a change in representations, as a study by Mugny
and Carrugatti clearly demonstrated.
The distinction between consensual and reified universes seems highly
relevant to me, and I would go so far as to say that it has a venerable
tradition. Rob Farr could trace it back to Mead, and he would undoubtedly
be right. In my opinion, it nicely organizes the facts and may be useful
once one gets away from a social psychology exclusively focused on
interpersonal relations. One of the most unfortunate confusions today
results from studying reified phenomena in the context of a consensual
universe, be it social cognitions, scripts, or even prototypes. But let us not
go into that. Having accepted this distinction, I am nevertheless neither a
dreamer nor a utopian, as Ian Parker states. The question remains
whether we turn to a consensual universe as though to a lost paradise. I am
flattered by the comparison with Weber’s ideas, with which I very recently
became acquainted. An affinity certainly exists, both because Weber’s
sociology is more “dynamic” than Durkheim’s and because it gives greater
scope for interactions between individuals. I would like to point out to
him, however, that in Weber too we find a certain “utopia” involving the
resurgence of charisma and a societal renaissance.
But does that suffice to turn me into an individualist? Certainly
familiarization and communication are processes concerning individuals.
Let me make two commonsensical comments. The first is to note that it is
only by interacting with others that an individual asserts himself as such.
By the same token, a particle of matter exists only when it interacts with
other particles of matter. Taken in isolation, outside such interactions, a
particle is a mere abstraction. From this angle, I cannot conceive of
“individual” processes that are not a t the same time bound up with social
processes. It might be wise to reexamine all these categories inherited
from the nineteenth century and which today are no longer very mean-
ingful. Under these circumstances, I consider the individual and indi-
vidualism as social representations. If individualism corresponded to a
single social representation, all would be straightforward, and one would
know what one had in mind. In our culture, however, there are three
representations, each of which has different origins and different features.
First, there is the representation of the individual who has become
“emancipated” from the servitudes of tradition, who defines himself in
opposition to the collectivity, with his rights and duties and his specific
consciousness. Secondly, there is the representation of the “sublimated”
individual, who sacrifices his pleasures, his ordinary feelings, to gain his
salvation and to carry out the goals of the collectivity. It so happens that
 Answers and Questions 521

one of these goals is precisely having each person follow his own path and
not indulge in the pleasure that comes from communion with others, from
social life in general. And finally there is the representation of the
individual as an “outsider” who is compelled to pursue his selfish aims by
dint of calculations and to act in the most impersonal way, ignoring values
and prior relationships with others. I am just sketching in the main
features of the three types of representation and add even more briefly that
the first representation was an outgrowth of the Renaissance and the
French Revolution, the second an offspring of the Reformation, and the
third a product of the money and market economy. Each representation
helped to shape a certain type of human being, a vision of the “self,” and
the appropriate personal qualities and motivations.
Yes, undeniably, I do take the individual into account. How could I do
otherwise when the individual is a historical fact and one of the most vital
inventions of the modern age? I do not envisage the individual, as is
implied, in terms of an opposition of the one to the many, of a person
challenged by a social setting. Embracing such a view of the individual
would in fact produce a contradiction with my theory. But that is not what
happens when one takes into account the whole range of representations
that shape in depth the social reality which refers to what we call “an
individual.” Unquestionably a theory of the “self’ and research along
these lines would be enriched by taking our point of view into considera-
tion. They would become more aware of the structure and rationale that
underlies each of these ways of representing oneself, of being oneself. I
hope that these amplifications will be of some use to my critics and that
they will look more sympathetically at the heuristic aspect of my point of
view. Undoubtedly many of them will find my questions too metaphysical
as a reply. But what they and I all have in common is the desire to raise
social psychology to a certain level. And to be labelled, a touch condescen-
dingly, “metaphysical,” has never been a hinderance either for an idea or
for an empirical study.

I have always found Professor Markova’s writings very enlightening.

This is probably due to the fact that we belong more or less to the same
cultural ground. In her article with Patricia Wilkie, she again touches on
the essential point. She is right in believing that social representations
should be envisaged in terms of a social theory of knowledge. Admittedly
such a theory, whose task was defined by Karl Mannheim, still eludes us,
perhaps because we have not succeeded in tackling it in a sufficiently
concrete manner. However, as I emphasized earlier, the social psychology
of knowledge is equipped to do so. I t could succeed, not by showing how
522 Serge Moscovici

and why knowledge is a function of social factors, but by showing in how

far knowledge is an essential, constituent part of social phenomena. Let US
pursue this idea a little further to see where it leads.
Taking into account the experiences of sociology and anthropology, it
would not make sense for the social psychology of knowledge to investi-
gate what happens when an individual processes any sort of information in
the presence of one or several persons. The fact that there are several
persons together in one place does not automatically bestow a social
character on cognitive activity. The social psychology of knowledge cannot
simply be a psychology of opinions and attitudes, that is, of contents of our
stands about an object that already exists, be it AIDS or Marxism. In
between these two, one might say, there are “mental formations,” ways
and practices of thought with their own rules, taught by a certain
discipline, communicated by specific media, with a corresponding division
of labor and a certain degree of legitimacy. They furnish us with concepts
of space and time, for instance, and they provide answers to the per-
manent questions of a given society. What I have in mind under this
heading, of course, are myths, religions, science, art, rhetoric, and so on.
Each of these has a birth date, a sphere of validity, and a way of activating
our cognitive and emotional capabilities for a certain purpose.
I will not at this point marshall again all the arguments presented
elsewhere, but social representations are one of these mental formations.
They have a special place in modern culture, synthesizing myths and
public opinions and resting on mass communication media. Martin
Roiser’s very interesting article shows how surveys assure them a certain
legitimacy and propagate them. A division of labor manifests itself here
too. There now exist social representation makers, as there are science
makers, just as other civilizations had their myth makers or religion
makers. I have in mind here all those whose work it is to spread knowledge
about the physical sciences, cosmology, biology, economics, etc., popula-
rizers of culture, social workers, and all those who use different ways to
spread images. In our urban society, with its increasingly abstract and
compartmentalized relationships, their never-ending task is to bring
together, to unify, in short, to turn the world into something familiar,
counteracting the effects of science, art, technology, and the vastness of
space itself, which conspire to make the world into something very alien.
And they are successful in their efforts by setting in motion these social
representations of the universe, the human body, power relations, illness,
economic activities, all of which circulate and are exchanged among us.
Hence an investigation of social representations and of the professionals
who devote their lives to them would help us grasp cognitive phenomena
better in the laboratory of our culture. In the same way, research about
scientific theories and procedures has given us insight into the mind in
 Answers and Questions 523
general and that of our time in particular. I believe that we have masses of
documents available in this respect and that careful research would yield
much more valuable results than many ingenious experiments with a very
slight heuristic value.
I have the feeling that the pairs of opposites which we cherish -
emotional-cognitive, irrational-rational, and even individual-collective -
have lost their edge today. They are too academic in character to be
interesting. At any rate, to the extent that social representations involve a
link to the community, to life experienced as a community, they are not
“purely cognitive.” Such a link inevitably involves a certain emotional
energy, which potentiates it. Hence representations with a nearly identical
content may have different emotional charges depending on the link
associated with them. Take the representations we have of someone whose
identity differs from ours: a child, a German, an Englishman, an ill person,
or a homosexual, etc. As long as I think of him and classify him as just
anybody in a crowd of passers-by, I may have a feeling of indifference,
which is a very definite feeling. But if I think of and perceive this
individual as belonging to another group or nation, for example the
German, Jewish, or English nation, I can single him out and display the
kind of hostility towards him that one feels toward a stranger or an enemy.
And finally, if I situate this individual, as happens all too often, unfor-
tunately, outside the bounds of normal humanity, I stigmatize him. And I
will unwittingly feel a sort of fear mingled with disgust and aversion
toward him. It is well known that this fear may express itself in sensory
hallucinations, as exemplified by the famous odor feminitatis or odor judaicur.
The mentally ill may arouse similar hallucinations, as Denise Jodelet has
shown. I realize how tentative this example is.
Anyhow, a social representation, as a result of its functions, has a
emotional gradient that potentiates it. And the only question that remains
to be resolved is what is the nature of the emotions engendered by the
social link that it produces and reinforces. Undoubtedly the research on
AIDS, which is often mentioned in this article, brings this question
particularly sharply into focus. The opportunity exists to stake out a
psychosocial analysis of a contemporary historical event. Several of our
shared representations are crystallyzed by the AIDS issue, and the first
signs of changes in one sector of our culture are becoming visible. If such a
study were carried on over a sufficiently long period of time, it would
enable us to understand this change at several levels. Not least important
among these is the genesis of the concomitant representations, the
language in which they are couched, and the wealth of images that they
create. And the level of material representations, exemplified by the use of
gloves by teachers in certain New York high schools to save them from
contamination, is at least as significant. This measure, one might claim,
524 Serge Moscovici
“speaks” louder than a lengthy speech. I must stress the need to study this
phenomenon longitudinally, because in our discipline the opposite pro-
cedure normally prevails. In disciplines like history, paleontology,
anthropology and sociology, it is considered normal to carry out long-
range studies which look at a given problem from all sides, provide a body
of data, and occasionally yield a theoretical breakthrough. In the end, such
studies yield a few classic works that mark a milestone, have an impact,
and give a scientific discipline a sense of identity, which in turn shapes the
identity of the discipline in the public eye. For reasons with which I am
well acquainted, in social psychology we are under the impression that we
can every four or five years go through all the stages from the formulation
of a theory to the verification of all its empirical consequences. Well, we
will never manage to explore the fundamental aspects of this phenomenon
with this approach, and we will be unable to apply our theories on a large
enough scale.
Strangely enough, the same problem of a theory of knowledge turns up
as well in Nicholas Emler’s article. His way of approaching the problem
and the arguments he invokes are very persuasive. Over and above my
meeting of mind with Nicholas Emler, I would like to draw attention to a
few simple points. Despite my respect for the authors quoted, notably for
Kohlberg, their argumentation belongs to an earlier era. Ever since the
nineteenth century, people have been reiterating that science as such is
rational and that any intervention of social factors bears the seal of the
non-rational. This contention can be expressed by the equations: indi-
vidual = rational, collective = irrational. When these equations are
applied to morality, they take on a clearly Kantian character, and moral
evolution is subject to an a priori, an invariant kind of morality that
transcends the religious or social context.
One might wonder, even so, how we know that these judgment
categories are moral and who characterit.ed them as such. For example, who
decides that the prohibition of incest is an obligation, a prescription, or a
social rule? And how could we be sure which it is outside a specific cultural
context? Not even Piaget, whom these authors rightly regard as their
forerunner, ever made such a rash claim. He contends that the child’s first
tentative morality is the outgrowth of external coercion and of the
powerful emotions of a gerontocratic society. These moral judgments are
then modified by the experience of cooperation, of interchanges with his
peers. Piaget’s optimistic outlook leads him to visualize a sort of “natural
evolution” in the course of which each child spontaneously moves from a
morality of “coercion” to a morality of “cooperation.” He never questions
the fact that there is a correspondence between the social relationships of
the child and his normative judgments. And these judgments are “irratio-
nal” not because they are social, but because they are the outcome of the
 Answers and Questions 525
coercion exerted on the individual by the group.
Paiget’s approach coincides very closely with the theory of social
representations. Not only does this theory contend that prescriptions and
obligations are woven into a vision of social relations and couched in the
language appropriate thereto, but it also endeavors to bridge the gap
between sociology and psychology, between the collective and the indi-
vidual. The only difference is that we do not think of this evolution as
“natural,” that is, determined by the child’s age, but that it is the
consequence of the multitudinous institutions and relations with which
the child comes into contact in the course of time. The theory asserts that
what at a certain age seemed to the child to be determined by a religious,
parental context, acquires a moral and even a legalistic tinge when he gets
older. There is an undeniably austere elegance in these linear concepts of
“practical reason” and in their experimental demonstration. But they
make unrealistically high demands on human beings, and if they were
correct, they would leave a large part of the cruel daily lives of people -
outside a few academic enclaves - completely incomprehensible.
Rob F a d s article, to which I now turn, threatens to make me feel
immodest. Not just immodest, of course, but also grateful, because I am
very personally touched by his generosity towards me. Over our extended
personal contact, I have become aware of the historical dimension of the
problems with which we deal. I have in mind particularly contributions by
Ichheiser, Thomas and Znaniecki, and the complete list would be exten-
sive. All those acquainted with Rob Farr know how contagious his intense
interest in the history of our discipline has been and how creatively he has
applied his great erudition. From this standpoint he is greatly honouring
us by referring to a French tradition with respect to the attempts that have
been made to introduce social representation phenomena into the field of
social psychology. For some years now this tradition has tended to become
European, if we include the contributions by our English, Italian, or Swiss
colleagues for example. And I hope that when our American colleagues get
tired of individualism and the psychology of private life, some of them will
give a new impetus to this tradition.
But from the very start the theory that we have attempted to build up
incorporated some elements of Lewin’s thinking about the relationships
between cognition and values, as well as of Sherifs work on anchoring.
And we should not fail to remember Bartlett, whose ideas on the
“conventionalization” and “familiarization” of memory enriched our
thinking about the purposes served by a given representation. I suspect
that in back of Bartlett’s concept of schemas, one would find the concept of
representation, which was brought to his attention by British anthropo-
logy. In science, and especially in Europe, it is difficult to pinpoint a
tradition and above all to maintain it. This is true all the more because in
526 Serge Moscovici

France, as is true elsewhere, there is only one acceptable model for many
scholars, namely the one admitted in the United States.
Let me now focus on an important comment by Rob Farr. Something
similar to the notion of social representations can be found in every
sociological theory. This surely applies to Durkheim, but it also applies to
Weber, Simmel, and many others, with the status of vision or image and
building block of what holds a society together. Weber’s analyses of the
Protestant cthic and Simmel’s analysis of money presuppose a mental
formation at work which lies at their root. This mental formation shapes
group and individual psychology even in the most minute details and
motivates their action. Durkheim and Simmel were explicit in this respect,
but even where the idea was not theoretically formulated as such, this was
because the authors believed that it was the task of social psychology - or
psychology in general - to elaborate it. Thus a theory of social represen-
tations is not the appendage of a particular sociology, such as Durkheim’s.
For my part, I do not share his way of looking at social facts from the point
of view of coercion and of envisaging the relations between society and
individuals as something that has become mechanical. From his stand-
point, moreover, group cohesiveness and conformity are always seen in a
positive light. Historical experience, however, has repeatedly confirmed
their repressive and destructive consequences.
It is our responsibility as social psychologists, in any case, to examine
society “in the making,” a perpetual creation of its members, materially as
well as symbolically. We start out, in principle, from the most anonymous
and fugitive events and we seek to keep track, first, of their aggregation,
then of their objectivation into a stable relationship or institution. O r at
least institutions or relationships with a more or less recognizable form,
like masses or social movements. It is therefore correct to say that in my
thinking I have always been much closer to someone like Weber or like
Simmel, even before reading their works, than to a Durkheim, with whose
work I was familiar. Rob Farr several times shows the connection between
my research on minority influence and the research on social represen-
tations. And rightly so, although much work remains to be done to
integrate these two areas better. From the very start, social psychology
seemed to me better equipped than the other behavioral sciences to study
social transformations and innovations. In this respect my work on
psychoanalysis, at the time it was done, focused on an important cultural
innovation: how one way of looking at man and society was being accepted
in France. It was at that time that I first proposed the hypothesis that a
parallelism exists between communication or influence systems and the
structure of social representations. T o the extent that minorities are the
most common source of such innovations, existing concepts in social
psychology, with their conformity bias, could give no answers to the
 Answers and Questions 527

questions I was raising. This led me to devote myself to the study of this
kind of influence, despite my colleagues’ rebuffs and indifference. But I
believe that, in all fairness, the relationship between minority influence
and social representations has been more fully studied by Doise on the one
hand and Mugny, Papastamou, and Perez on the other, particularly from
the point of view of group relationships.
There are many valuable suggestions in Farr’s article, notably those
about the question of public levels and public opinion, which struck me
and convinced me. I should like to enlarge these suggestions by pointing
out, as social psychologists, that we have failed to attain a clear view of the
role of language in our theories and our discipline. Generally speaking we
do not take language into account and study social or mental relationships
as though language had yet to be invented, as though somewhere a society
existed that operated without a language. Certain articles in this issue give
the impression that language can replace representations in the analysis of
social phenomena. I doubt that this “hermeneutic” stand will be produc-
tive in the long run. After all, our linguistic comprehension and linguistic
practice presuppose an individual andlor social capacity to shape repre-
sentation. It would be instructive, for instance, to explore how the four
abstract words with the initials AIDS fused into a single word in the course
of its transformation from a medical concept to a social representation.
What is more, this term has become a symbol and a linchpin for a number
of political or religious representations, giving new shape to the associated
images and meanings. Not to speak of the emotional charge that is
generated in our times by mental revisions of this kind. It is more difficult
to deal simultaneously with representations and languages, but the effort
is rewarding.
Let me close with two important points. Yes, I do believe that social
psychology is a sort of anthropology of our culture. And in fact, when
anthropologists study our culture - I am thinking of Goffman, Cicourel,
or the ethnomethodologists - they are really doing social psychology. At
any rate the concept of culture would be better suited to define the
phenomena that delimit our sphere of responsibility and the problems for
which we should endeavor to find an answer. Let us go one step further.
We do research not only for the sake of knowledge but also to give some
meaning to our lives and the lives of our contemporaries. The truth is that
the theory of social representations attempts to understand human
thought and its relations to human action, and at the same time seeks to
liberate us from a preconceived and fixed notion of what this thought
should be. This preconceived notion has turned rationality and objectivity
into permanent characteristics of the brain, if not of human nature. Surely
it is better to be rational and objective, just as it is better to be young and
healthy. However, by transforming these potentialities into social obliga-
528 Serge Moscovici
tions and norms, we discredit the other dimensions of mental and
emotional life. Look at the theories of individual and social cognition: they
deal with nothing but information processing and interpreting. People are
never dreaming, imagining things, story-telling, expressing superstitions.
This is not just a scientific rationality, it is a bureaucratic rationality,
which does not differentiate between understanding and doing calcula-
tions. What we are seeing is the merging of homo psychologicus with homo
bureuucruticus. Not withstanding its interesting aspects, the cognitive
revolution has moved a long way in that direction.
We must also be very careful how we apply the concepts of objectivity
and correctness. There is a tendency to turn a characteristic of Western
culture into a trait of human nature. We should break free of this
Eurocentric bias, against which the philosopher Merleau-Ponty warned
us. Let me quote him at some length, because what he has to say is of
considerable importance for us: “By the very fact that one is working in
social psychology, one has stepped outside objectivist ontology. By
remaining inside this ontology, one cannot avoid exerting undue coercion
on the “object” of one’s study, which hampers research. The objectivist
ideology is a clear barrier to the growth of knowledge in this field. For a
man shaped by the objective knowledge of the West, for instance, it was
obvious that magic and myths contained no intrinsic truth, that magic
effects and mythical and ritual experiences must be explained by “objec-
tive” causes and beyond that attributed to subjective illusions. If social
psychology wants to see society as it really is, it cannot take this postulate,
which itself is part of Western psychology, as its starting point, and by
adopting it, we would reach forejudged conclusions . .’ .
The theory of social representations wanted from the very start to break
free of the kinds of postulates that take for granted what still remains to be
proved. It tends to make us aware of “cognitive polyphasia,” of the
diversity of forms of language and thought that enable us to communicate
and live in society. Without activating several mental registers, we could
have no culture, no genuine freedom. And as a science of our culture,
social psychology should and could contribute to criticise a certain
number of our ideological “difficulties,” whose political and human
consequences are huge.
My second point is methodological. Each theory must acquire an
accurate technique and aspire toward rigor. That much is perfectly
obvious. Nevertheless, neither accuracy nor rigor come made to order.
They are a function of the phenomena under consideration and the course
of research. This goes without saying in most scientific fields. For reasons
that would take too long to explain at this point, social psychology has
become a .05 science. Anything that does not lead to a hypothesis that can
be verified by an event whose effects can be determined at this level of
 Answers and Questions 529
significance, is considered unworthy of attention or publication. As a
result, we now have in operation a perfectly working trap, which narrows
the scope of social psychology to fragmented phenomena and eliminates
all phenomena that are still new and “vague.” In truth, social represen-
tations, language, communications, perhaps thought in general, do not
lend themselves to this sort of retrenchment. At best, the most fascinating
part of the phenomena will be swept aside. A nascent field as the biologist
Delbriick expresses it. This must not prevent our taking the results thus
obtained into account or granting them some scientific value. In any case,
everything will have to be judged by its results and justified by them.
This .05 social psychology, with rare exceptions, among them disso-
nance theory, has not yielded more striking discoveries than economics,
linguistics, anthropology, or history, all of which do not demand this sort
of unrealistic accuracy. With this in mind, one should not conclude that
anything goes, but one should reconsider and review critically the norms
that guide our work and our methods at present. But that would take us off
in a new direction. I thank my colleagues for having allowed me to express
my views on a number of important points. As happens with any dialogue,
I have been a bit unsystematic. Perhaps this is a sign that there are still
more questions than answers.

S. Moscovici

NOTES
’ M. MERLEAU-POUTY
Le visible cf l’invisibk. Gallimard, Paris, 1969, p. 43.