Étude de la transformation de la représentation sociale de l'Europe sous l'impact majoritaire et minoritaire

Resum

The aim of this paper is to show how certain variables of a cognitive nature can modify a social representation (that of Europe among students of psychology). The element of the representation (connected vs non connected) and the source of influence (majority vs minority) are manipulated in a counter-attitudinal message. Changes affect the periphery alone (Flament, 1989; Abric, 1994b) and only in the case of connected elements (as the initial hypothesis posited). As for injluence, it was hypothesized that majority influence caused a direct change and minority influence a delayed change. Then, only a direct minoritary effect is observed (Martin, 1987; Aïssani, 1991).