This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Web of Science (1) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Howarth, C. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

How Social Representations of Attitudes Have Informed Attitude Theories

The Consensual and the Reified

London School of Economics

In this paper I discuss the importance of examining the impact of our common-sense making on the development of academic psychological constructs. In the process, I shall review the history of social psychology in understanding differences and similarities in the ways in which attitudes and social representations have been theorized. After a concise review of each of these two concepts, I examine the points of connection and tension between them, with particular reference to the dialectic of the social and the psychological. This highlights the influence of dominant constructions of the individual within the discipline of social psychology itself and on recent research in attitude theory in particular. The paper discusses how social psychologists have used, have been constrained by, and have developed particular social representations of the individual and of ‘attitudes’ themselves in the reified realm of academic psychology. By way of a conclusion, the example of racism is drawn on to reveal the conceptual and political consequences of theorizing either racist attitudes or racializing representations.

Key Words: attitudes • history of social psychology • individualism • racism • social representations

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 16, No. 5, 691-714 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354306067443


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				H. J. Stam Introduction: Reclaiming the Social in Social Psychology Theory Psychology, October 1, 2006; 16(5): 587 - 595. [Abstract] [PDF]