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Intergroup alliances and rejections within a protest movement (analysis of the social representations)
Author(s) -
Dl Giacomo JP.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.2420100402
Subject(s) - psychology , movement (music) , multidimensional scaling , alliance , social psychology , representation (politics) , population , task (project management) , sociology , political science , demography , philosophy , statistics , mathematics , management , politics , law , economics , aesthetics
Studied the development of a student protest movement which, after an initial success, rapidly declined. Opinion surveys were conducted simultaneously with an analysis of the social representations which our population (i.e. male and female university students) held about itself, its potential partners and the proposed strategies. For this latter method, different words related to the protest movement were used as stimuli for a free association task. Similarities between dictionaries were analysed according to Johnson's clustering method and Kruskal's multidimensional scaling method. The structure of social representations allows us to explain the lack of success of the protest movement in terms of intergroup differentiation: the students refused an alliance with the leaders of the movement and rejected their strategies because they progressively defined them and their culture as foreign to and incompatible with themselves. The concept of social representation is discussed in light of the findings.