Social Representations

Social representations are concepts or systems that establish the means for individuals to categorize and place themselves within their world and allow communication between individuals who share the same culture and social world.

This is a concept first introduced by the social psychologist Serge Moscovici in the 1960s. Social representations consist of values, practices, customs, ideas, and beliefs that are shared between individuals in a society or group. Social representation theory takes this concept and applies it to tenets of social psychology and group dynamics. Social representations are evolving concepts and are socially constructed. Moscovici suggested that new ideas become social representations by the comparison and integration of the unfamiliar with already known social representations. He also suggested that the concept of 'common sense' is a social representation - unfamiliar scientific thought eventually works its way down to the general public and laypeople who eventually integrate it into common knowledge.