Degree of Proximity in the Construction of Social Representations: The Case of Intelligence

The present article is devoted to the empirical endeavor of studying the effect of the degree of proximity, defined by specific socio-educational insertions, on the organization of social representations of intelligence. A questionnaire was answered by a sample of 752 participants belonging to five different social categories with different degrees of proximity and knowledge about intelligence: mothers, fathers, mother-teachers and non-parent students (psychology and science students). The questionnaire included different topics, namely concerning the concept of intelligence, its development and the effectiveness of teaching procedures. Results show that the principles organizing the contents of representations are linked to the personal involvement in intelligence, on which subjects more or less implied take different positions. Results produced suggest, therefore, that the content of representations is directly linked to the activation of social roles and the salience of the object, reflecting the functional character that the organization of representations has to specific social dynamics.

Social comparison and differentiation strategies in social representations of intelligence

The two studies presented here analyse the effect of conditions of social comparison on the organisation of social representations of intelligence. In order to induce the comparisons, participants were asked successively to describe either the intelligence of humans and that of animals (Study 1), or the intelligence of men and that of women (Study 2). Results indicate that a comparison between species leads to maximising the differences between the two forms of intelligence, by increasing the relevance of the categories' most typical dimensions in the descriptions of their respective forms of intelligence. The induction of a comparison between male intelligence and female intelligence produces effects that differ according to participants' own sex. Whereas male participants are led to accentuate the differences between the two forms of intelligence, female participants seem to look for similarity rather than for difference. The differentiations produced suggest, moreover, that the structure of the representations resulting from a comparison between two categories of unequal status tends to legitimate their respective positions in the social structure.