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Embracing Change: Knowledge,
Continuity, and Social Representations

Alberta Contarello (Editor)
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Embracing Change
Embracing Change
Knowledge, Continuity, and
Social Representations
Edited by
A L B E RTA C O N TA R E L L O
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Contarello, Alberta, author.
Title: Embracing change : knowledge, continuity, and social representations /Alberta Contarello.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021034879 (print) | LCCN 2021034880 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197617366 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197617380 (epub) |
ISBN 9780197617397
Subjects: LCSH: Social change. | Change (Psychology)
Classification: LCC HM831 .C658 2021 (print) | LCC HM831 (ebook) |
DDC 303.4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034879
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034880
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197617366.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Contributors ix
PA RT I E N T E R I N G T H E F I E L D
Introduction: Why a Social Representations Perspective?
“Le Regard Psychosocial” for the Study of Change and
Continuity in the Field of Social Psychology 3
Alberta Contarello
1. Change Seen Through the Lens of Social Psychology in Europe
and the United States: Close and Distant Reading of Reference
Books and Papers Published in Two Key Journals 24
Valentina Rizzoli, Arjuna Tuzzi, and Alberta Contarello
PA RT I I T H E P R I M AC Y O F R E L AT IO N SH I P S
2. Stability and Change in Everyday Knowledge: From Taken for
Granted to Social Representation: The Case of Normality 59
Francesca Emiliani
3. Social Representations in the Classroom: The Experience of
Social Inequalities in Teacher–Student Relations 79
Giovanna Leone and Arie Nadler
PA RT I I I T H E P R I M AC Y O F C OM M U N IC AT IO N
4. Social Representations, Communication, and
the Evolution of Cultures 103
Bruno M. Mazzara
5. The Contribution of Social Representations Theory for a
Social Psychology of Communication Laboratory 127
Brigido V. Camargo and Andréa Barbará S. Bousfield
vi Contents
PA RT I V C HA N G E A N D C O N T I N U I T Y A S
O N G O I N G E N T E R P R I SE S
6. Battles of Ideas Between the Legal and the Legitimate: Studying
Change and Continuity in Sustainability and Ecological Issues 145
Paula Castro, Sonia Brondi, and Alberta Contarello
7. Research of the Health, Aging, and Society Laboratory: Changes
and Continuities of Social Representations in Health and Labor
Contexts 162
Antônia Lêda Oliveira Silva, Luiz Fernando Rangel Tura, and
Campos Madeira
PA RT V D IA L O G U E S W I T H C O G NAT E
P E R SP E C T I V E S
8. Social Constructionism and Social Representation
Theory: Convergences and Divergences in the Study of Change 181
Diego Romaioli and Alberta Contarello
9. The Discursive Format of “Social Warming”: How People
Change Their Self-Representation in the Context of a
“Mixed Family” 202
Giuseppe Mininni
Epilogue 219
Jorge Correia Jesuino
Index 227
Acknowledgments
This book took several years to come to light, my first and last sabbatical
leaves in Oxford playing a big role in it.
Ideas, gazes, voices, relationships, encounters, misunderstandings . . . again
connections, exchanges, links . . . My warm gratitude goes to all that animated
this picture along time— persons, places, institutions—
co- constructing
ideas, images, experiences.
Very many people have played a role: the contributors, de facto co-
authors, and then colleagues, mentors, students and PhDs, friends and
families, language revisers. A special thought goes to Francesca Helm, who
carried out the second linguistic review of the whole book, a further co-
author, as well as to the vibrant and globalized team of OUP. Too many to
thank individually, but to each of them (often in overlapping roles) goes my
most sincere gratitude.
Enjoying and re-launching our search for better ways of understanding—
and helping to co-produce—social psychological knowledge, in its conti-
nuity and change and, in the end, our life . . .
Alberta Contarello
Padua, September 5, 2021
Contributors
Andréa Barbará S. Bousfield, PhD Jorge Correia Jesuino, PhD

Associate Professor Professor emeritus ISCTE-IUL
Department of Psychology Researcher at CFCUL
Federal University of Santa Catarina University of Lisbon Portugal
Florianópolis, Brazil Campo Grande
Sonia Brondi, PhD Giovanna Leone, MSPsy
Assistant Professor Full Professor of Social Psychology
Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Department of Communication and
Education and Applied Psychology Social Research
University of Padua Sapienza University of Rome
Padua, Italy Rome, Italy
Brigido V. Camargo, PhD Campos Madeira, PhD
Full Professor of Psychology Associate Researcher
Federal University of Santa Catarina Health, Aging and Society Laboratory
Florianópolis, Brazil Federal University of Paraiba
João Pessoa, Brazil
Paula Castro, PhD
Full Professor of Psychology at ISCTE— Bruno M. Mazzara, MSSoc
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and Full Professor of Social Psychology
Director of CIS_iscte Communication and Social Research
Lisbon University Institute University of Rome Sapienza
Lisbon, Portugal Rome, Italy
Alberta Contarello, MSEd Giuseppe Mininni, MPhil/MA Semiotics

Full Professor of Social Psychology Full Professor of Social Psychology
Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Department of Educational Sciences,
Education and Applied Psychology Psychology, Communication
University of Padua University of Bari
Padua, Italy Bari, Italy
Arie Nadler, PhD
Francesca Emiliani, MMed/
Professor Emeritus
Specialization Psy
School of Psychological Sciences
Full Professor of Social Psychology
Tel Aviv University
(retired)
Tel Aviv, Israel
Department of Education Science
University of Bologna Antônia Lêda Oliveira Silva, PhD
Bologna, Italy Full Professor
Department of Public Health
Federal University of Paraiba
João Pessoa, Brazil
x Contributors
Valentina Rizzoli, PhD Luiz Fernando Rangel Tura, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow Associate Researcher
Department of Communication and History, Health and Society Laboratory
Social Research Institute of Public Health Studies
Sapienza University of Rome Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Rome, Italy Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Diego Romaioli, PhD Arjuna Tuzzi, PhD
Assistant Professor Full Professor of Social Statistics
Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Department of Philosophy, Sociology,
Education and Applied Psychology Education and Applied Psychology
University of Padua University of Padua
Padua, Italy Padua, Italy
PART I
EN T E R ING T HE F I E LD
Introduction: Why a Social
Representations Perspective?
“Le Regard Psychosocial” for the Study of Change and
Continuity in the Field of Social Psychology
Alberta Contarello
Our life is changing at an accelerated pace. Common metaphors are used

in public and in everyday conversations and discourses to underline this
phenomenon with an aura of great alarm when speaking of the tsunami of
the economic crisis, the overwhelming wave of the aging population in the
world, or—currently at the forefront—migration. The spread of information
and communication technologies (ICTs) and the ever-growing call for sus-
tainable economics are also being presented in terms of extreme urgency.
And, finally, the Covid-19 pandemic arrived and modified everything. Social
and human sciences are being challenged by not necessarily new but rapid
and astounding demands. For example, the Manifeste pour le science sociales,
by Calhoun and Wieviorka (2015), questioned the role of social sciences in
understanding the fast changes of our world and foreseeing possible futures.
Surprisingly enough, social psychology is less present than we might expect
in this multi-and interdisciplinary debate, although it has been appropri-
ately defined as a “science in movement” (Moscovici, 1972), one of develop-
ment and change (Moscovici, 2000).
Seeking to address this gap, the foci of this volume are forms of change
and continuity in the production of shared knowledge in our contemporary
world, understood from a social psychological perspective that is inspired
by social representations theory (SRT) (Jovchelovitch, 2007; Marková, 2003;
Moscovici, 1961/76; Tura & Oliveira Silva, 2012). This perspective explic-
itly deals with meaning-making in specific social contexts, enhancing both
the process of representing and the structures of social knowledge as well as
their evolution and transformations. The main purpose and commitment of
Alberta Contarello, Introduction: Why a Social Representations Perspective? In: Embracing Change. Edited by: Alberta
Contarello, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197617366.003.0001
4 Alberta Contarello
the volume are to highlight the social dimension, through a full recognition
of the inescapable role of “the Other” in the production of (social) under-
standing. This “Other” does not simply refer to some outside entity meant to
exert influence on the knower (as in the metaphor of mirroring reality), thus
leaving unchallenged an individualistic tilt of the discipline and a preferen-
tial attention to stability. Rather it refers to an inescapable “third” gaze that
the human condition imposes for the development of knowledge. Following
a dialogical epistemology (Marková, 2003), this gaze is conceived of as fo-
cused on everyday life, where common sense provides both its stuff and its
structure (cf. Emiliani, 2002).
Grounding our roots in seminal thinking that arose at the outset of the
discipline, mainly from Mead’s (1934) theorizing on the generalized Other,
to phenomenological sociology (Schutz, 1967) as well as historical-cultural
perspectives (renovating Vygotsky, 1978), we advocate for a more “social”
social psychology, one sharing great concern with the field of societal psy-
chology. We also further stress the co-construction of meaning via language
and communication in everyday life, reconsidering the structured and struc-
turing role of common sense. The main ambition of this volume is to show
that (this) social psychology has much to say as far as the themes of change
and continuity are concerned and to illustrate how relevant and coherent
empirical research can be carried out. In parallel, the innovative role of SRT
within social psychology will be enhanced. To this aim, the volume brings
together the voices of scholars whose work, within or in connection/rela-
tion with the theory of social representations, has extended its boundaries.
The main topics pertaining to the theory will be introduced in the various
chapters, illustrating their heuristic power as well as possible future paths of
research.
What Is at Stake? Change, Continuity, and

Social Psychology
How has change— and continuity—been studied in social psychology?

Already in 2003, Ivana Marková observed that
Casual inspection of psychological theories of social knowledge

indicates that in general they foreground stability as a theoretical
Introduction 5
concept . . . Moscovici (1976b) shows that the studies of social influence

have been largely based on congruence and movement towards conformity.
Thus these studies have emphasised the tendency for non-change in both
thinking and action. . . . It is not that change as a social and psychological
phenomenon has been ignored. . . . The fundamental issue here is that the
criterion for the study of change is the state of stability. It is stability that
is presupposed and the questions posed in research concern the causes or
reasons for disturbances of stability. For example, social research is often
concerned with the question as to why people change their attitudes rather
than why they retain their attitudes. Or, why people change their behaviour
rather than why they remain stable in their habits and activities. Although
we have numerous theories about stable universals, their nature, content
and form, we do not have theories of social knowledge based on the concept of
change. (Marková, 2003, p. 5, emphasis in the original)
Before trying to retrace some important steps in social psychology in this

regard, a few words are needed on what is meant here by “change” and
“continuity.”
From an etymological ground, the word “change”—coming from Latin,
Celtic, and French—means to become different, undergo alteration, switch.
In terms of synonyms, we find a great number of terms such as “transforma-
tion,” “modification,” “alteration,” “shift,” and “turn” and others with an eval-
uative stance, such as “innovation,” “development,” “revolution.” With regard
to antonyms, a smaller number of items exist, such as “similarity” or “same-
ness” (https://www.powerthesaurus.org/change). In this volume, I refer (and
invite the reader to refer) to change, in its various nuances, both as a verb
and a noun: both an ongoing transformation and a rapid switch from one
pattern to another. As mentioned earlier, the theoretical framework in which
this analysis is grounded is the social representations perspective; that is, our
concern will regard both meaning-making processes and their outcomes in
terms of contents and structures of shared knowledge. “Continuity,” on the
other hand, is not conceived of as an antonym to “change” but rather in a rela-
tion of complementarity with it. In this, I agree with Anderson’s (2007, p. 11)
note that “we are never at a standstill; our meanings, our bodies, and so on
are always in motion (e.g., altering, developing, evolving), from the moment
of birth to death. And there is always a sense of continuity in it; we do not
change, for instance, from one person to another, but as new and different
identities come forward, we remain who we have been and are, while at the
same time we are becoming.” This holds for human beings as well as for
shared systems of knowledge. However, I prefer the word “change” to “trans-
formation.” The main reason for my choice is that, in the social psychological
field in which SRT is grounded, we take into account a spiraling causality
where, instead of causes, we look for co-causes or co-occurrences in contin-
uous movement, but also consider moments of inertia. A beautiful and fit-
ting metaphor here might be that of a kaleidoscope, mingling movement and
stillness, ongoing perturbations and fixed shapes: changes and continuities.
Parallel to a scholarly attention to change and continuity in shared systems
of knowledge, it is interesting to note how the role of the researcher in this
area of study tends to move from that of an acute observer and interpreter
to that of somebody who tries to intercept explicit and implicit features, as if
with a radar or an amplifier, in order to monitor and possibly play the role of a
co-agent of change and continuity.
The aim of this volume is thus to approach the study of the dynamic be-
tween change and continuity, making explicit the constitutive thirdness of
the knowing process, offering theoretical-empirical contributions in various,
interrelated, research fields. Whether we focus on health, the environment,
forms of citizenship, or migration, the “social psychological gaze” requires us
to take into account the vitality and generativity of different points of view,
on both a theoretical level and, even more cogently, on the pragmatic level
of research methodology. Change arises and innovation emerges from di-
versity and conflict between perspectives. This is a long-standing lesson of
social psychology, from the seminal work by Lewin (1948) onward (cf. also
Moscovici & Doise, 1991). Widely accepted at a theoretical level, surpris-
ingly enough, this view encounters less favor in present-day research projects
within the discipline, which remains more cognitively and, recently, neuro-
logically oriented (cf. Emiliani & Mazzara, 2015).
The different themes considered in the book find their meaning and ur-
gency within temporal frames that compare “what we were like” and “what
we are becoming,” searching for shifts from the present to the conditional
tense: from pictures of what exists to analyses of what was there, to proposals
of what could better be. Research thus becomes a valid opportunity to offer
an exercise of possibilities (Badaloni & Contarello, 2012; Jovchelovitch &
Priego-Hernández, 2013). Writings and studies in this line, oriented toward
a societal approach, have been flourishing, mainly from cognate theoretical
perspectives such as social identity theory (e.g., Elcheroth et al., 2011; Special
Introduction 7
Thematic Section on “Societal Change” in the Journal of Social and Political

Psychology, 2013). Various chapters of this volume will explicitly dialogue
with these advances. A few introductory words might thus be helpful to draw
the contours of the perspective adopted and of the science within which it
developed.
Social Psychology: One, None, One Hundred Thousand—

A Science in Movement and the Position of SRT Within It
Since its early beginning in the first years of the twentieth century, social psy-
chology has adopted different shapes and forms, positioning itself in a variety
of ways between the human and natural sciences. It has enhanced, on the one
hand, social dynamics (Ross, 1908) and, on the other, psychological processes
guided by the specific makeup of human beings (McDougall, 1908). Over
more than a century, this duality has sometimes tended to fade away, while
at other times it has sharpened, producing an imperfect identity—or better, a
multiple identity—which makes this field of knowledge particularly vital and
contemporary. It is a science which is still in motion, rich in specificity and
tensions (Contarello & Mazzara, 2000; Farr, 1996; Moscovici, 1970).
Over time since its foundation, various definitions of social psychology
have been offered, at times clearly diverging and in mutual conflict, so much
so that Aronson (1972) declared “There are almost as many definitions of so-
cial psychology as there are social psychologists” (p. 4). To retrace the main
ones would be misleading in this context; it is, however, worth dwelling on a
few of them, in search of those which are more compatible or in tune with the
adopted perspective.
One of the most widely shared definitions was proposed during the
1950s by Gordon Allport, who defined the discipline as “an attempt to un-
derstand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of individ-
uals are influenced by the actual, imagined, and implied presence of others”
(Allport, 1954, p. 5). In a few words, the authoritative field pioneer framed
what would overall become the foundation for theory and research in the
discipline: the study of how “others” would have an impact on an individual’s
cognition, emotions, and intention to act. However, while recognizing the
fundamental role of the social dimension—the importance of “others”—this
definition still proposes a one-way direction of influence—from “them” to
the individual—and focuses on individuals as distinct agents.
Involved in the search for a “more social” social psychology (cf. Israel &
Tajfel, 1972), in the late 1970s, Tajfel and Fraser declared, “We are all social
psychologists,” offering one of the most inclusive definitions of the discipline;
that is, the study of “the various aspects of the interaction between individ-
uals, between and within social groups, and between individuals and social
systems, small or large, of which they are part” (Tajfel & Fraser, 1978, p. 22).
The authors hence organized their highly influential textbook to distinguish
between different levels of analysis: intraindividual, interindividual, inter-
group, and societal processes and dynamics (cf. Doise, 1986).
Further elaborating on these dynamics, Moscovici (1984b) defined social
psychology not merely as the study of individuals and society, but also as the
science of the conflict between individual and society. In his words, “The cen-
tral and exclusive object of social psychology consists in all the phenomena
pertaining to ideology and communication, examined in terms of their gen-
esis, structure and function” (p. 7). He had previously maintained, “Because
of its dual reference to the individual and the group, to the psychological and
the sociological, and to personality and culture, social psychology can be
assigned a hybrid position or status” (Moscovici, 1970). As he himself in-
dicated, the originality of this composite field of study lies particularly in its
“subversive” questioning of the division between the psychological and so-
cial (Moscovici, 1984b).
In this process of pluralizing perspectives, some areas of renewal have
been pivotal, indicating in the second half of the twentieth century the need
for certain “turns,” in particular toward a social psychology that would be
“more social,” but also culturally, linguistically, discursively, narratively, and
critically oriented (Sugiman et al., 2008). One of the theoretical perspectives
that developed in this broad context of debate is the framework of social
representations (Moscovici, 1961/761). These are understood as forms of so-
cial, practical, and situated thinking (Jodelet, 1984) and are of particular ap-
peal for those interested in the relationship between individual and society in
terms of continuity and change. The theory has recently celebrated its fiftieth
anniversary, which has been fêted with various publications (e.g., Lo Monaco
et al., 2016; Palmonari & Emiliani, 2019; Sammut et al., 2014).
1 This book encountered translations in various language decades after its publication: in English,
introduced by Daniel Lagace (2008), In Italian, edited by Annamaria de Rosa (2011), in Portuguese,
translated by Sonia Fuhrmann.mThis is a remarkable witness of its vitality. All the three versions and
editions are mentioned in the chapters of this volume.
Introduction 9
Autonomy of an Interdisciplinary Project
If today we re-read the 1970 text which introduces the volume by Jodelet,
Voet, and Besnard, from which the previous quotation is taken, thoroughly
examined within it we find some questions which are still alive and being
debated today. Moscovici (1970) recognized a heterogeneous nature in so-
cial psychology, intrinsically oriented to interdisciplinarity, with a mediating
role on several levels. On the one hand, it involved a task of coordination
and integration between disciplines (mainly psychology and sociology; but
as Jodelet [2009a] will indicate, also anthropology and social history) with
the production of complex and mixed approaches. On the other, a particular
mandate: that of constituting a “laboratory of social sciences.”
As regards its objects of study, Moscovici reiterates that, beyond the com-
pound nature of its name, social psychology is not a “mixed” science. It was
not born to respond to the limits of the two sciences with which it relates
most; at the same time, it does not move into the area of “no man’s science,” to
exist free from one or the other. Rather, it finds its own legitimacy, autonomy,
and coherence in addressing the study of new phenomena that are not con-
templated in the two other aforementioned areas of knowledge. Moscovici
(1970) indicates some of them: “how modalities of internalization and ex-
ternalization of the social decisively influence psychological and physiolog-
ical functions or processes,” or how “modifications of mental and cognitive
structures, of symbolic systems, through interpersonal and intergroup dy-
namics” happen, or again “the impact of representations and ideologies on
social processes, communication phenomena, and so on” (p. 16). These were
unexplored phenomena, in psychological as well as sociological inquiry,
which require both solid and innovative methodologies to be tackled.
If all of this holds true for social psychology in general, it does even more so
within the perspective favored here. In fact, a social psychology so defined can
properly address the “phenomenon of social representations” as the study of
a system of values, ideas and practices with a dual function: firstly

establishing an order that allows individuals to orient themselves in their
material and social world and to master it; secondly, making communi-
cation between the members of a community possible by providing them
with a code for social exchange and a code to unambiguously name and
classify the various aspects of their world and their individual and group
history. (Moscovici, 1973, p. xiii)
Consequently, both psychological and social aspects, as well as aspects re-

lated to communication, become relevant to scholars. Thus, the variety of
appropriate issues to be enquired about, as well as research methodologies to
be devised, expands further (see Flick, 2014), as exemplified in the following
chapters.
Le regard psychosocial
What fully characterizes the social representations perspective is the un-

conditioned adoption of a social-psychological gaze (a “regard psychoso-
cial”); that is, a threefold reading of knowledge (Moscovici, 1995). As already
maintained by Peirce (1931–1935), the knowledge of a social object neces-
sarily requires the mediation of an Alter, a “thirdness.” Thus, the binary for-
mula that connects the subject of knowledge and the known object is replaced
by the triad Ego-Alter-Object (Figure I.1): and not only. Proposing the no-
tion of a “thinking society,” Moscovici (1981, p. 257) clearly explains that
individuals and groups, far from being passive receptors, think for
themselves, produce, and ceaselessly communicate their own specific
representations and solutions to the questions they set themselves. In the
streets, in cafés, offices, hospitals, laboratories, etc., people analyse, com-
ment upon, and concoct spontaneous, unofficial “philosophies” which have
a decisive impact on their social relations, their choices, the way they bring
up their children, the way they plan ahead, and so forth. Events, sciences
and ideologies simply provide them with “food for thought.” (1984b, p. 16)
Object
(physical, social,
imaginary or real)
Ego Alter
Figure I.1 The triangle Ego-Alter-Object.

Introduction 11
The main purpose is thus to stress the priority of the social dimension. This
implies, in the research process, a diminished use of classical, linear research
models—which involve the study of the effects of independent variables,
manipulated or recorded by the experimenters, on dependent variables
measured by them—in favor of revised forms of these or more complex
models that take into account the reciprocal influence of the different elem-
ents involved, considered as true co-constructors of meaning.
The theory of social representations not only adopts the idea of a
“thirdness,” which becomes a fundamental pillar of it (see also Jesuino, 2009;
Marková, 2003), but it also opens up to different “ternary” reasonings. One
of these concerns the area of relevance of approaches oriented toward this
theory. As indicated by Moscovici (1961/76; 2011) and taken up by Flick
(1998) in his methodological reflections, a social representation can be un-
derstood as the space that extends between (1) changes in the investigated
social contexts, which produce new and different readings of relevant social
phenomena; (2) changes in the everyday practices of the individuals involved
in these contexts; and (3) transformations at the level of the psychosocial
processes that guide these practices, for example on the level of identity, or of
the construction of values, attitudes, or socio-cognitive modalities of seeing
one’s own and other groups (Figure I.2). Clearly, on the basis of these issues,
each of the vertices of the triangle must be understood as both a starting ele-
ment and as a landing point for the changes considered.
Clear in its outlines, this model easily lends itself to playing a generative
role for various joint research designs (multi-or mixed methods) focusing
Changes in social
“Realities”
Social Representations
Changes in social
Changes in uses
psychological
and practices
processes
Figure I.2 A second triangle: Between-ness.

Badaloni, S., & Contarello, A. (Eds.) (2012). Gender and changes. From under-representations of
women to new emerging scenarios. Padova: Padova University Press.
on change and continuity. We ourselves have used it effectively to study pro-

cesses of change from a social-psychological perspective regarding gender
(the underrepresentation of women in the scientific and technological uni-
verse; see Badaloni et al., 2012), age/generation (aging in an aging society;
see Contarello et al., 2016; Contarello & Romaioli, 2020), health (the imple-
mentation of projects aimed at reducing pain in health and hospital settings;
see Nencini et al., 2015), and the environment (Brondi et al., 2012; Contarello
et al., 2006). This involves analyzing existing situations and proposals for
change (often advanced by international bodies such as the World Health
Organization or European agencies and cascading national, regional, and
local ones) at the macro level, observing the transformations in the uses and
life practices at the meso level, and recording social-psychological processes
at the micro level as they unfold. Widening the focus of analysis requires
various shifts in research design and in the interpretation of the role of
researchers. I touch on some of these topics further on.
It is important, however, at this point to underline to what extent full
adoption of this “new look”—“le regard psychosocial”—leads to modifying
consolidated structures for theorizing and researching in social psychology
and related disciplines. In short, it is a question of putting the primacy of
relationships and communication at the forefront while taking social and
cultural forces into account. It also involves the question of designing, simul-
taneously within the same project, elements concerning different levels of
analyses, micro and macro (Lopes & Gaskell, 2014), or the three different
spheres of relevance of a social representation: intraindividual, interindi-
vidual, and transindividual (cf. Jodelet, 2009b). Occasionally, it also involves
organizing multi-or interdisciplinary research teams by bringing together
social psychologists with experts in areas such as political science, sociology,
and anthropology (cf. Sammuth et al., 2014) as well as other hard and soft
sciences (Badaloni et al., 2012).
This fully occurs especially in the more “societal” developments of the per-
spective, up to the point of assuming an intense “family resemblance” with
similar perspectives such as forms of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough,
1995; van Dijk, 1993), social constructionism (Gergen, 1999), and political
and societal psychology (Elcheroth et al., 2011; Jovchelovitch & Priego-
Hernandez, 2013; Howarth et al., 2013).
This brings us back to the long-term question of methods, on which
the specificity of social psychology lies, with its “arsenal” of research
designs, techniques, and procedures that are also rooted in related
Introduction 13
disciplines: ethnography for observation in natural settings, psychology

for monitoring and measuring personality characteristics and other psy-
chological constructs, and sociology for large-scale surveys. Plurality,
therefore—but also methodological originality—is intrinsic to the disci-
pline, with a fervor oriented to innovation that derives from the irreduc-
ibility of the new phenomena under study to theoretical and empirical
models already existing in the “mother” disciplines: psychology on the
one hand, sociology on the other. Fifty years later, we can now extend
the range of artifacts that enter the social psychologist’s toolbox, partic-
ularly when oriented toward the currents we are considering, to include
instruments adopted by social statistics, semiology, linguistics, and, more
recently, neurosciences. However, we must recognize that this openness
to interdisciplinarity remains a strength of social psychology, as do va-
riety and inventiveness in its methodological choices. After a period of full
prevalence of experimentation and correlational research, multimethod
choices or “mixed methods” are returning, integrating different method-
ologies into the same research project and giving full recognition to quali-
tative methods and procedures (Gergen, 2015). Launched mainly by social
psychology, this path is also undertaken by a large proportion of the social
sciences (Creswell, 2013; Flick, 2014).
The Time Dimension
The systems of knowledge that we are immersed in and that we contribute to

building change over time, at a faster or slower pace depending on different
concomitant conditions and with modalities ranging from a slow change
to sudden paradigmatic jumps. Their propensity for change—apparently
higher at present than in the recent past—is dictated by the pluralization of
knowledge and of values shared—but much more frequently challenged—in
our contemporary world. With this regard, Moscovici (1982) wrote about
the era of social representations. The one in which we have been living in the
“modern” world, no longer subject to massive, strong powers (religious or-
thodoxy, military dictatorships, and/or monarchical absolutism [although
we also witness counter-examples]) and imbued with independent com-
munication flows, might offer the citizen a plurality of voices and possible
positions in a democratization occurring from below: surely imperfect, but
potentially liberating.
The astonishing acceleration in individual and social communication

occurring in the third millennium has further enhanced this pluralization
between and within individuals and groups, demanding in-depth analyses
and extensions, both theoretical and methodological, in the study of social
representations (cf. Arruda, 2013; de Rosa, 2012).
Unfortunately, recent turns in what we could call global agenda setting—
or, in our terms, societal meaning-making processes—have made us less opti-
mistic with regard to the liberating potentials offered by these innovations.
Again, we can re-read some lines by Marková (2003).
However, under no circumstances are ahistorical explanations suitable as

explanations for human phenomena because these involve interdependen-
cies between societies, groups and individuals and therefore between crea-
tive agencies. The movements of changes of human social phenomena have
neither predetermined goals, nor do they necessarily lead to any progress.
(p. 49)
Subject to changes, social representations live along the dimension of time,

and it is precisely in their making, in the trajectory and in the processes along
which such forms of social, practical, and shared thinking are produced, that
the perspective in question concentrates its focus of analysis.
Starting from Moscovici’s pioneering study on the social representations
of psychoanalysis in France in the 1950s (Moscovici, 1961/76), much re-
search has highlighted the role of constitutive psychosocial processes—
objectification of new knowledge and anchoring to existing socio-cognitive
systems—but also the forms of communication adopted mainly by mass
media as well as the social psychological dynamics connected to processes of
influence (cf. Palmonari & Emiliani, 2009).
Already in the foundational work, the issue of time, and thus continuity
and change of representations along the temporal trajectory, was funda-
mental. Since then, some authors have further developed this issue. In par-
ticular, Bauer and Gaskell (1999) have proposed taking into account the
time dimension to denote the project that links Ego, Alter, and the Object
(cf. Bauer, 2015), and Valsiner has challenged social representation theory
by proposing an advancement in terms of a theory of enablement. Focusing
his attention on the study of the process of social representing rather than
on the meaning structures that gained stability in a society, he wrote “If
viewed from this perspective, social representations are meaning complexes
Introduction 15
that play the role of macro-level cultural constraints of human conduct in its
present-future transition” (Valsiner, 2003, p. 7.6, emphasis in the original)
and concluded, “The critical question for further development of the SR [so-
cial representation] theory is to create formal models of the transformation
of the current construction of oppositional structures into something new”
(p. 7.14).
In dialogue with these scholars, Sandra Jovchelovitch analyzes in depth
the “future-tense” orientation of social representations. Together with the
“who,” “how,” “why,” and “what” dimensions of representation, the author
reflects on the “what for” and, within this, on the future-making or anticipa-
tory function of representations, writing,
Representations seek to construct knowledge of the future cognitively,

socially and emotionally. Cognitively, they do so through the construc-
tion of projects, which correspond to cognitive anticipations of things to
come; socially, through the construction of utopias, which correspond to
the projection of visions about how things should be in times to come; and
emotionally, through the experience of hope, which corresponds to the
emotional field in which anticipation operates. Projects, utopia and hope
are the constitutive elements of the anticipatory function of representations
and are present mainly in knowledge systems open to the future and to
the unknown. Whereas a great deal of knowledge construction is driven
by backward energies linked to the past and to trajectories that remain
active in the present, there is a dimension of the process that is disposed
forwards, towards the not-yet-conscious and not-yet-become, the catego-
ries Bloch (1986) described when examining anticipatory consciousness.
(Jovchelovitch, 2007, pp. 113–114)
This function of social representations opens the way to challenging fields

and themes of research, particularly when the purpose of inquiry is an “an-
thropology of everyday life” (Moscovici, 1984a; Moscovici & Marková,
1998) in its present but also in its not-yet-happened conditions.
Future-Making: “Engagé” Approaches
Studying change, from the perspective we are considering, involves facing a

flow in movement characterized by mutual influences and relationships or,
more properly, by co-constructions of meaning-making.2 What then are the

role and the positioning of the researcher?
From a social representation perspective, Jesuino (2009) maintained
that the researcher might become a “traveling companion” of social poli-
cies. He/she indeed has the chance, on the one hand, to have access to spe-
cific fields or existing databases and/or to co-generate the latter, and, on the
other, to step back from the urgency that policy-makers and practitioners
in general have to face. The search for balance between detachment and
involvement thus becomes a challenging feature of doing research, to
a greater extent here than is usually the case in social psychology. With
this regard, Wagner and Hayes (2005, p. 328) noted that “in all research
having to do with culture and common sense, researchers are more a par-
ticipant than an observer in the research field” and that both participants
and researchers play the role of active agents in social processes. In her
analysis of “knowledge in context,” Jovchelovitch (2007) further elaborates
this point, discussing three main focuses inherent to the study of local rep-
resentational systems: knowledge, conscientization, and empowerment.
The first aims mainly to depict knowledge systems by providing “a picture
of the field in a given moment of the community being studied” (p. 168).
The second, in Jovchelovitch’s analysis, is strictly linked to Freire’s dialog-
ical method and borrows a strong commitment to the development of crit-
ical consciousness from the author of “the pedagogy of the oppressed” and
“the pedagogy of hope” via a recognition of underprivileged voices and,
more generally, of the plurality of coexisting worldviews. The third further
enhances the need to bring back socially excluded actors to the social arena
and foresees participatory exercises to “construct critical encounter(s)
based on the dialogical principle, where all stakeholders in the project can
gain and develop knowledge” (p. 172).
Together with the need for the “right distance,” reflexivity by the researcher
thus becomes essential, alerting awareness of her or his role as a potential
agent of change or a co-constructor of continuity rather than a detector of
traces. Such an awareness also implies repercussions on the social relevance
of the research and demands practices of inquiry that challenge a clear-cut
distinction between pure and applied research in favor of theoretically in-
formed interventions (cf. Contarello et al., 2013).
2 This heading echoes the title of an oeuvre dedicated to Denise Jodelet, enhancing a socially com-
mitted tilt in the study of social and local knowledge (Madiot et al., 2008).
Introduction 17
These ideas will be encountered throughout the various chapters of the

volume at hand. Clearly, as it is an edited publication and thus composed of
writings by different scholars, different positionings with these regards are
presented. With this plurality of voices, I hope the reader will appreciate both
the scientific quality of the various contributions and the social relevance
that they could play in a wider social psychological research agenda.
Outline of the Volume
Following these premises, the volume is divided into five parts. In Part
I, “Entering the Field,” Chapter 1, by Valentina Rizzoli, Arjuna Tuzzi, and
myself, offers an overview of the field and provides a framework for the fol-
lowing sections. “Change Seen Through the Lens of Social Psychology in
Europe and the United States” provides an overview of the study of change
and continuity in social psychology. In particular, it aims to systematically
test Marková’s above-mentioned observation regarding a lack of theories of
social knowledge based on the concept of change and, more generally, re-
garding the study of change to the detriment of stability. To this purpose, after
considering how change has been studied in reference books and by leading
figures in the discipline, the chapter presents a lexical content analysis of the
abstracts of two main journals in social psychology from the United States
(Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) and Europe (European Journal
of Social Psychology), since their inception, showing interesting trends over
time and probing the role of Moscovici’s thinking along this path.
Part II is devoted to “The Primacy of Relationships.” In Chapter 2,
“Stability and Change in Everyday Knowledge from Taken for Granted to
Social Representation: The Case of Normality,” Francesca Emiliani sets down
fundamental issues—and keywords—in the perspective adopted in this
volume: mainly, the essential role of relationships in the meaning-making
process. Through constant and repeated interactions within significant
relationships, humans learn to co-construct meaning, and, in everyday life,
they do so in search of stability, in answering to normative meta-systems.
Empirical observations regarding severe child deprivation as well as a study
with narratives on the global suspension of the taken-for-granted pro-
duced by the Covid-19 pandemic powerfully enlighten these processes.
Chapter 3, by Giovanna Leone and Arie Nadler, maintains the focus of atten-
tion on relationships, but moves to an intergroup level of analysis in “Social
Representations in the Classroom: The Experience of Social Inequalities in

Teacher–Student Relations.” From an interdisciplinary point of view, it aims
to illustrate, through experimental and observational studies, the ambivalent
nature of giving help and the potential risks of meaning-making processes,
which tend not only to stigmatize but also to let stigma be interiorized by
members of underprivileged groups. It is in the pendulum between conti-
nuity and change of social representations—in this case through teachers’
experiences of self-reflection—that social disempowerment may be rein-
forced or challenged.
Part III expounds on “The Primacy of Communication.” In Chapter 4,
“Social Representations, Communication, and the Evolution of Cultures,”
Bruno M. Mazzara overviews lines of research and perspectives on the diffu-
sion and change of social representations and illustrates a view of this spread
of such representations and the evolution of cultures via communication.
Discussing interpretations in terms of naturalization, mechanicism, and,
more widely, neurosciences, the author maintains that culture may be con-
ceived as a network of social representations in continuous change and that
the true “nature” of the human being is her or his need to create shared sym-
bolic contexts, in line with the provocative assertion by Rogoff (2003) that
the human species is “biologically cultural,” in the full and literal sense of this
expression. Chapter 5, “The Contribution of Social Representations Theory
for a Social Psychology of the Communication Laboratory,” by Brigido
V. Camargo and Andréa Barbarà Bousfield, aims to illustrate the way in
which a laboratory of social psychology of communication (LACCOS) can
work when it fully adopts a social representations perspective. Through an
example of research on scientific socialization in areas of health protection
and prevention in South-East Brazil, the active role of subjects (Ego-Alter)
in the construction and circulation of meaning-making is enhanced, as well
as the interaction in which the subjects take part within specific social and
historical situations.
As mentioned earlier, studying change and continuity in systems of
knowledge at a societal level invites one to take into account the role of legal
systems and normative regulations (cf. also Doise, 2013). Paula Castro has
long dedicated her interests to the relation between meaning-making in
everyday life and the implementation of new laws, showing the heuristic
power of SRT to analyze “the conflict which might arise between different
groups, differing with regard to sense-making, and how these differences
relate to local conflicts, are negotiated in everyday communication and
Introduction 19
re-presented in mediated formats” (Castro, 2015, p. 303). Part IV is about

“Change and Continuity as Ongoing Enterprises.” In Chapter 6, “Battles of
Ideas Between the Legal and the Legitimate,” Paula Castro, Sonia Brondi,
and myself focus attention on local knowledge; more specifically, on how
change and continuity may be achieved in the meaning-making processes
related to environmental issues. In that chapter, key theoretical concepts
from SRT are unfolded (i.e., cognitive polyphasia) and illustrated via em-
pirical inquiry. More explicitly directed to the implementation of theo-
retical analyses and practical outcomes is Chapter 7, “Research of Health,
Aging, and Society Laboratory,” by Antônia Lêda Oliveira Silva, Luiz
Fernando Rangel Tura, and Margot Madeira. Focusing on the issue of pop-
ulation aging, which has become—in various degrees and ways—a global
concern also pertaining to countries until recently defined as “developing,”
the authors present proposals for research and interventions inspired by
the social representations perspective aimed to foster individuals’ and
communities’ well-being in (mainly North-Eastern) Brazil. The interest
here, and the challenge, is to study and encourage change in meaning-
making regarding aging and the elderly in a society which has experienced
a remarkable aging of its population without previously undergoing an in-
crease in wealth, as has previously happened to the elderly population of
various countries.
Part V gives space to two “Dialogues with Cognate Perspectives” devel-
oped in social psychology at the same time as SRT. As was anticipated, the so-
cial representation perspective took part in the linguistic turn and enhanced
the role of communication, yet, through the past decades, it has occupied
a distinct place with regard to converging paradigms such as social con-
structionism and discourse analysis (cf. Sugiman et al., 2008). In Chapter 8,
“Social Constructionism and Social Representation Theory,” Diego Romaioli
and myself attempt to tackle the main similarities and differences in the way
SRT and social constructionism face the study of change and continuity in
meaning-making at the social and societal levels, focusing our attention on
the two key Authors who started these two perspectives. In Chapter 9, “The
Discursive Format of ‘Social Warming,’ ” Giuseppe Mininni proposes a pos-
sible integration of SRT and discursive psychology, advancing a dialectical
synthesis of the two that is suitable for the study of change and continuity in
knowledge systems. Both chapters of Part V include an illustration of inqui-
ries meant to help us better understand the issues at stake (e.g., aging in an
aging society, availability to volunteer, social warming in mixed families
in times of accelerated mobility) but also to help generate a novel reading

of them.
As this overview has indicated, each of the central sections is composed
of a more theoretical and a more “practical” chapter, but all of the chapters
have been designed to include a brief introduction, the presentation of
one or more central topics within the theory of social representations, and
one or more examples of research discussed at some length. The purpose
of the whole volume is thus to both reflect on and update lines of research
pertaining the study of change and continuity in meaning-making processes
regarding relevant social issues such as health, environment, and community
and to provide an array of suitable research methods from the social psycho-
logical domain.
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Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes
(ed. M. Cole). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Wagner, W., & Hayes, N. (2005). Everyday discourse and common sense: The theory of so-
cial representations. New York: Palgrave.
1
Change Seen Through the Lens
of Social Psychology in Europe and
the United States
Close and Distant Reading of Reference Books and
Papers Published in Two Key Journals
Valentina Rizzoli, Arjuna Tuzzi, and Alberta Contarello
How has social psychology investigated the concept of change? In this

chapter, we try to answer this question by moving in two directions. First, we
briefly consider the main lines of research described in some of the reference
books on social psychology and the contributions of leading scholars who
studied change (i.e., the great names in its history, cf. Lubek, 1993). Second,
we analyze the abstracts of the papers published in two journals of pivotal
importance in this field since their inception: the Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology (JPSP) and the European Journal of Social Psychology
(EJSP). In line with recent developments in digital methods, the distant
reading of large corpora of scientific literature can serve as a valid counter-
part to more traditional ways of pursuing a historical quest like the one we
posit here (Tuzzi, 2018).
Change in Reference Books on Social Psychology and

in Contributions of Leading Scholars
“An ancient aphorism . . . holds that social psychology is a field with a long
past but a short history” (cf. Farr, 1991). It is from this premise that Ross,
Lepperd, and Ward (2010, p. 13) begin to introduce social psychology in
what is probably the most often studied and quoted handbook on the matter
and that has been published in five prestigious editions (the latest of which
contains the above-mentioned comment; see Box 1.1). We could chart this
Valentina Rizzoli, Arjuna Tuzzi, and Alberta Contarello, Change Seen Through the Lens of Social Psychology in Europe and
the United States In: Embracing Change. Edited by: Alberta Contarello, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press
2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197617366.003.0002
Change Seen Through the Lens of Social Psychology 25
Box 1.1 The Various Editions of the Two Handbooks
Lindzey, G. (Ed.) (1954). The handbook of social psychology (vols. 1 & 2). Cambridge,
MA: Addison-Wesley.
Lindzey, G., & Aronson, E. (Eds.) (1968). The handbook of social psychology (2nd ed.,
vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Lindzey, G., & Aronson, E. (Eds.) (1985). The handbook of social psychology (3rd ed.,
vols. 1 & 2). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Gilbert, D. T., Fiske, S. T., & Lindzey, G. (Eds.) (1998). The handbook of social
psychology (4th ed., vols. 1 & 2). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
Fiske, S. T., Gilbert, D. T., & Lindzey, G. (Eds.) (2010). The handbook of social
psychology (5th ed., vols. 1 & 2). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Hewstone, M., Stroebe, W., Codol, J.- P., & Stephenson G. M. (Eds.) (1988).
Introduction to social psychology: A European perspective. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hewstone, M., & Stroebe, W., & Stephenson G. M. (Eds.) (1996). Introduction to
social psychology: A European perspective (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Hewstone, M., & Stroebe, W. (Eds.) (2001). Introduction to social psychology:
A European perspective (3rd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Hewstone, M., Stroebe, W., & Jonas, K. (Eds.) (2008). An introduction to social
psychology: A European perspective (4th ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
psychology (5th ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
psychology (6th ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
long past back over millennia, but—like most historians—we can also iden-
tify two pivotal periods much closer to our own times. A first period framed
the emerging science, launched more than a century ago by the work of key
figures like James and Mead in the United States, Wundt in Leipzig, and
Vygotsky in Moscow (although Ross, Lepperd, and Ward chose to leave out
Vygotky while including Helmoltz, Hall, Cattell, Titchener, Brentano, and
Ebbinghaus in their influential chapter). A second period gave social psy-
chology its “modern” shape, when Lewin, Hovland, Sherif, Asch, Festinger,
and others developed a new experimental scientific (or sub-scientific) ap-
proach to psychology, keen to manipulate social and situational factors to
clarify psychological processes. Over several decades, three core topics, or
macro-areas of study, took center stage. They concerned group processes,
attitudes, and self-and social cognition. At different times, in a kind of pen-
dulum motion, one or another of these core topics occupied the limelight
more or less exclusively. Giving a brief account of the most widely acknowl-
edged contributions to the discipline, Ross and colleagues try to detect a
26 Rizzoli, Tuzzi, and Contarello
common thread connecting the development of the main topics addressed

in social psychology with the historical period that prompted them. From
the Great Depression of 1929 to the challenges posed by fundamentalisms
at the turn of the Millennium, they browse these topics and try to arrange
them in some sort of order. Following their plot, we encounter aggression,
conformity, social influence, and terror management theory, in that order,
along one path; prejudice, propaganda, stereotyping, aversive racism, and
implicit attitudes along another; and social comparison, social cognition,
and a plethora of theories and models focusing on the self, right up to self-
theories informed by social neuroscience, along a third. While the authors’
effort is commendable, the outcome is rather puzzling. It gives the reader
the measure of how challenging it is to condense into a few lines or a single
table what 120 years or more of research and perspectives have produced—
sometimes moving in quite different directions. The authors themselves say
that we cannot write the history of social psychology (or of any other sci-
ence), but only a history because “any history of a field of study reflects par-
ticular values and tastes” (2010, p. 3). We agree and take this same stance for
our own historical outline, in this chapter and this volume as a whole. We
might add that a careful reading of currently available reference books would
support these scholars’ approach, as a glance at Table 1.1 shows how these
core topics have twisted and unfolded over the years and decades (cf. also
Rizzoli, 2018a). So, moving from this overall pattern, how has change been
considered and studied in social psychology over the course of time?
From the very beginning, the focus on group dynamics (as the social
psychology of groups and of intra-and intergroup processes was called in
Lewin’s time) might have been expected to prioritize the study of change,
especially given the importance attributed to the Lewinian notion of inter-
dependence. Instead, the strong emphasis on experimental methods, already
in the early stages, prompted a thorough analysis of the factors that might
produce change from one situation to another, be it a certain level of perfor-
mance, or morale, or eating habits, just to recall a few well-known examples
of the research that was conducted (Lewin, 1948). The object of interest in
this domain, both initially and much later on, was the shift from one social
psychological arrangement to another, and the purpose of research was to
explain the mechanisms behind such a shift from one sort of continuity to
another.
Over the many decades devoted to developing the grand topic of attitudes,
researchers’ efforts revolved around studying their measurement, change,
Table 1.1 Contents of five editions of the Handbook of Social Psychology (1954, 1968, 1985, 1998, 2010)
SECTION Historical Contemporary Research Methods The Individual in a Group Psychology Applied Social
TITLE introduction Systematic Social Context and Phenomena of Psychology
Positions Interaction
1st Chapter The Historical Stimulus-Response Experiments: Their Social Motivation Experimental Studies Prejudice and Ethnic
edition titles Background of Contiguity and Planning and The Perception of of Group Problem Relations
(1954) Modern Social Reinforcement Execution People Solving and Effects of the
Psychology Theory in Social Selected Socialization Process Mass Media of
Psychology Quantitative Psycholinguistics Psychological Communication
Cognitive Theory Techniques Humor and Laughter Aspects of Social Industrial Social
Psychoanalytic Attitude Structure Psychology
Theory and Its Measurement Mass Phenomena The Psychology
Applications Systematic Leadership of Voting: An
in the Social Observational Culture and Behavior AnalysisofPolitical
Sciences Techniques National Behavior
Field Theory Sociometric Character: The
in Social Measurement Study of Modal
Psychology The Personality and
Role Theory Interview: A Tool Sociocultural
of Social Science Systems
Content Analysis
The Cross-Cultural
Method
The Social
Significance of
Animal Studies
Continued
Table 1.1 Continued
SECTION Historical Systematic Research Methods The Individual in a Group Psychology Applied Social
TITLE Introductions Positions Social Context and Phenomena of Psychology
Interaction
2nd Chapter The Historical Stimulus-Response Experimentation in Psychophysiological Group Prejudice and Ethnic
edition titles Background of Theory in Social Psychology Approaches in Problem-Solving Relations
(1968) Modern Social Contemporary Data Analyses, Social Psychology Group Structure: Effects of the
Psychology Social Including Social Motivation Attractions, Mass Media of
Psychology Statistics The Nature of Coalitions, Communication
Mathematical Attitude Attitude and Communications, Industrial Social
Models of Social Measurement Attitude Change and Power Psychology
Behaviour Simulation of Social Social and Cultural Leadership Psychology and
The Relevance Behavior Factors in Social Structure Economics
of Freudian Measurement of Perception and Behavior Political Behavior
Psychology Social Choice and Person Perception Cultural Psychology: A Social Psychology
and Related Interpersonal Socialization Comparative of Education
Viewpoints Attractiveness Personality and Studies of Human Social-Psychological
for The Social Interviewing Social Interaction Behavior Aspects of
Sciences Content Analysis Psycholinguistics National Character: International
Cognitive Theory Methods and Laughter, Humor, The Study of Modal Relations
in Social Problem in and Play Personality and Psychology of
Psychology Cross-Cultural Esthetics Sociocultural Religion
Field Theory Research Systems Social Psychology of
in Social The Social Collective Behavior: Mental Healts
Psychology Significance of Crowd and Social
Role Theory Animal Studies Movements
Organizations The Social
Psychology of
Infrahuman
Animals
SECTION Theory and Theory and Theory and Special Fields and Special Fields and
TITLE Methods Methods Methods Applications Applications
3rd Chapter The Historical The Historical Experimentations Altruism and Leadership
edition titles Background Background in Social Aggression and Power
(1985) of Social of Social Psychology Attribution and Effects of Mass
Psychology Psychology Quantitative Social Perception Communication
Major Methods for Socialization in Intergroup Relations
Developments Social Psychology Adulthood Public Opinion and
in Social Attitude and Sex Roles in Political Action
Psychology Opinion Contemporary Social Deviance
During the Past Measurement American Society The Application of
Five Decades Systematic Language Use and Social Psychology
Learning Theory in Observational Language Users Personality and
Contemporary Methods Attitude and Attitude Social Behavior
Social Survey Methods Change Social Psychological
Psychology Program Evaluation Social Influence and Aspects of
The Cognitive Conformity Environmental
Perspective Interpersonal Psychology
in Social Attraction Cultural Psychology
Psychology
Decision-
Making and
Decision Theory
Symbolic
Interaction and
Role Theory
Organizations and
Organization
Theory
Continued
Table 1.1 Continued
SECTION Historical Methodological Intrapersonal Personal and Interdisciplinary Interdisciplinary

TITLE Perspectives Perspectives Phenomena Interpesonal Perspectives and Emerging
Phenomena Perspectives
4th Chapter Major Experimentation Attitude Structure Understanding Small Groups Health Behavior
edition titles Developments in Social and Function Personality and Social Conflict Psychology and Law
(1998) in Five Decades Psychology Attitude Social Behavior: A Social Stigma Understandings
of Social Survey Methods Change: Multiple FunctionalistStrategy Intergroup Relations Organizations:
Psychology Measurement Roles for The Self Social Justice and Concepts and
The Social Being Data Analysis Persuasion Social Development Social Movements Controversies
in Social in Social Mental in Childhood and Opinion and Actions
Psychology Psychology Representations Adulthood in the Realm of
and Memory Gender Politics
Control and Nonverbal Social Psychology
Automaticity in Communication and World Politics
Social Life Language and Social The Cultural
Behavioral Behavior Matrix of Social
Decision-Making Ordinary Personology Psychology
and Judgment Social Evolutionary Social
Motivation Influence: Social Psychology
Emotions Norms,Conformity,
and Compliance
Attraction and Close
Relationships
Altruism and
Prosocial Behavior
Aggression and
Antisocial Behavior
Stereotyping,
Prejudice, and
Discrimination
SECTION The Science of The Science of The Social Being The Social Being The Social World The Social World
TITLE Social Psychology Social Psychology
5th Chapter History of Social The Art of Social Cognitive Nonverbal Behavior Evolutionary Social Intergroup Relations
edition titles Psychology: Laboratory Neuroscience Mind Perception Psychology Intergroup Bias
(2010) Inside, Experimentation Social Judgment and Morality Social
Challenges, and Social Psychophysiology Decision-Making Aggression Justice: History,
Contributions Psychological and Embodiment Self and Identity Affiliation, Theory, and
to Theory and Methods Outside Automaticity and Gender Acceptance, Research
Application the Laboratory the Unconscious Personality in Social and Belonging: Influence and
Data Analysis Motivation Psychology The Pursuit of Leadership
in Social Emotion Health Interpersonal Group Behavior and
Psychology: Attitudes Experimental Connection Performance
Recent and Attitudes and Existential Close Relationships Organizational
Recurring Issues Persuasion: From Psychology: Interpersonal Preferences
Biology to Social Coping with the Stratification: and Their
Responses to Facts of Life Status, Power, and Consequences
Persuasive Intent Subordination The Psychological
Perceiving People Social Conflict: Underpinnings of
The Emergence Political Behavior
and Social Psychology
Consequences and Law
of Struggle and Social
Negotiations Psychology and
Language: Words,
Utterances, and
Conversations
Cultural Psychology
Note: The 1954 edition is usually considered the first official edition; however, listing the 1935 edition edited by Carl Murchison as first is a matter of debate.
32 Rizzoli, Tuzzi, and Contarello
and structure (McGuire, 1985, 1986; cf. also Albarracin & Johnson, 2019).
Changing attitudes, in particular, and persuasive communication remain
a core topic in the discipline (Bohner & Dicker, 2011). Despite the widely
shared conviction that attitudes are unstable, they are seen as sets of psycho-
logical evaluations, emotional trends, or behavioral intentions that gradually
acquire a degree of inertia and are sometimes induced to change as a result of
external perturbations due to social or contextual factors.
It is probably in the third area charted by Ross and colleagues, however—
what they call social perception/cognition and the self—that we find the
clearest layout. This third area brings together some quite diverse aspects of
social psychology that share an interest in social perception and social cog-
nition, focusing on how humans come to know the (social) world and them-
selves. Here, we might expect to find traces of what the great names of social
psychology had to say, starting from the seminal contributions of Mead and
Vygotsky, but this is rarely the case. The meta-theoretical and methodological
choices regarding the fields of investigation tend to focus on the impact of so-
cial and/or external forces on the arrangement of the plans and frameworks
guiding our behavior.
Attention to the attitudes, opinions, and behavior of individuals—and
to their tendency to be influenced, for better or for worse, by their peers or
settings—reflects an adherence to the definition of social psychology pro-
posed by Allport in 1954 (see Chapter 1). Together with the mainstream
preference for experimental and correlational methods within an overall
neo-positivist worldview, this has promoted studies that try to shed light on
individual processes seen as shifts between different general layouts inas-
much as they are triggered by an external source.
The three-way layout proposed by Ross and colleagues introduces the
latest edition of their work, and, on glancing at the table of contents in the
five editions of the handbook, we can generally find support for this pattern
(Table 1.1).
While this handbook is acknowledged as having formed generations of
social psychologists in the United States and around the world for at least
50 years, the Introduction to Social Psychology by Hewstone, Stroebe, Codol,
and Stephenson, first published in 1988, is recognized as a pivotal work that
highlights European contributions to social psychology. It contains a fair pre-
sentation of the science to students, taking into account contributions and
developments in the United States and Europe. To achieve this, most of the
chapters are jointly written by leading authors from both sides of the Atlantic
Change Seen Through the Lens of Social Psychology 33
and often from different theoretical perspectives. The volume is arranged in

several parts, along four main levels of analysis of social psychological pro-
cesses and dynamics, from the individual to the societal. Like the previously
mentioned Handbook, it, too, has been published in various editions. In our
view, although it is presented as a textbook, its structure and breadth give
it more the character of a handbook. Table 1.2 shows the volume’s contents
in its various editions. Here again, we can see that the main areas of the dis-
cipline are amply covered, including social cognition, attitudes, prosocial
and aggressive behavior, social influence, group dynamics, prejudice, and
intergroup relations. This last topic is widely developed (by comparison with
Lindzey’s Handbook and US reference books more generally), shedding light
on the key topics of self-and social identity, particularly dear to European
social psychology. Change and continuity are clearly taken into account, but
largely in the same direction as we encountered previously—as a shift from
one pattern to another, especially in the study of attitudes, social influence,
social behavior, and group dynamics.
Change: Retracing “Great Names”
As mentioned in the introduction to this volume, ever since the mid-

twentieth century various voices have challenged the just-described perspec-
tive, however. There have been efforts to widen the focus of our attention
toward a social rather than psychological level of analysis and to place
change at the forefront of our inquiries. The social construction movement
concentrates particularly on the ongoing process of constructing meaning
from practices and relations through social artifacts. From this perspective,
known reality is conceived not as static, but as fluid and continuously liable
to change, and scholarly inquiry is organized accordingly (Gergen, 2015; cf.
also Chapter 8). Discursive psychology, for its part, turned its attention to
the construction of everyday meanings through discourse and argumenta-
tion (cf. Billig, 1996; Edwards & Potter, 1992). The shifts in sense-making
that derived from taking a different stance on linguistic, rhetorical, and so-
cial levels became pivotal. The focus of attention, particularly in some crit-
ical advances, shifted to the processes of social change built into discourses
(Fairclough, 1992; see also Chapter 9). The narrative turn also pointed us to-
ward looking at how narrative works as an instrument of the mind in the
construction of reality (Bruner, 1991) and prompted us to produce suitable
Table 1.2 Contents of the various editions of (An) Introduction to Social Psychology (1988, 1996, 2001, 2008, 2012, 2016)
1st ed. 1988 2nd ed. 1996 3rd ed. 2001 4th ed. 2008 5th ed. 2012 6th ed. 2016
Introduction to a History of Social Psychology x x

Introducing Social Psychology Historically x
Introducing Social Psychology x x x
Social Cognition x x x x x x
The Self and Social Identity x
The Self x x
Emotion x x
Social Perception and Attribution x x x
Attribution Theory and Research x x
Attribution Theory and Social Explanations x
Attitudes: Structure, Measurement and Functions x x x x x x
Strategies of Attitude and Behaviour Change x x x
Strategies of Attitude Change x
Principles of Attitude Formation and Strategies of Change x
Processing Social Information for Judgments and Decisions x
Prosocial Behaviour x x x x x x
Aggressive Behaviour x x x
Aggression x x x
Conflict and Cooperation x
Social Interaction (Cooperation and Competition) x
Social Relationships x
Affiliation, Attraction and Close Relationships x x x x
Attraction and Close Relationships x
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Embracing Change Knowledge Continuity and Social Representations Alberta Contarello Editor Full Chapter

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Embracing Change: Knowledge,

Continuity, and Social Representations

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Andréa Barbará S. Bousfield, PhD Jorge Correia Jesuino, PhD

Alberta Contarello, MSEd Giuseppe Mininni, MPhil/​MA Semiotics

Valentina Rizzoli, PhD Luiz Fernando Rangel Tura, PhD

Our life is changing at an accelerated pace. Common metaphors are used

What Is at Stake? Change, Continuity, and

How has change—​ and continuity—​been studied in social psychology?

Casual inspection of psychological theories of social knowledge

concept . . . Moscovici (1976b) shows that the studies of social influence

Before trying to retrace some important steps in social psychology in this

Thematic Section on “Societal Change” in the Journal of Social and Political

Social Psychology: One, None, One Hundred Thousand—​

Autonomy of an Interdisciplinary Project

a system of values, ideas and practices with a dual function: firstly

Consequently, both psychological and social aspects, as well as aspects re-

What fully characterizes the social representations perspective is the un-

Figure I.1 The triangle Ego-​Alter-​Object.

Figure I.2 A second triangle: Between-​ness.

on change and continuity. We ourselves have used it effectively to study pro-

disciplines: ethnography for observation in natural settings, psychology

The Time Dimension

The systems of knowledge that we are immersed in and that we contribute to

The astonishing acceleration in individual and social communication

However, under no circumstances are ahistorical explanations suitable as

Subject to changes, social representations live along the dimension of time,

Representations seek to construct knowledge of the future cognitively,

This function of social representations opens the way to challenging fields

Future-​Making: “Engagé” Approaches

Studying change, from the perspective we are considering, involves facing a

more properly, by co-​constructions of meaning-​making.2 What then are the

These ideas will be encountered throughout the various chapters of the

Outline of the Volume

Representations in the Classroom: The Experience of Social Inequalities in

re-​presented in mediated formats” (Castro, 2015, p. 303). Part IV is about

in times of accelerated mobility) but also to help generate a novel reading

Allport, G. (1954). The historical background of modern social psychology. In G.

Valentina Rizzoli, Arjuna Tuzzi, and Alberta Contarello

How has social psychology investigated the concept of change? In this

Change in Reference Books on Social Psychology and

Box 1.1 The Various Editions of the Two Handbooks

common thread connecting the development of the main topics addressed

SECTION Historical Methodological Intrapersonal Personal and Interdisciplinary Interdisciplinary

and often from different theoretical perspectives. The volume is arranged in

Change: Retracing “Great Names”

As mentioned in the introduction to this volume, ever since the mid-​

Introduction to a History of Social Psychology x x

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1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Alberta Contarello, MSEd Giuseppe Mininni, MPhil/MA Semiotics

How has change— and continuity—been studied in social psychology?

Social Psychology: One, None, One Hundred Thousand—

Figure I.1 The triangle Ego-Alter-Object.

Figure I.2 A second triangle: Between-ness.

Future-Making: “Engagé” Approaches

more properly, by co-constructions of meaning-making.2 What then are the

re-presented in mediated formats” (Castro, 2015, p. 303). Part IV is about

As mentioned in the introduction to this volume, ever since the mid-