Consensus, salience and necessity in social representations

Abstract: The results of 7 studies show that among several (quantitatively) very salient traits of an object of social representation, some are (qualitatively) necessary, the others, not. This is made apparent by using a particular kind of questioning, the logic of which is described. The necessary traits are considered as constituting the central core of the social representation. Social representations, with or without consensus? This problem is too often formulated in quantitative t rms. Of course, this is important, but insufficient. Unlike the theory of typicality, which contents itself with measuring a salient trait in social objects ' study (which have a different nature than the objects the typicality studies. Cf. Semin, 1989), our results strongly suggest the existence of a character of necessity, which is suitable for some salient traits, but not for all of them. This qualitative problem is necessarily studied through numerical results but, when an extreme position gathers 96 % of the subjects, a qualitative interpretation can be defended. We present here a type of empirical data which does not seem to have been much sought after other than in our laboratory. The fact that this type of data answers the questions we1 have set ourselves within the context of a structur l approach to social representations is no