First, the main points:
1, psychological experience is the collective adjustment and decision of individuals. People in the same group have similar views and experiences, and have the same environment and language.
2. Social representation is a kind of common sense knowledge produced in daily life, which has almost mandatory influence on members of social groups. This is called "behavioral descriptive"/"behavioral prescriptive". As a member of a social group, the knowledge system about social reality is stable for a period of time. However, these views and attitudes are not completely consistent within the group, so social representations can be divided into "dominant", "unconstrained" and "controversial".
Second, the origin and connotation of social representation theory:
1. Tracing back to the source, the theory of social representation is mainly developed from Durkheim's sociological concept-collective representation. Of course, it is undeniable that from Moscovici's quotation in his theoretical construction, Levi-Brewer's exposition of the collective representation of primitive society and Piaget's research on the cognitive representation of human individuals in the external world also have a profound impact on it. Limited by space, this article will not go into details.
2. As a pioneer of social science, Durkheim has been obsessed with exploring the complexity of human society-how unique individuals form an organic whole. First of all, in his book On Social Division of Labor, he distinguished two types of social integration, namely, relatively simple mechanical unity based on social and cultural homogeneity and more complex organizational unity based on complementary roles and mutual commitments. Later, he discussed the root of "unity" in the book "Basic Forms of Religious Life".
3. In its view, "unity" is rooted in the collective representation, that is, the symbol bearing the meaning enjoyed by a certain community or society. It can be rational or emotional. These symbolic "images" or "ways" come from interpersonal communication and acquire a kind of super-individuality, thus forming an all-encompassing and socially constructed reality. This collective representation of preexistence and existence, through the so-called subtle rational process, not only restricts the individual's thinking, emotion and action, but also is enjoyed by all members of several generations in a nearly homogeneous way.
4. In a word, collective representation has four characteristics: enjoyment, regeneration, functionality and social constructiveness. In Durkheim's conception, although the collective representation is rich in meaning, including science, ideology, world outlook and religious mythology, it also shows a rather stagnant side, that is, as a pre-existing social setting, it has the characteristics of stability and compulsion.
Third, the relevant evaluation:
1. The study of social representation provides a theoretical basis for the study of multi-orientation, effectively breaks through the information processing paradigm of American version of social cognition, and reveals people's social cognitive process under the background of big society with its theoretical perspective more suitable for the ontology of human existence. More importantly, Moscovici returned to the form of humanistic discourse, and his society constructively emphasized the historical, social and cultural background and the significance of social knowledge or social representation.
2. A universally applicable value orientation will be untenable and it is impossible to impose one's own values on another culture. These are unscientific. Furthermore, the representation of "science" is different in different periods and cultures. It is precisely because people continue to explore "psychology" and pursue intellectuality that they can gradually deconstruct American scientific psychology and redefine it, which embodies the theoretical perspective of social representation theory with multiple orientations.
3. Undoubtedly, this theoretical perspective is in line with the development trend of diversified development in the world and the need to seek common ground while reserving differences. On the other hand, the theory of social representation involves personal and social aspects, which is a very good combination of personal and social perspectives. From the development of social representation theory, we can see that social representation theory is constantly improved on the basis of previous theories, which greatly expands the research field of psychology across individual and social levels and improves the explanatory power of social psychology.