SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS, GROUP AFFILIATION, AND PROJECTION - KNOWING THE LIMITS OF VALIDITY

It is argued that social representations and similar constructs can on ly be conceived of as mental structures containing meta-information ab out the group, within which the representation was formed and where it is part of social identify. The most important information will be to know the limits of its validity, that is, to know to which social gro up a representation pertains. Experiments on social projection have sh own that people tend to project their opinions onto others, if they ar e perceived as being similar in background values. Such projection can not be expected with idiosyncratic attitudes and beliefs. Consequently it is hypothesized that idiosyncratic and private attitudes, opinions , etc., are not attributed to specific social groups, whereas knowledg e pertaining to social representations the subject subscribes to is pr ojected onto the ingroup and less on the outgroup. This effect is expe cted to be independent of the relative number of people holding this o pinion. This is what was found in a quasi-experimental questionnaire s tudy. Implications of the findings are discussed with regard to the de finition and criteria of social representations and to the structure o f the theory.