Social Representations, Social Identity, and Representational Imputation

Abstract. Social representations can be considered as sets of knowledge, beliefs, or opinions shared by members of a group regarding social objects such as general topics (e.g., vaccination), tangible objects (e.g., electric cars), or even social groups (e.g., migrants). While social representations of different social groups have been explored in several studies, almost none focus on the representations we are likely to attribute to these groups in relation to given social objects. In other words: “how do we represent how others are perceiving something?” The aim of this contribution is then to present and discuss the concepts of representational imputation and divergence, these concepts referring respectively to the fact of attributing a certain representation of a given object to others and to the perceived discrepancy between this representation and our own. As representational imputation and divergence are related to the social identity theory as well as the social representations theory, after a presentation of the literature connecting these two fields, we will present these concepts and the research perspectives opened by this theoretical proposition.