Abstract

WOLTER, Rafael Pecly; GURRIERI, Chloé  and  SORRIBAS, Estelle. Empirical illustration of the hierarchical organisation of social thought: a domino effect?. Interam. j. psychol. [online]. 2009, vol.43, n.1, pp. 1-11. ISSN 0034-9690.

The "architecture of social thinking", a model presented by Rouquette (1996) suggests that various forms of social thought may be conceived as being part of a hierarchical organisation. Our study aims to show how that variation in a higher level of social thought (ideology) can trigger variations in the lower levels (social representations, attitudes and opinions). Our study compared two ideologically distinct groups (N=81): the first group (n=25) comprised participants who had reported a religious affiliation (Catholicism), while the second (n=56) comprised those who had reported no religious affiliation. We compared participant's representational and attitudinal fields towards a scenario on a charitable activity promoted by the Church. Results indicated that representations and attitudes may depend on higher levels. These findings suggest the hypothesis of a domino effect among the successive levels of the architecture of social thought.

Keywords : Social thought; Ideology; Social representations; Attitudes.

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