The Psychosocial Production of Ideas: Social Representations and Psychologic

Abstract

In responding to Jan Smedslund's (1998) paper, this commentary first of all considers the value of vagueness for research in social psychology. Second, I argue that Smedslund's consideration of social representations underestimates both the representational and social aspects of the theory. This discussion leads to some broader characterizations of social representations, and particularly to the relation between social representations and cultural psychology. Finally, these comments conclude with a discussion of the role of language in social psychological research, and suggests that while both psychologic and social representations are concerned with the analysis of common sense, they approach this analysis from different theoretical positions.