Socio-cognitive Elaborations and Reactions to Economic Crisis: Insights from Social Psychology

Abstract

This special issue dedicated to the social psychological study of the economic crisis in four European Union countries along the Mediterranean includes six empirical papers discussing different aspects of the phenomenon. Four papers are part of a larger project that started in 2011, aiming to compare the social representations of the economic crisis in France, Greece, Italy, and Portugal. Starting from the study of the social representations of the causes of the crisis and the measures to overcome it, various social psychological parameters that interfere are examined. Thus, the political, ideological, and social positioning, and the axiological universe of the participants are considered as important predictors and mediators in the different papers. Additionally, possible political participatory activities in reaction to the crisis are considered. The presentation of the outcome of this research project is completed by a paper analyzing the way the crisis was depicted in the Italian press and a paper looking at the impact of the financial threat to political participation in France. The research presented here reveals the ways social subjects give meaning to a situation of crisis and thus provides social and political insights into social thinking and behavior with important policy implications for individual nations as well as Europe at large. In this paper, we present the general framework of the studies carried out and we introduce the collection of empirical papers of the special issue.

Keywords

• economic crisis
• social representations
• ideology