Emergenţa reprezentărilor sociale. Mecanismul de ancorare [Articol]

Abstract

People always come in contact with information unknown to them. When they feel a discrepancy, they make an effort to adapt the discomforting cognitions to the ensemble of already existing cognitions. What they seek at this point is actually anchoring something which is alien and disturbing in a system of known notions. The term "anchoring" perfectly belongs to that specific situation where unusual ideas are put into usual categories and images. Having a gestalt origin, it denotes situating something new in an old framework well adjusted to the realities of time. In the context of the process of social representation, to anchor means to "classify and name something", it means to label an object or phenomenon in order to be able to operate with it. Moreover, to anchor, in this very context, means to ensure the inception of a new idea in the hierarchy of agreed values and respectively its transformation in an "object placed on a scale of preferences in the existent social relations.