- Serge Moscovici
Serge Moscovici (born 1925 as Srul Herş Moscovici — Srul Hersh Moskovitch) is a
Romania n-born French social psychologist, currently the director of the "Laboratoire Européen de Psychologie Sociale " ("European Laboratory of Social Psychology"), which he co-founded in 1975 at the "Maison des sciences de l'homme " inParis . He is a member of theEuropean Academy of Sciences and Arts and Officer of the "Légion d'honneur ", as well as a member of theRussian Academy of Sciences and honorary member of theHungarian Academy of Sciences . Moscovici's son,Pierre Moscovici , is a well-known French politician.Biography
Moscovici was born in
Brăila into a Jewish family, the son of a grain merchant.fr icon [http://www.balzan.com/fr/dokumente/preistraeger/moscovici_biographische.pdf "Donées biographiques sur Serge Moscovici"] , at the International Balzan Foundation (retrievedJune 17 ,2007 )] ro icon Lavinia Betea, [http://www.jurnalul.ro/articole/60354/moscovici-victima-regimului-antonescu "Moscovici, victima regimului Antonescu"] , in "Jurnalul Naţional ",October 24 ,2004 (retrievedJune 17 ,2007 )] He frequently relocated, together with his father, spending time inCahul ,Galaţi , andBucharest . Later, he indicated that his stay inBessarabia had contributed to his image of a homeland. From an early age, Moscovici suffered the effects of anti-semitic discrimination: in 1938, he was expelled from aBucharest high school on the basis of newly-issued anti-semitic legislation.fr icon [http://psycho.univ-lyon2.fr/article.php3?id_article=347 "Serge Moscovici. Repères bio-bibliographiques"] , at the Institut de Psychologie (retrievedJune 17 ,2007 )] In later years, he commented on the impact of the Iron Guard, and expressed criticism forintellectual s associated with it (Emil Cioran andMircea Eliade ).Moscovici trained as a
mechanic at the Bucharestvocational school "Ciocanul". Faced with an ideological choice betweenZionism andcommunism , he opted for the latter, and, in 1939, joined the then-illegalRomanian Communist Party , being introduced by a clandestine activist whom he knew by the pseudonym "Kappa". DuringWorld War II , Moscovici witnessed theIron Guard -instigated Bucharest Pogrom in January 1941, and was later interned by theIon Antonescu regime in a forced labor camp, where, together with other persons of his age, he worked on construction teams until being set free by the SovietRed Army in 1944. During those years, he taught himself French and educated himself by reading philosophical works (including those ofBaruch Spinoza andRené Descartes ).Subsequently, Moscovici traveled extensively, notably visiting Palestine,
Germany andAustria . During the late stage ofWorld War II he metIsidore Isou , the founder oflettrism , with whom he founded the artistic and literary review "Da" towards the end of 1944 ("Da" was quickly censored). Refusing promotion on the basis of political affiliation at a time when the Communist Party participated in Romania's governments, he became instead awelder in the large Bucharest factory owned byNicolae Malaxa .Initially welcoming Soviet occupation, Moscovici grew progressively disillusioned with communist politics, and noted the incidence of antisemitism among Red Army soldiers. [ro icon Ştefan Ionescu, [http://www.idee.ro/holocaust/pdf/mem_supr.pdf "În umbra morţii. Memoria supravieţuitorilor Holocaustului în România"] , at [http://www.idee.ro/ Idee Communication] (retrieved
June 17 ,2007 )] As the communist regime was taking over and theCold War erupted, he helped Zionist dissidents cross the border illegally. For this, he was implaced in a 1947 trial held inTimişoara , and decided to leave Romania for good. Choosing clandestine immigration, he arrived in France a year later, passing throughHungary and Austria, and spending time in arefugee camp inItaly .In
Paris , helped by a refugee fund, he studiedpsychology at the Sorbonne, while being employed by an industrial enterprise. At the time, Moscovici became close to Paris-based writers, including the Romanian-born JewishPaul Celan andIsaac Chiva .ro iconIsaac Chiva , [http://www.observatorcultural.ro/informatiiarticol.phtml?xid=15837&print=true "Pogromul de la Iaşi"] , in "Observator Cultural " (retrievedJune 17 ,2007 )] In reference to himself, Celan, and Moscovici, Chiva later recalled: "For us, people on the Left, but who had fled communism, the first period in Paris, in a capital where the intellectual environments were developing under full-scale Stalinist enthusiasm, was very harsh. We were caught between a rock and a hard place: on one side, the French university environment who saw us as «fascists». [...] On the other, the Romanian exiles, most of all the nationalist students, when not outright on thefar right , who did not shy away from denouncing us as communist «moles» in the pay of Bucharest orMoscow ."Moscovici's 1961 thesis ("La psychanalyse, son image, son public"), directed by the
psychoanalyst Daniel Lagache , explored thesocial representations of psychoanalysis in France. Moscovici also studiedepistemology andhistory of science s with philosopherAlexandre Koyré . During the 1960s, he was invited to theUnited States by thePrinceton University 'sInstitute for Advanced Study ; he also worked atStanford University and Yale, before returning to Paris to teach at the "École pratique des hautes études ". Serge Moscovici has been a visiting professor at theThe New School inNew York City , at theRousseau Institute inGeneva , as well as at the "Université catholique de Louvain " and theUniversity of Cambridge .By 1968, together with
Brice Lalonde and others, he became involved ingreen politics , and even ran in elections for the office of Mayor of Paris for what later became "Les Verts". Adoctor honoris causa of several universities, Moscovici was the recipient of theBalzan Prize in 2003.In 1997, Serge Moscovici authored an autobiographical essay titled "Chronique des années égarées" ("Chronicle of the Mislaid Years"). It was translated into Romanian as "Cronica anilor risipiţi" (published by
Polirom in 1999).Research
His research focus was on
group psychology and he began his career by investigating the way knowledge is reformulated as groups take hold of it, distorting it from its original form. His theory of "social representations" is now widespread in understanding this process of cultural "Chinese whispers". Influenced byGabriel Tarde , he later criticized American research into majority influence (conformity) and instead investigated the effects of minority influence, where the opinions of a small group influence those of a larger one. He also researched the dynamics of group decisions and consensus-forming.Minority influence
Moscovici claimed that majority influence in many ways was misleading – if the majority was indeed all-powerful, we would all end up thinking the same. Drawing attention to the works of
Gabriel Tarde , he pointed to the fact that most major social movements have been started by individuals and small groups (e.g.Christianity ,Buddhism , theSuffragette movement,Nazism , etc) and that without an outspoken minority, we would have no innovation or social change.The study he is most famous for, "Influences of a consistent minority on the responses of a majority in a colour perception task", is now seen as one of the defining investigations into the effects of minority influence:
*Aims: To investigate the process of innovation by looking at how a consistent minority affect the opinions of a larger group, possibly creating doubt and leading them to question and alter their views
*Procedures: Participants were first given an eye test to check that they were not colour blind.They were then placed in a group of four participants and two confederates. they were all shown 36 slides that were different shades of blue and asked to state the colour out loud. There were two groups in the experiment. In the first group the confederates were consistent and answered green for every slide. In the second group the confederates were inconsistent and answered green 24 times and blue 12 times.
*Findings: For 8.42% of the trials, participants agreed with the minority and said that the slides were green. Overall, 32% of the participants agreed at least once.
*Conclusions: The study suggested that minorities can indeed exert an effect over the opinion of a majority. Not to the same degree as majority influence, but the fact that almost a third of people agreed at least once is significant. However, this also leaves two thirds who never agreed. In a follow up experiment, Moscovici demonstrated that consistency was the key factor inminority influence , by instructing the stooges to be inconsistent. The effect fell off sharply.Works
* "La psychanalyse, son image, son public",
University Presses of France , 1961/1976
* "Reconversion industrielle et changements sociaux. Un exemple: la chapellerie dans l'Aude",Armand Colin , 1961
* "L’expérience du mouvement. Jean-Baptiste Baliani, disciple et critique de Galilée",Hermann , 1967
* "Essai sur l’histoire humaine de la nature",Flammarion , 1968/1977
* "La société contre nature",Union Générale d’éditions , 1972 /Seuil , 1994
* "Hommes domestiques et hommes sauvages", Union Générale d’éditions, 1974
* "Social influence and social change",Academic Press , 1976.
* "Psychologie des minorités actives", University Presses of France, 1979
* "L'Age des foules: un traité historique de psychologie des masses",Fayard , 1981 (aboutGustave Le Bon 's invention ofcrowd psychology andGabriel Tarde )
* "La Machine à faire les dieux", Fayard, 1988
* "Chronique des années égarées: récit autobiographique",Stock , 1997
* "Social Representations: Explorations in Social Psychology",Polity Press , 2000
* "De la Nature. Pour penser l'écologie", Métailié, 2002
* "Réenchanter la nature. Entretiens avec Pascal Dibie",Aube , 2002.
* Moscovici, S., Lage, E. and Naffrenchoux, M. (1969) "Influences of a consistent minority on the responses of a majority in a colour perception task", "Sociometry ", Vol.32, pp.365-80. cited in Cardwell, M. and Flanagan, C. (2003) "Psychology AS The Complete Companion", Nelson Thornesee also
*
Crowd psychology
*Gustave Le Bon
*Gabriel Tarde
*Minority influence References
Further reading
*Mirilia Bonnes (ed.), "La Vita, il percorso intellettuale, i temi, le opere", Milano,
Franco Angeli , 1999
*Fabrice Buschini, Nikos Kalampalikisin (eds.), "Penser la vie, le social, la nature. Mélanges en l'honneur de Serge Moscovici", Paris, Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2001External links
*en icon/fr icon [http://www.leps.msh-paris.fr/eng/leps_home.htm European Laboratory of Social Psychology website]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.