Serge Moscovici

Serge Moscovici
Born	Srul Herş Moscovici (1925-06-14)14 June 1925[1] Brăila, Romania
Died	November 15, 2014(2014-11-15) (aged 89) Paris, France
Nationality	Romanian; French
Alma mater	University of Paris
Occupation(s)	Psychologist Political ecology
Political party	Romanian Communist Party; The Greens (France)
Relatives	Pierre Moscovici (son)

Serge Moscovici (June 14, 1925 – November 15, 2014),

Moscovici trained as a mechanic at the Bucharest vocational school Ciocanul.^[4] Faced with an ideological choice between Zionism and Communism, he opted for the latter, and, in 1939, joined the then-illegal Romanian Communist Party, being introduced by a clandestine activist whom he knew by the pseudonym Kappa.^[4]

During

Subsequently, Moscovici travelled extensively, notably visiting Mandatory Palestine, Germany and Austria.^[3] During the late stages of World War II he met Isidore Isou, the founder of lettrism, with whom he founded the artistic and literary review Da towards the end of 1944 (Da was quickly censored^{[by whom?]}).^[5] Refusing promotion on the basis of political affiliation at a time when the Communist Party participated in Romania's governments, he became instead a welder in the large Bucharest factory owned by Nicolae Malaxa.^[4]

Initially welcoming

In 1955, he married Marie Bromberg who he met at the Institute de Psychologie. They had two sons, Pierre and Denis.^[8]

In 1961, he completed His doctoral thesis (La psychanalyse, son image et son public). It was directed by the

He died in Paris in 2014.[9]

Research

His research focus was on

Moscovici developed the theory of

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.^[3] 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, the Suffragette 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 in minority influence; by instructing the stooges to be inconsistent, the effect fell off sharply.

Works

Social psychology

• Le scandale de la pensée sociale (edited by Nikos Kalampalikis). Editions de l'EHESS, 2013
• Raison et cultures (edited by Nikos Kalampalikis). Editions de l'EHESS, 2012
• The Making of Modern Social Psychology: The Hidden Story of How an International Social Science was Created (with
  Polity Press
  , 2006.
• Social Representations: Explorations in Social Psychology (edited by Gerard Duveen),
  Polity Press
  , 2000
• Conflict and Consensus: General Theory of Collective Decisions (with
  SAGE Publications
  , 1994
• La Machine à faire les dieux, Fayard, 1988 / The invention of society: psychological explanations for social phenomena, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993
• Changing conceptions of conspiracy (with C.F. Graumann), New York: Springer, 1987
• L'Age des foules: un traité historique de psychologie des masses, Fayard, 1981 / The age of the crowd: a historical treatise on mass psychology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985
• Psychologie des minorités actives, Presses Universitaires de France, 1979
• Social influence and social change, Academic Press, 1976
• L’expérience du mouvement. Jean-Baptiste Baliani, disciple et critique de Galilée, Éditions Hermann, 1967
• Reconversion industrielle et changements sociaux. Un exemple: la chapellerie dans l'Aude, Armand Colin, 1961
• La psychanalyse, son image et son public, PUF, 1961/ new edition 1976 / Psychoanalysis. Its image, its public, Polity Press, 2008

Ecology

• De la Nature. Pour penser l'écologie, Métailié, 2002
• Réenchanter la nature (Interviews with Pascal Dibie), Aube, 2002
• Hommes domestiques et hommes sauvages, Union Générale d’éditions, 1974
• La société contre nature, UGE-Seuil, 1972 / Society against nature: the emergence of human societies. Hassocks, Harvester Press - Atlantic Highlands, N.J., Humanities Press, 1976
• Essai sur l’histoire humaine de la nature, Groupe Flammarion, 1968/1977

Autobiographies

• Mon après-guerre à Paris: Chronique des années retrouvées (Texte établi, présenté et annoté par Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine) Grasset, 2019
• Chronique des années égarées: récit autobiographique, Stock, 1997 / Cronica anilor risipiţi Romanian, Polirom, 1999

Honours and legacy

Honorary degrees

• University of Evora^[12]

• 1980 - In Media Res Prize of the Felix Burda Foundation
• 1988 - European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences for La Machine à faire les dieux
• 2000 - Ecologia Award
• 2003 - Balzan Prize^[3]
• 2007 - Wilhelm Wundt-William James Award by the American Psychological Foundation and the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations^[13]
• 2010 - Premio Nonino "Maestro del nostro tempo" ("Master of our Time")^[14]

National awards

• Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur

Prizes

In commemoration of his elaborate and significant contribution to the world of psychology and society in general, several awards, medals, lectures have been established. Notable among these are:

• Serge Moscovici Medal awarded by the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP)^[15]
• "Serge Moscovici" Values-Based Leadership Award by the Aspen Institute Romania.^[16]

Network

A network has been established to continue his work:

• Réseau Mondial Serge Moscovici^[17]

Further reading

• Bonnes, M. (ed.), Moscovici, La Vita, il percorso intellettuale, i temi, le opere, Milano, FrancoAngeli, 1999.
• Fabrice Buschini, Nikos Kalampalikis (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, 2001.
• Kalampaliki, N., Jodelet, D., Wieviorka, Moscovici, D., & Moscovici, P. (eds.). Serge Moscovici. Un regard sur les mondes communs, Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2019.
• Papastamou, S., & Moliner, P. (eds.), Serge Moscovici's work. Legacy and perspective, Paris: Editions des archives contemporaines, 2021.

External links

• (in English and French) European Laboratory of Social Psychology website

See also

References