Estructura de les representacions socials sobre la psicologia durant el transcurs de la carrera
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Student’s social representations about their own discipline determine future professional
practice. This investigation analyzes from an structural point of view social representations by
considering that this construct have a central core which provides global meaning to social
representations, and a peripheral system which constitutes the evolutionary and the mobile
characteristics. Using a word evocation technique the investigators asked 87 participants from
different courses of psychology to mention three words related to “psychology”. Then, a
frequency analysis was developed and, immediately afterwards, a graphic analysis of the data
through the elaboration of a social representation´s network by means of an specific software,
Ucinet 6.85 and Netdraw 1.48.
Results suggest that the central core of psychology´s social representation is based on
a clinical-psychoanalytic model. By analyzing the peripheral elements, it can be observed that
the closest answers to cognitive-behavioural and neuropsychology models maintain distant to
the central core. Moreover, results obtained show a disproportionate view of psychology based
on the treatment of psychological disorders rather than based on mental health prevention and
on the promotion of psychological wellbeing. Although more investigations are needed to
support solid conclusions, this investigation provides an important empirical basis for the
development of studies that may extend knowledge about how psychology practitioners
conceptualize their discipline