What Is Social Knowledge?

Any of us, through superficial observation, can see that social phenomena have a very different nature from physical ones. In addition, we not only see them differently, we also act differently in front of them. But what really is social knowledge? And how do we build that knowledge in our minds? Many psychologists throughout history have sought to answer these questions.

The study of social knowledge is a very broad and highly relevant field of research. This is because the interest in this field of study is multiple and can be considered from many points of view (psychological, educational, epistemological …). In this article we are going to talk about two specific aspects: the construction of representations of social reality and the nature of social phenomena.

Construction of social knowledge

A key aspect of social knowledge is understanding how it is constructed. By observing the functioning of the world around us, people build representations or models that explain what we perceive. This helps us to give meaning to what happens outside of us and to generate our own models, very useful as frameworks for action.

This theory of representations was created by the social psychologist Serge Moscovici. With them he tried to explain that our behavior is governed by a common code with which we name and classify everything that happens to us. That is why these social representations allow us to act in a “socially acceptable” way in most situations.

In effect, representations make it possible to anticipate what is going to happen, and act accordingly. It is easy to deduce the great adaptive value that our ability to generate and adjust valid and reliable models has. For example, as we come up with a representation of how electricity works and the damage it can do, we discard the idea of ​​sticking our fingers in a socket.

A key aspect of the human species is its social environment. Thanks to life in society we have been able to adapt to a hostile environment, despite the natural deficiencies of the human being. For this reason, it is logical to think that we must have a large repertoire of social models that allow us to know how to act in our day to day in the social framework.

Within these representations or models of society, which is what is called in psychology as social knowledge, we can find three large categories:

• Knowledge of others and oneself:  through experience with others we create models that allow us to get to know others and ourselves. Knowing the minds of others, that is, knowing how others think helps us to anticipate their actions. Studies on the so-called “theory of mind” can be framed within this section.

• Moral and conventional knowledge: the subject is acquiring the rules or norms that regulate the relationships he has in relation to others. Knowing this allows us to adapt to our community and live with others. In this sense, the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg studied the development of morality in the human being.
• Knowledge of institutions: a key aspect of social knowledge is understanding the roles that people occupy within a society. Here we talk about the representations we have about how a shopkeeper, a boss, a political representative, etc. behaves. This helps us to carry out any social act without the need to know what the person in front of us is like, because we know the role to be played.

Nature of social phenomena

Although it seems obvious that there are differences between a physical and a social phenomenon, making these differences explicit becomes complicated. You can define physical events as objective and independent of the subject and social events as subjective and dependent, but from a socio-constructivist perspective this distinction is meaningless.

An attempt to understand what social phenomena are composed of is the one proposed by the philosopher John Searle. To explain the representations about the social world, he introduces us three elements : (a) the constitutive rules, (b) the assignment of functions and (c) the collective intentionality.

Like a game is made up of rules, Searle affirms that institutions are too. And the importance of these rules is that without them neither the game nor the institutions could exist.

For example, when it comes to playing chess there is a regulation that tells us what we can and cannot do; if these rules did not exist the game would be meaningless. Well, the same happens with our institutions, they exist to the extent that we say they exist. A clear example is the currency, there are rules that say how much each bill is worth and under what conditions they are exchanged, if these did not exist, the money would only be metal or paper.

When we speak of assignment of functions, we refer to the intention of assigning functions to objects or people. We say that chairs are for sitting and forks are for eating, but these are not intrinsic properties of objects: the function is imposed by the human being. This attribution is largely collective, generating socially shared knowledge about the role of people and objects in society.

And finally, it is important to understand the role that collective intentionality plays. This supposes the attempt of the human being to share beliefs, desires and intentions. Which allows us to act within a framework where cooperation is possible, thus achieving coexistence in an adaptive and safe society for all its individuals.

Social knowledge helps us understand and know how to act within society. Your study has great added value and allows us to act on many levels. For example, with regard to education, understanding this helps us to know what pedagogical models or measures we should take when creating a more just and cooperative society.