Theme 1’s overall objective is to ascertain how knowledge, judgments, beliefs, representations, ideologies, attitudes, and practices are socially constructed or reflect social processes. We approach these questions from a social perspective in which we consider individuals not as isolated entities but as beings whose perception and judgment activities are necessarily mediated by significant others. Consequently, the processes involved in constructing socio-cognitive, emotional, identity, ideological, and everyday knowledge take place in historically and temporally situated social and cultural contexts.

One of our objectives is to identify the processes by which individuals, operating within groups, appropriate and elaborate everyday knowledge. By focusing on the connections between everyday knowledge and individuals’ social practices, the aim is also to understand the various ways these processes are implemented in different social contexts, notably, relationships of domination. We will also investigate the relationships between socio-cognitive, emotional, identity, and ideological processes and the functioning of intergroup relations, focusing on the ways these processes influence intergroup relations, especially the development of positive or negative attitudes and beliefs toward ingroups and outgroups, and how they help establish or maintain unequal relations between social groups.

The theme’s study objects are societal problems and issues that contribute to social conflicts and controversies. They include conspiracy theories, manipulation and influence processes, gender violence, domination processes, and discriminations experienced by minorities, risks, particularly environmental risks (e.g., coastal erosion and submersion), work, life events (e.g., traumatic events, conversion, etc.), diet and health, etc.

The work carried out within this theme examines contemporary society from a psychosocial perspective with the aim of stimulating reflection on the construction of social ties and otherness.