Abstract
One hundred and fifty lower-sixth pupils were asked to complete a school self-esteem scale (pre-test). They then responded to a logico-mathematical test which was presented as a means to evaluate their relative chances of succeeding in higher education. Participants were randomly given either positive or negative feed-back about their chances of success before they completed the school self-esteem scale a second time (post-test) and also a test for the centrality of 12 beliefs associated with the social representation of higher education. Results indicate that induction of low self-esteem reduces the importance accorded to higher education whereas induction of high self-esteem results in valuing the efforts that higher education requires. Additionally, it appears that both these dynamics are mediated by an intra-group differentiation process in which salience depends on the level of self-esteem induced. These results are analysed with regard to recent developments in central core theory (Abric & Tafani, 1995) that distinguish two levels of analysis of the dynamics of social representation: (a) a structural and qualitative opposition between central versus peripheral beliefs and (b) a quantitative hierarchy of the relative weights of different central beliefs in the organization of the representational field. Implications for the study of social representation dynamics are discussed with respect to the model of covariation between intra- and inter-group differentiation processes (Deschamps, 1982a).