Climat social en psychologie sociale : un thème délaissé, un trésor oublié ou un concept détourné ?

Abstract

The social climate belongs to those concepts relatively deserted by social psychology. In this paper, we focus on its current evolution. As descriptive and evaluative, this concept is a metaphor-concept which “talk more than explain”. Suffering from a weak theoretical insertion, it transformed form a group characteristic to a individual perception. This transformation explain probably why, nowadays, in social climate research, the fascination for its measure far prevails on the reflexion on its explication power and on the attempt to manipulate it. This brings us to think that the social climate concept is a “hijacked” concept.