Altérité et identité vues par le psycho-sociologue

The paper gives the theoretical background of a Cross- Cultural Study carried out in the Institute of Social Psychology in Strasbourg. If the fact that Jews are different is an objective one, there must be observable differences in their attitudes and especially in those covert attitudes : the affective meaning of the language in which we express our thoughts. Using the Semantic Differential technique, Jews and Non- Jews were given the same list of concepts to evaluate with the help of descriptive scales. The analysis of the data provides evidence of the relevant concepts for which the variable Jew/ Non-Jew is determinative, independently from other variables, thus demonstrating the existence of a Jewish specifisity. If the same phenomenon can be observed cross-culturally, we can speak of a Jewish identity. Using a couple of other techniques which enable us to identify some constants, each of them being a dimension of a configuration space, we could locate the test subjects (J, J, J,... Jn for Jews and NJ, NJ, NJ,... NJ n for Non-Jews) and then measure the distance between the two main clusters, which we identify as the Judaicity factor.