Different conceptions of money and the economic crisis: a study on social representations in the Italian context

In the last years the instability of the socio-economic context has been breeding ground for the representations shared by Italian citizens about two key elements of daily life to change: the economic crisis and money. This study aims to combine the perspectives offered by economic psychology and social psychology to develop a new point of view on how money and the economic crisis are experienced and perceived by individuals belonging to different social groups, in an environment requiring great adaptability and the adoption of new practices, even in the financial context. From a methodological perspective, free association task was adopted as a common method of investigating social representations. Thus, 300 participants completed an online questionnaire composed by both spontaneous associations and self-report scales, in the aim to recreate the social representations of money and of the economic crisis, highlighting how each of them differs in relation to (1) the life-cycle phase, distinguishing between young people in a phase of construction and stabilization of their own path and more adult subjects in a more stable and structured stage, and (2) the perception of financial vulnerability, which reflects concerns and uncertainties concerning one’s economic and working situation.