Objective:

This paper aims to identify semantic continet of social representations, focus on a theoretical hypothesis as follows: “socially shared knowledge”.

Method:

This paper shows three studies. 1659 participants were sampled, 52 % men and 48 % women, intentionally selected, by convenience, over 16 years of age, inhabitants in Santa Marta, Colombia. A mixed methodology showing preponderance of qualitative results; also, techniques of Prototypical and Categorical Analysis of Social Representation, Content Analysis and Lexicographic, Free Association of Words, supported with other instruments, 20 words or phrases inducing to extract information were used.

Results:

According to different studies 5983 types (total words) and 1806 types (different words) and average of types per subject was 1.3. The study demonstrates that knowledge has concrete and individual although socially shared contents and the semantic structure that moved retains significant quantitatively common and reduced units.

Conclusion:

It has been shown in this research that the semantic content tends to be compact, suggesting that cognition tends to save energy and facilitate behavior, addressed to more efficient and stable interrelationships.

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