Affective and Cognitive Factors Influencing Sensitivity to Probabilistic Information

In study 1 different groups of female students were randomly assigned to one of four probabilistic information formats. Five different levels of probability of a genetic disease in an unborn child were presented to participants (within‐subject factor). After the presentation of the probability level, participants were requested to indicate the acceptable level of pain they would tolerate to avoid the disease (in their unborn child), their subjective evaluation of the disease risk, and their subjective evaluation of being worried by this risk. The results of study 1 confirmed the hypothesis that an experience‐based probability format decreases the subjective sense of worry about the disease, thus, presumably, weakening the tendency to overrate the probability of rare events. Study 2 showed that for the emotionally laden stimuli, the experience‐based probability format resulted in higher sensitivity to probability variations than other formats of probabilistic information. These advantages of the experience‐based probability format are interpreted in terms of two systems of information processing: the rational deliberative versus the affective experiential and the principle of stimulus‐response compatibility.     

Decompartmentalizing the sociology of activist commitment. A critical survey of some recent trends in French research

This article is a critical survey of a field of research that for 20 years has been particularly active in France and is once again gaining momentum: the sociology of activist commitment. An outcome of this sociological current was the inter-actionist paradigm, i.e. how activists’ careers are embarked upon and evolve. The notion of how to reward activism has been refined and reconsidered. Theoretical debates relating to the surfacing – or not – of “new forms” of activism – or even “new activists” – are replaced in perspective and the two challenges that confront research today stressed. Both concern the social division of labor: how to account more thoroughly for the link between macro-social transformations and individual commitment, on one hand, how organizations are instrumental in formatting activism, on the other.     

Décloisonner la sociologie de l’engagement militant. Note critique sur quelques tendances récentes des travaux français

This critique reviews an especially active field of research during the last 20 years in France: the sociology of activism. In this current of sociology, a new interactionist paradigm has emerged that takes into account activists’ careers and the process of becoming an activist. This critique focuses on how the idea of the “rewards” of activism has been reworked. After reviewing theoretical debates about whether or not new forms of activism and new activists are arising, this article points out two issues for current research, both related to the social division of labor, namely: improving our understanding of, on the one hand, the linkage between macrosocial changes and activism and, on the other hand, of the way that organizations shape activism.