Papers
Social Thinking about Collective Risk: How Do Risk-related Practice and Personal Involvement Impact Its Social Representations?
published in Journal of Risk Research, 2007
The study investigates the effects of personal involvement in a collective risk on the structure of its social representation, and how those effects depend on risk-related experience. The paper reports an empirical study conducted within the structural approach to the Social Representations Theory. We tested the effects of risk-related practice (earthquake experience) and of personal involvement in risk on the structure of its social representation. The results showed that the social representation was normative in nature, but became more practically oriented in the group who experienced earthquake. A normative representation is useful in judging risk's attributes; instead, a more functional, or a more practically oriented representation is expected to enable the use of more diversified risk-related information especially for practical purposes (risk mitigation behaviour). Similarly, the social representation of participants who were highly involved in seismic risk was more structured and more practically oriented. However, this was true only if they possessed risk-related experience, either through collective (risk culture) or live earthquake experience. Based on these results, a suggestion is made on how to increase the efficiency of prevention campaigns that aim at encouraging collective risk-mitigation conduct.
Like (3)Le rôle de l’implication personnelle dans l’expression de la pensée sociale sur les risques (The role of personal involvement in the expression of social thinking about risks)
published in 2009 in M.-L. Rouquette (Ed.). La pensée sociale. Perspectives théoriques et recherches appliquées. Ramonville St Agne: Erès, pp. 161-190
This paper focuses on the lay thinking on terrorism and collective risk related to natural hazards. After distinguishing between the event and the risk from a social psychological perspective, we focus on the lay thinking about the latter. We suggest an analysis completed from the positional level of explanation, as opposed to the individual level. This analysis is based on the Theory of Social Representations and its specific methodologies. It is supported by two empirical studies. The results showed that the social representations of collective risks were normative in nature, and had little behavioral efficiency. In addition, in the case of terrorism, the results also illustrated a theoretical proposal according to which, in a conflict, threat, or crisis situations, and in the absence of practice, high personal involvement may favour the expression of lay thinking through a more narrow, radical, collective and mobilising form, the nexus, rather than through the social representations of terrorism.
Add Comment