The present study examined the relationship between personality facets and risk perception using the Big Five model. A broad range of hazards was considered: energy production, pollutants, sex, deviance, addictions, weapons, common individual hazards, outdoor activities, medical care, and psychotropic drugs. Key personality facets that were most predictive of risk perception compared to (or in association with) age, gender, educational level, and personality factors were identified. They were moderation and tranquility (associated with energy production or pollutants), rationality and efficiency (associated with pollutants, sex, deviance, addictions, or weapons), creativity, imagination, and reflection (associated with energy production, pollutants, or common individual hazards), self-disclosure (associated with outdoor activities), and nurturance and tenderness (associated with sex, deviance, addictions, or medical care). These facets may be recommended for use in future studies on risk perception.

A great deal of recent work has found that two fundamental dimensions underlie social judgment. The most common labels used to denote these dimensions are agency versus communion, and competence versus warmth. The present work aimed to disentangle agency understood as the motivation to promote the self from competence understood as ability, and to address their distinctive role in status perception. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were presented with a high- versus low-status target and asked to rate this target on agency, competence and warmth. In Study 3, participants were presented with an agentic, competent, and warm target and asked to rate their social status. Overall, our findings indicated that agency and competence operate as distinct dimensions in social judgment, and that agency is more related to social status than competence.

The aims of the present study were (i) to explore autobiographical memory and episodic future thought in multiple sclerosis (MS), using Levine's Autobiographical Interview; (ii) to investigate the influence of the Interview's high retrieval support condition (the specific probe phase) on MS patients' past and future simulations and (iii) to obtain the patients' estimations of their own difficulties, during the test, and in everyday life. To that end, we examined 39 non-depressed relapsing-remitting MS patients and 34 healthy subjects matched for gender, age and education level. The 73 participants underwent an adapted version of the Autobiographical Interview in two conditions: remembering and imagining personal events. The group of patients also underwent an extended neuropsychological baseline, including particularly, anterograde memory and executive functions. The results showed that the MS patients' scores on the baseline were mildly or not impaired. On the contrary, the Autobiographical Interview measure, i.e., the mean number of internal details, for each of the two phases of the test -free recall and specific probe -was significantly lower in simulated past and future events in comparison with the healthy controls. Within each group, autobiographical memory performance was superior to episodic future thought performance. A strong positive correlation was observed between past and future mental simulation scores in both groups.In conclusion, our results showed, for the first time, the co-occurrence of deficit of remembering the past and imagining the future in MS patients. They also showed more difficulty in imagining future events than remembering past events for both patients and normal controls. MS being a neurological condition very frequent in the young adult population, the clinical considerations of our study might be of interest. Indeed, they give rise to new insights on MS patients' daily life difficulties related to impaired mental simulation of personal events despite general abilities, including anterograde memory, only mildly or not impaired.

The multifocal nature of lesions in multiple sclerosis hints at the occurrence of autobiographical memory (AbM) impairment. However, the dearth of studies on AbM in multiple sclerosis is noticeable, notwithstanding the importance of AbM in everyday life. In the first section of this study, 25 multiple sclerosis patients and 35 controls underwent a detailed episodic AbM assessment. Results obtained by means of ANOVA suggested an AbM retrieval deficit in every patient. That pattern of performance paved the way for the second section of the study, in which we followed up 10 out of the 25 patients. Our objective was to assess the effectiveness of a cognitive facilitation programme designed to alleviate AbM retrieval deficits, based on the key role of mental visual imagery on AbM. Statistical group analyses by means of ANOVA and individual analyses using the χ 2 test showed significant differences in AbM test results, in post-facilitation relative to pre-facilitation training, in all 10 patients. Moreover, the patients' comments showed that the positive effects were transferred in their daily life functioning. We would like to suggest that the facilitation programme efficiently enhanced the process of selfcentred mental visual imagery, which might have compensated for poor retrieval of personal memories by providing better access to visual details and detailed visual scenes of personal recollections.

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The effect of specification of the target on risk evaluation was examined. A whole set of hazards, covering most of the domains, were considered: common individual hazards, outdoor activities, medical care, public transportation, energy production, pollutants, sex, deviance, and addictions. Three human targets were introduced: personal health risk (including personal risk of death), health risk for people in the country, and health risk for people in the world. The basic design was a between-subjects design. The first hypothesis was that risk judgments made in the "world" condition should be higher than risk judgments made in the "country" condition, and risk judgments made in this condition should be higher than risk judgments made in the "personal" condition. This is what was observed. The second hypothesis was that the target effect should differ as a function of the kind of hazards considered. This also is what was observed. In two domains--pollutants, and deviance, sex, and addictions--the target effect was important. It corresponded to about one-tenth of the response scale. In the four remaining domains, the target effect was unimportant or absent.

Personality is among the most studied correlates of belief in the paranormal. There is, however, some inconsistency in their association. The purpose of the present study was to provide a more clear view of how paranormal beliefs are associated with personality by (1) using a psychometrically sound instrument for assessing belief in the paranormal, and (2) investigating the differential role in paranormal beliefs of the two lower-level aspects of each Big Five domain. French citizens completed a modified version of the Revised-Paranormal Belief Scale and the Big Five Aspect Scales. A six-factor model of paranormal beliefs displaying strong psychometric properties was identified. Correlations between personality and paranormal beliefs were stronger at the aspect level than at the domain level. Consistent with our differential prediction hypothesis, the effect of one aspect was not the same as another aspect of the same broad domain of personality on belief in the paranormal. Withdrawal, Openness, Industriousness, and Assertiveness did a good job of predicting belief in the paranormal, while Volatility, Intellect, Orderliness and Enthusiasm were not predictors of such beliefs. Overall, these results emphasize the importance of considering lower levels of the personality hierarchy in attempting to understand paranormal beliefs. Keywords Personality. Big five aspect scales (BFAS). Belief in the paranormal. Confirmatory factor analysis. Path analysis

The impact of the media on people's risk perception was assessed by comparing risk ratings obtained from African villagers without access to the media with risk ratings obtained from African city-dwellers with access to the media and risk ratings obtained from French participants. The overall mean risk judgment observed among the Togolese villagers was lower than the mean rating observed among the Togolese city-dwellers, and lower than the mean rating observed among the French. The linear association observed between the Togolese villagers' ratings and the Togolese city-dweller ratings and the French ratings was moderate. The impact of the media on risk perception was estimated to be an increase of about 15% of the overall mean ratings, and to about 31% of the variance of the mean ratings. This impact was independent of educational level.