Benoît De Courson

Biographic Data

ID4152271
NAMEBenoît De Courson
GIVEN NAMESBenoît
FAMILY NAMEDe Courson
SIGNATUREDE COURSON B
AFFILIATIONSCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique
ORCID0000-0001-8215-9928
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS9
TOTAL CITATIONS4
AUTHOR COUNT9
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2019
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2024
H-INDEX1

  • Poverty is associated with both risk avoidance and risk taking: An empirical test of the desperation threshold model

    Benoît De Courson, Willem Frankenhuis et al.PREPRINT2024

    In situations of poverty, do people take more or less risk? Some theories state that poverty makes people 'vulnerable': they cannot buffer against losses, and therefore avoid risk. Yet, other theories state the opposite: poverty makes people 'desperate': they have little left to lose, and therefore take risks. Each theory has some support: most studies find a negative association between resources and risk taking, but risky behaviors such as crim…

  • Short‐term changes in financial situation have immediate mental health consequences: Implications for social policy

    Open AccessD Nettle, Coralie Chevallier et al.ARTICLESocial Policy and Administration2024Cited by: 4References: 5

    Poverty is associated with psychological variables such as increased anxiety, increased depression, steeper time discounting and greater risk aversion. However, less is known about whether short‐term changes in financial circumstances are coupled to immediate psychological responses. We present data from the Changing Cost of Living study, in which panels of adults in France ( n = 232) and the UK ( n = 240) completed financial and psychological su…

  • Gallicagram: Les archives de presse sous les rotatives de la statistique textuelle

    Benoît De Courson, Benjamin Azoulay et al.ARTICLECorpus2023

    Gallicagram est un nouvel outil de lexicométrie, fondé notamment sur les archives océrisées de la Bibliothèque nationale de France et sur celles du journal Le Monde ; il dénombre dans le corpus choisi et pour une période donnée les occurrences d’un mot ou d’un syntagme, et offre différents modes de visualisation des données obtenues. Ce logiciel mérite à plusieurs titres d’être investi par les chercheurs : outre le volume des données qu’il exploi…

  • Short-term changes in financial situation have immediate mental health consequences: Implications for social policy

    D Nettle, Coralie Chevallier et al.PREPRINT2023

    Poverty is associated with psychological variables such as increased anxiety, increased depression, steeper time discounting and greater risk aversion. However, less is known about whether short-term changes in financial circumstances are coupled to immediate psychological responses. We present data from the Changing Cost of Living study, in which panels of adults in France (n = 232) and the UK (n = 240) completed financial and psychological surv…

  • Quantifying the scientific revolution

    Open AccessBenoît De Courson, Valentin Thouzeau et al.ARTICLEEvolutionary Human Sciences2023References: 6

    The Scientific Revolution represents a turning point in the history of humanity. Yet it remains ill-understood, partly because of a lack of quantification. Here, we leverage large datasets of individual biographies ( N = 22,943) and present the first estimates of scientific production during the late medieval and early modern period (1300–1850). Our data reveal striking differences across countries, with England and the United Provinces being muc…

  • Desperation and inequality increase stealing: Evidence from experimental microsocieties

    Setayesh Radkani, Eimile Holton et al.PREPRINT2022

    People facing material deprivation are more likely to turn to acquisitive crime, but it is not clear why. Recent theory suggests that people should be more willing to steal if they are on the wrong side of a ‘desperation threshold’; that is, a level of resources critical to wellbeing. Below such a threshold, people should pursue any risky behaviour that offers the possibility of a short route back above, and should be insensitive to the severity …

  • Why is violence high and persistent in deprived communities? A formal model

    Benoît De Courson, Willem Frankenhuis et al.PREPRINT2022

    There is massive variation in rates of violence across time and space. These rates are positively associated with economic deprivation and inequality. They also tend to display a degree of local persistence, or ‘enduring neighbourhood effects’. Here, we identify a single mechanism that can produce all three observations. We formalise it in a mathematical model, which specifies how individual-level processes generate the population-level patterns.…

  • Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust

    Benoît De Courson, D NettlePREPRINT2020

    Humans sometimes cooperate to mutual advantage, and sometimes exploit one another. In industrialised societies, the prevalence of exploitation is related to the distribution of economic resources: more unequal societies tend to have higher crime, as well as lower social trust. We created a model of cooperation and exploitation to explore why this should be. Distinctively, our model features a desperation threshold, a level of resources below whic…

  • Quantifying the Scientific Revolution

    Benoît De Courson, Nicolas BaumardPREPRINT2019

    The Scientific Revolution is one of the most important phenomena in human history. Yet it is ill understood, partly because of a lack of quantification. Here, we leverage large datasets of individual biographies to build national estimates of scientific production during the early modern period. While aggregate levels of national production are unsurprising, per capita estimates reveal striking differences across countries, with the two richest c…