"Not everyone can be an activist"

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Daniel Davis:
> Furthermore, what ever the conditions of their life, it is 
> highly unlikely that everyone, or indeed a particularly high 
> percentage of people, have the personality type to be an 
> activist.  It looks like a pretty difficult job to me; not 
> unlike being a salesman for an unpopular product.  Casual 
> empiricism suggests to me that there are few people as 
> unhappy an ineffectual as people who have gone into sales 
> jobs but aren't really cut out for them, so I suspect that 
> anyone trying (from the best of motives) to put pressure on 
> people to do their duty and be activists, is most likely 
> causing avoidable misery.

Research suggest that what makes an activist is not conviction or
personality, but social connections.  People get drawn to action by
their friends, spouses, syblings, or co-workers, but then they
rationalize their participation in terms of their adherence to the
action's ideology.  Ideology or personality alone seldom acts as
sufficient motivator (ditto for most kinds of volunteering).  

And that makes perfect sense.  The behavioral model that seems to have
most validity is not utility maximization, but transaction cost
minimization.  People tend to do not what gets them the most benefits,
but what comes easiest and offers the least resistance.  Thus, to induce
people to action, one need to lower their transaction costs (that is,
btw, why most business firms offer an 800 number).  Social conncetion do
reduce transaction cost of social activism, hence they are a good
"motivator" for participation.  

Wojtek