The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between the glass cliff phenomenon and two forms of sexism: hostile sexism (HS) and benevolent sexism (BS). Glass cliff refers to the tendency to endorse a woman candidate for a normally desirable, high-status position at the time of downfall or when things are not going well. A questionnaire package was first administered to a working people sample (N = 328) with diverse occupational backgrounds. Based on the analyses and findings, to be able to eliminate the potential confounding effect of the order of the scales in the package, the study was repeated on a student sample (N = 147). Finally, analyses were repeated after the data from both samples were combined. Results showed no evidence for 1) the presence of glass cliff and 2) the presence of a relationship between glass cliff and two forms of sexism. The results from both samples were discussed, presenting some plausible explanations for the findings. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are also presented.

<p>Takeovers are used as a mean for companies to grow and gain entry to new markets. Hos-tile takeovers, apart from the friendly takeovers, is when an acquirer tries to takeover a corporation against the will of management, shareholders and board of directors of the target company. All listed companies run the risk of being a target for a hostile takeover, and to-day many companies are trying to involve actions protecting them from possible threats. Lacking protection can evolve into a costly defense program with actions with fictitious names such as White knight, Pac-man and Poison pills. The purpose with this thesis is to describe and analyze hostile takeovers and hostile takeover attempts in Sweden, and the defense tactics involved in the process.</p><p>In this thesis a deductive approach will be used, where theories are used as guidance when searching for explanations. On the basis of the defense tactics described in the theory empirical data has been gathered with the purpose of seeing if the expectations reflect reality, and conclusions about their efficiency. The thesis has used a quantitative research method where the focus is on what, where and when. The aim of the thesis is to classify targeted features and count them, with the intent to construct statistical models with an underlying purpose of explaining what is observed.</p><p>The most frequently used defense tactic used by the target company in a hostile takeover in the Swedish market is to attack the logic of the bid. Around 56 percent of the targets in a hostile takeover or a hostile takeover attempt have used this defense tactic to avoid a hos-tile takeover. The aim with an implemented defense tactic is to avoid a hostile bid or making it impossible for the hostile bidder to proceed with the bid and close the deal. The White knight and White squire defense tactic is the most successful defense tactic when it comes to not finalizing the hostile bid, in 90 percent of the cases the deal is not closed if the target chooses to use a White knight as a defense tactic. A secondary objective with a defense tactic is to force the hostile bidder to increase the bid and pay more for the target company. In the Swedish market, the use of Corporate restructuring as a defense tactic has made the hostile bidder to increase the bid in 67 percent of the cases and the use of Positive public information has forced the hostile bidder to increase the bid in more than half of the cases.</p><p>The question why these defense tactics are the most frequently used strategies, is explained by two variables. The first one is the cost and simplicity variable, where Attack the logic of the bid and Public information ends up. These defense tactics are cost efficient and can be seen as natural step for the target company when deciding not to approve of the offer made by the acquirer. The second variable is the proven efficiency, where the target knows if implementing this defense tactic the risk of being acquired by the hostile bidder is relatively low, a good example of this is the White knight defense.</p>

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Hostile attribution of intent (HAI) is a social information processing pattern that reflects a distorted interpretation of ambiguous social situations as overly negative, personal, and aggressive, leading to further aggression. Previous research has documented the existence of HAI in connection with relational aggression among adolescent girls, but little is known about the role of HAI and physical aggression in this population. This qualitative study explored the experiences of adolescent girls involved in physical fights with another girl in order to determine the types of provocation that led to physical aggression. Participants were 11 girls, ages 15 to 17 years, and 7 parent participants of the girls. School disciplinary records were used to identify participants for the study. All girls who had a disciplinary record for engaging in a physical fight with another female student were invited to participate. A semi-structured interview was conducted, and the parents were given a single-question survey related to socioeconomic status. Data were analyzed using Consensual Qualitative Research as described by Hill, Thompson, and Williams (1997). The study participants reported that relational provocations, such as “talking mess” and “mean mugging,” led to physical aggression. They also noted that the type of help offered by adults to reduce conflict was not effective. Many participants reported receiving messages from adults implying it was acceptable to fight, provided that the participant won the fight. Finally, participants reported that disrespect is an acceptable and expected reason to get into a physical fight. / text

Background: The long-term detrimental impact of childhood emotional maltreatment is being increasingly recognised in the empirical literature. Adulthood trait-aggression is one proposed outcome of childhood emotional maltreatment. However, the pathways by which emotional maltreatment leads to trait-aggression are not well understood. Method: A systematic review was conducted to appraise the current empirical evidence base regarding the relationship between childhood emotional maltreatment and adulthood trait-aggression. Eighteen studies were reviewed and their quality analysed based on a number of pre-defined criteria. An empirical study was conducted using a cross-sectional, survey based design to evaluate hostile attribution bias and emotion regulation difficulties as mediators between childhood emotional maltreatment and adulthood trait-aggression. Participants were men (N = 42) recruited from NHS Forensic Mental Health Services. Results: Results from the systematic review provided support for a positive and significant association between childhood emotional abuse and adulthood traitaggression. There was evidence to indicate that childhood emotional neglect was also positively associated with adulthood trait-aggression, however, only a small number of studies have examined this relationship. The empirical study found significant indirect effects of childhood emotional abuse on self-reported aggression through emotion regulation difficulties. Emotion regulation difficulties did not have a significant effect on the relationship between childhood emotional neglect and aggression. Hostile attribution bias was not found to significantly mediate the relationship between either emotional abuse and aggression or emotional neglect and aggression. Conclusion: Those who experience emotional maltreatment during childhood may be at increased likelihood of engaging in aggressive behaviour in adulthood. Emotion regulation difficulties may play a key role in the relationship between childhood emotional abuse and aggression and this should be taken into consideration when assessing and treating adults who have difficulties with aggression. The routes by which emotional neglect and emotional abuse lead to aggression may differ. Further research is required to better understand the processes which lead from emotional maltreatment to aggression, particularly with regards to emotional neglect.

Workplace sexual harassment in Cote d'Ivoire has been documented as extensive and commonplace, yet in West African nations, sexual harassment is not well studied or understood. Specifically, little is known about whether intervention programs instituted by the Ivorian law under Act No.98-756 forbid sexual harassment are viewed by female workers as effective. Using Hendricks and Valasek's theory on gender mainstreaming as the foundation, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the perceptions of female workers in Cote d'Ivoire related the effectiveness of sexual harassment training programs. Data for this study were collected from 15 women who worked in public or nonprofit organizations in Cote d'Ivoire. Data were inductively coded and then subjected to a thematic analysis procedure. Key findings indicated that interviewees believed that exposure to sexual harassment in the workplace results in a loss of trust in the work environment and reductions in work productivity. Further, participants generally agreed that intervention programs are promising in terms of ameliorating the effects of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace. The positive social change implications stemming from this study include recommendations to local governments in Cote d'Ivoire to develop municipal ordinances that support the investigation and prosecution of workplace sexual harassment and individual organizations should design workplace policies to efficiently and effectively handle complaints of sexual harassment.

The general aggression model (GAM) has suggested that the interaction between person factors (e.g., personality variables) and situation factors (e.g., playing violent video games [VVGs]) can increase individuals’ aggressive behaviors through their cognition (e.g., hostile attributions), affect (e.g., negative affect), and/or arousal. The present study employed a modified competitive reaction time task to test the effects of shyness, violent (vs. nonviolent) gameplay, and shyness on individuals’ positive–negative affect, hostile attributions, and aggressive behaviors. In addition, the present study also employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the mediation (by cognition and affect) and moderation (by shyness). Results showed that playing a VVG increased aggressive behaviors, negative affect, and hostile attributions primarily among shy participants. In addition, the results of SEM also revealed that this moderating role was mediated by negative affect and hostile attributions. The present study supported GAM and showed that individuals’ aggressive behaviors are differentially susceptible to VVGs, depending on their level of shyness in a “for bad and for worse” manner.

Large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are highly vulnerable to attacks because they consist of numerous resource-constrained devices and communicate via wireless links. These vulnerabilities are exacerbated when WSNs have to operate unattended in a hostile environment, such as battlefields. In such an environment, an adversary poses a physical threat to all the sensor nodes. An adversary may capture any node, compromising critical security data including keys used for encryption and authentication. Consequently, it is necessary to provide security services to these networks to ensure their survival. We propose a novel, self-organizing key management scheme for large-scale and long-lived WSNs, called Survivable and Efficient Clustered Keying (SECK). SECK provides administrative services that ensures the survivability of the network. SECK is suitable for managing keys in a hierarchical WSN consisting of low-end sensor nodes clustered around more capable gateway nodes. Using cluster-based administrative keys, SECK provides five efficient security administration mechanisms: 1) clustering and key setup, 2) node addition, 3) key renewal, 4) recovery from multiple node captures, and 5) re-clustering. All of these mechanisms have been shown to localize the impact of attacks and considerably improve the efficiency of maintaining fresh session keys. Using simulation and analysis, we show that SECK is highly robust against node capture and key compromise while incurring low communication and storage overhead. / Master of Science

Contexte : Bien que l'hostilité et l'agressivité ne soient pas essentielles au diagnostic de la dépression, ces symptômes se sont révélés être très prévalents chez les patients déprimés et sont associés à des niveaux de comorbidité et de sévérité de la maladie plus élevés. En outre, des études ont montré que la dépression est associée de manière significative à des biais d’interprétation négatifs et que, selon les théories cognitives de la dépression, ces biais peuvent représenter un facteur de risque considérable pour l’apparition et/ou le maintien de la maladie. Alors que les biais d'interprétation négatifs soient reconnus comme un élément fondamental des modèles cognitifs de la dépression, peu d'études ont examiné les biais spécifiques du traitement de l'information, notamment le biais d’attribution d’intention hostile, chez des individus hostiles présentant des symptômes dépressifs. Méthodologie : À l'aide de données pré-recueillies auprès d'un échantillon de 72 (hommes = 41,6%, femmes = 58,3%) participants hostiles (n = 26) et non hostiles (n = 46), cette étude visait à examiner l'association entre la dépression et le biais d'attribution d’intention hostile en déterminant si les scores de niveau de dépression étaient liés de manière unique aux mesures électrophysiologiques du biais d'attribution hostile. Résultats : Le groupe hostile a montré des niveaux de dépression et d'agressivité réactive plus élevés que le groupe non hostile. En outre, les scores de dépression étaient des prédicteurs significatifs de l'effet N400 dans la condition non hostile, alors que l'agressivité réactive ne l'était pas, tandis que dans la condition hostile, le modèle global s’est avéré significatif, avec des niveaux de dépression et d'agressivité réactive montrant tous deux de fortes tendances vers la signification. Limites : Une petite taille d'échantillon a limité la portée des conclusions de l’étude. De plus, la sélection de l’échantillon n’a pas permis d'examiner les différences de groupe spécifiques concernant le biais d'attribution hostile dans les groupes déprimés et non déprimés. Conclusion : ii Cette étude souligne l’importance de mieux comprendre les mécanismes de perception associés à la dépression et d'envisager l'application de techniques de restructuration cognitive pour contrer les processus d'interprétation biaisés dans des contextes où la dépression et l'agression se croisent. Cette étude suggère également que des alternatives aux méthodologies d'auto évaluation pourraient être plus utiles lors de l'évaluation des processus automatiques et implicites. / Background: Hostility and aggression have been found to be highly prevalent among depressed patients and are associated with higher comorbidity and illness severity levels. Although negative interpretation biases are a fundamental element of cognitive models of depression, few studies have examined the specific biases in information processing, mainly the hostile attribution bias, found in hostile individuals who present depressive symptoms. Method: Using pre-collected data from a sample of 72 (male=41,6%, female=58,3%) undergraduate and community-based hostile (n=26) and non-hostile (n=46) adult participants, the authors aimed to examine the association between depression and the hostile attribution bias by determining whether depression level scores were uniquely related to electrophysiological measures of the hostile attribution bias. Results: The hostile group showed higher measured levels of depression and reactive aggression, compared to the non-hostile group. Also, depression scores were significant predictors of the N400 effect in the non-hostile condition, while reactive aggression was not, whereas in the hostile condition, the overall model was significant, with depression and reactive aggression levels both showing strong trends towards significance. Limitations: A small sample size limited the scope of our conclusions. Also, sample selection prevented the authors from examining specific group differences regarding the hostile attribution bias in depressed and non-depressed groups. Conclusion: This study highlights the importance of better understanding the perception mechanisms that are associated with depression and to consider the application of cognitive restructuring techniques to counter biased interpretation processes in settings where depression and aggression intersect. This study also suggests that alternatives to self-evaluative methodologies might be more useful when assessing automatic and implicit processes.

The purpose of this qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual study was to explore and describe nurses’ experiences of hostile behaviour from mentally ill patients in the psychiatric ward of a general hospital and to propose recommendations to the hospital management to support nurses who experienced hostile behaviour from mentally ill patients. Purposive sampling was used to identify the twelve nurses who participated in this study. Data were collected through in-depth face-to-face interviews, drawings and field notes. The data were analysed using Tesch’s descriptive method of open coding and the findings revealed that nurses experienced verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual harassment from mentally ill patients, and had varied negative and positive responses to these forms of hostile behaviour. Main challenges were identified and recommendations were made to the hospital management to support nurses who experience hostile behaviour from mentally ill patients. / Health Studies / MA (Public Health)