This research attempted to demonstrate that faction size affects what people are looking for when they attend to conformity stimuli. It was expected that subjects exposed to a majority look for valid informational reasons to agree with the advocated norm, subjects exposed to one influence source attempt to validate the other's judgment, and subjects exposed to a minority attempt both to validate and understand the reason for the minority's judgment. Reconstrual of the stimulus was the proposed mechanism by which majority subjects could find reasons to agree with advocated norm and minority subjects could come to understand the reason for the advocated norm. Thus, stimulus reconstrual was expected to mediate conformity and facilitate private acceptance. Faction size, norm extremity, and attention to the stimulus were manipulated; conformity, reconstrual of the stimulus, and subsequent private acceptance were measured. The stimuli consisted of trait adjectives that subjects rated for positivity during the conformity task. It was found that conformity was greater with a large faction, high attention, and high norm extremity. A main effect for attention had not been found in past research that used perceptual stimuli. It is argued that this difference in findings reflects some fundamental difference between factual judgments (e.g., perceptual stimuli) and value judgments (e.g., trait ratings). More specifically, it is argued that with factual judgments there is an objectively correct answer, whereas with value judgments "correctness" is determined by social comparison. The mplications of the presence or absence of an objectively correct response is discussed with regard to the balance between normative and informational influence mechanisms. In parallel to the effect on conformity it was also found that higher attention increased reconstrual and private acceptance. However, the Faction Size X Attention interaction, which was significant for private acceptance and marginal for reconstrual, indicated that these effects of attention were more pronounced for subjects exposed to a minority than for subjects exposed to a majority. Majority subjects showed almost the same amounts of reconstrual and private acceptance in response to both the high- and low-attention trials. Since it is assumed that subjects did not have enough time to reconstrue the stimulus before they gave their public response on the low-attention trials, this unexpected finding raises questions about the temporal ordering of conformity and reconstrual. That is does reconstrual precede and mediate conformity or succeed and justify conformity, and does the answer vary according to faction size and attention conditions. The present study could not directly answer these questions. Although no clear answer is provided to the question of whether faction size affects what subjects look for when they attend to conformity stimuli, a number of fruitful avenues for future research are discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Questa tesi è composta da due saggi indipendenti. Il saggio presentato nel Capitolo 1 studia la conformità fiscale all'interno di un modello basato su agenti. Il modello è progettato tenendo conto di una serie di regole fiscali in vigore in Italia e calibrato con micro-dati forniti dall'autorità fiscale italiana. I risultati delle simulazioni mostrano che, considerando livelli di deterrenza realistici, agenti strettamente razionali generano un livello (medio) di non conformità fiscale sostanzialmente superiore a quello suggerito dai dati empirici. Quando includiamo nel processo decisionale dell’agente il calcolo e l’aggiornamento della probabilità soggettiva di subire un controllo, così come l’attitudine alla conformità sociale e gli effetti di rete, il modello fornisce risultati maggiormente in linea con l'evidenza empirica. Il saggio presentato nel Capitolo 2 impiega diverse tecniche di apprendimento automatico, con l'obiettivo di identificare quei contribuenti che hanno maggiore probabilità di aumentare l’importo della loro dichiarazione dei redditi dopo essere stati controllati dall'autorità fiscale. Tra i metodi impiegati, la foresta casuale ha garantito la maggiore accuratezza predittiva. Per valutare l'utilità pratica del nostro approccio, calcoliamo l'aumento del reddito netto riportato dai contribuenti identificati dal modello random forest. Troviamo che, in media, questo aumento è significativo rispetto alla media di tutti i contribuenti ispezionati. Riteniamo, dunque, che il nostro approccio possa rivelarsi uno strumento utile al fine di individuare e selezionare quei contribuenti che hanno una maggiore probabilità di dichiarare un reddito più alto in seguito ad un controllo, consentendo, quindi, una migliore allocazione delle - tipicamente scarse - risorse finanziarie a disposizione dell’autorità fiscale nell'ambito della sua attività ordinaria di controllo. / The essay presented in Chapter 1 studies tax compliance within an agent-based framework. The model is designed according to a set of normative taxing rules for the Italian case and calibrated with micro-data provided by the Italian tax authority. Simulation results show that, under realistic deterrence levels, strict rational agents generate a (average) level of tax noncompliance substantially higher than that suggested by the empirical data. When subjective audit probability computing and updating as well as social conformity attitude and network effects are included in the decision process, the model provides results more in line with the empirical evidence. The essay presented in Chapter 2 employs several machine learning techniques, with the aim to identify those taxpayers who are more likely to increase their net income declarations after being audited by the tax authority. Among the employed methods, random forest guaranteed higher predictive accuracy. In order to assess the practical utility of our approach, we compute the reported net income increase by taxpayers identified through the random forest model. We find that, on average, this increase is significant compared to the average of all the inspected taxpayers. We believe that our approach could prove a useful tool in order to identify and select those taxpayers who are more likely to increase the income reporting after an audit, therefore allowing for a better allocation of the – typically scarce – financial resources available to the tax authority for its ordinary auditing activities.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-127) / This dissertation examines how three dystopian texts, namely Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey and Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy, exhibit social conformity as a disciplinary mechanism of the ‘carceral’ – a notion introduced by poststructuralist thinker Michel Foucault. Employing poststructuralist discourse and deconstructive theory as a theoretical framework, the study investigates how each novel establishes its world as a successful carceral city that incorporates most, if not all, the elements of the incarceration system that Foucault highlights in Discipline and Punish. It establishes that the societies of the texts present potentially nightmarish future societies in which social and political “improvements” result in a seemingly better world, yet some essential part of human existence has been sacrificed. This study of these fictional worlds reflects on the carceral nature of modern society and highlights the problematic nature of the social and political practices to which individuals are expected to conform. Finally, in line with Foucault, it postulates that individuals need not be enclosed behind prison walls to be imprisoned; the very nature of our social systems imposes the restrictive power that incarcerates societies / English Studies / M.A. (English Studies)