This thesis examines what are for us two great sources or causes of error. The first arises from the influence of various cognitive biases upon our thinking, while the second emerges as a result of our wide-ranging dependence upon others for a vast amount of our beliefs about the world. Through both we can come to adopt false and harmful beliefs, a fact that naturally has both veridical and moral significance. One response is to suggest that we should increase our reliance upon experts in order to help us better acquire true beliefs and avoid false beliefs. By examining the historical, theoretical, psychological, and linguistic character of epistemic authorities and relationships, this avenue will be argued to be problematic. Scepticism in relation to epistemic authority is avoided in favour of an adoption of a critical attitude with respect to social sources of belief. The epistemology of testimony is next looked at, to see whether any lessons can be drawn from the nature of epistemic dependence to how we should epistemically approach others. Reductive versus non-reductive conceptions of the justification of testimony are explained, with the former conception being seen as naturally lending itself more to a critical treatment of social sources of belief. The question of why we should be rational at all is then examined. The positions of William K. Clifford and Karl Popper on the matter are explained, and my own views set forward. Finally, in light of the preceding groundwork, it is argued that there is a philosophical place and a social need for public education with respect to the broad epistemic situation in which we find ourselves.

This thesis explores how media has reported on the Darfur conflict as a climate conflict. For that purpose a media analysis has been carried out that analyses quantitative data through four different cases from different parts of the world. In order to get this data a quantitative content analysis has been carried out. The analysis has been carried out by using a media policy framework that enables the data to be classified in three different categories depending on the level of elite consensus and policy uncertainty on the matter at hand. This thesis concludes that media around the world have been reporting on climate change as a contributing factor depending on how that argument can be used to serve their geo-strategic policy on the conflict. In that sense climate change is mainly brought up as a way to relieve the Sudanese government of its responsibility in the conflict.

The purpose of this study was to describe and explain the portrayal of American Indians in U.S. textbooks selected for review in Hillsborough County, Florida's 2012 textbook adoption. The study identified which of the textbooks under consideration contained the greatest amount of information dedicated to American Indians. The study then analyzed how that information was portrayed. The exploratory questions that guided this study were, how are American Indians portrayed in five selected U.S. history textbooks? It also addresses the question, under what conditions can Tribal Critical Race Theory help illuminate how American Indians are portrayed in textbooks? The methodology used is a critical case study (Rubin and Rubin, 2005; Janesick, 2004). The Five Great Values, as developed by Sanchez (2007), were used in the organization, coding, and analysis of the data. The theoretical framework that guides this study is Tribal Critical Race Theory (Brayboy, 2005), created in order to address issues from an indigenous perspective. This study found that while overt racism has declined, colonialism and assimilation were still used as models when American Indians were depicted in the five selected textbooks. It also discovered the portrayal of American Indian women to be particularly influenced by the models of colonialism and assimilation. Colonization and assimilation can been seen in the depiction of American Indians as a part of nature, the homogenization of American Indian religion, the portrayal of elders as unnecessary, the exclusion of American Indian role models, and the use of Western socioeconomic models rather than indigenous ones.

The current study attempted to discern the extent to which a gender bias influences the adult ratings of observed childhood pain. While gender differences in pain sensation are well documented in physiologically mature individuals, there seems to be no such difference in children. The effect of manipulating gender on the procedural pain ratings of 201 university undergraduate and nursing students was examined via a deceptive pain observation task. Results demonstrated no significant difference between gender conditions; however a strong link was established between prior exposure to painful pediatric medical procedures and lower pain ratings. The results suggest that, while a gender bias failed to alter pain ratings, desensitization to viewing painful procedures could alter how much pain healthcare professionals believe a patient is experiencing.

This study aimed to clarify information processing conditions in which negatively-biased interpretations of faces manifest among individuals varying in self-reported, sub-clinical social anxiety. Existing findings are mixed, with conflicting research variously suggesting the presence (e.g., Bell et al., 2011; Yoon & Zinbarg, 2008) or the absence (e.g., Philippot & Douilliez, 2005; Schofield, Coles, and Gibb, 2011) of a negative interpretation bias for faces. Likely contributing to these equivocal findings is considerable methodological variability across studies that appear to tap two different levels of information processing (automatic and controlled). In this study, experimental conditions designed to elicit automatic versus controlled processing were compared in a single adapted learning paradigm (Yoon & Zinbarg, 2008). Hierarchical regression results did not support hypotheses that social anxiety would predict a negative interpretation bias in either condition. Further analysis of the learning paradigm revealed unexpected patterns of learning that varied according to face emotion.

Since its creation in 1998, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) has become a commonly used measure in social psychology and related fields of research. Studies of the cognitive processes involved in the IAT are necessary to establish the validity of this measure and to suggest further refinements to its use and interpretation. The current thesis used ERPs to study cognitive processes associated with the IAT. The first experiment found significant differences in P300 amplitude in the Congruent and Incongruent conditions, which were interpreted as a reflection of greater equivocation in the Incongruent condition. The second experiment tested the task-set switching account of the IAT in much greater detail by analyzing each trial type separately. In the Congruent condition, all trial types elicited the same amplitude P300. Local probability, and the consequent checking and updating of working memory, was thought to be responsible for differences between trials of the Incongruent condition that required or did not require a task switch. The final experiment examined the role of working memory in the IAT by introducing obtrusive and irrelevant auditory stimuli. The results of Experiment 3 indicated that the introduction of an obtrusive and irrelevant auditory increment deviant has little overall effect on the IAT, and a similar effect on switch and no-switch trials within the Incongruent condition. This could have been because both the Congruent and Incongruent conditions of the IAT make such extensive demands on central processing resources that few are available to allow for the switching of attention, or it is possible that the IAT does not require significant updating of working memory. The usefulness of ERPs in the study of the IAT effect is demonstrated by the current research. In particular, the finding that behavioural results were not always consistent with the ERP results demonstrates that electrophysiological measures can complement traditional behavioural measures.

Limao and Panagariya (L&P, 2007) modify Grossman and Helpman’s (1994) lobbying model in an attempt to understand why anti-trade bias is the predominant pattern in observed trade policy. L&P (2007) propose that governments seek to reduce inequality between sectors by modifying trade policies in a way that reallocates income from the smaller to the larger sector. We assess the empirical validity of L&P’s (2007) theory by exploiting the World Bank Distortions to Agricultural Incentives database (Anderson and Valenzuela, 2008), using their measure of trade bias as our dependent variable. We find little empirical support for L&P’s (2007) theory, and estimated coefficients on most control variables are insignificant. Lagged trade policies are significant determinants of current trade policy, suggesting the presence of policy persistence. We conclude that it is difficult to generalise L&P’s (2007) theory across a wide and unbalanced panel of countries that extends from the 1950s to the 2000s.

Exploring the relationship between prejudice and ethical decision-making within individuals that wish to pursue a career in the field of criminal justice has the potential to yield valuable insights on the ways that moral decisions may be impacted by extraneous factors. The objective of this thesis was to explore this relationship by means of quasi-experimental design and through examining 30 potential criminal justice candidates. Results suggested that significant associations between explicit racial attitudes and ethical decision-making are largely context-specific. Conversely, there was no significant relationship found between implicit racial attitudes and decision-making. In conducting this study, a better understanding of the role that explicit factors contribute within the decision-making process was revealed and a gap within the literature was identified. Also worthy of note, this study was the first known research inquiry into the relationship between both implicit and explicit attitudes and ethical decision-making within a Canadian criminological setting.

The SST bias in the tropical Atlantic exists in the early to latest generation of coupled general circulation models. The maximum bias is not on the equator but at 16°S, the cause of which has not been thoroughly studied. Newly released CMIP5 models provide a useful tool to investigate the contributions of different physical processes to the SST bias in this area in the coupled system. We tested three existing mechanisms and found that: 1) there is no significant relationship between the SST bias and surface heat flux bias; 2) deficient coastal upwelling is a contributing but not the sole source of the bias; and 3) the SST bias is correlated with temperature biases in the upstream equatorial region. The Angola-Benguela front is displaced southward by more than 10° in latitude in many CIMP5 models. Due to the huge temperature contrasts on two sides of the front, such a frontal displacement generates a very strong SST bias. The correlation between the SST bias and frontal location error in this region is significant at the 99% level, demonstrating that the SST bias in coupled GCMs is attributable to the models’ inability to reproduce a realistic position of the front and the consequent erroneous advection by the southward Angola current. This is due to both errors in the simulated surface wind field and systematic errors in ocean models. Ocean reanalysis datasets and a high-resolution regional model simulation suffer a similar pattern of SST biases. Although they produce a more realistic ocean circulation than coarser resolution simulations and alleviate some of the severe SST bias near the front, a warm bias overlies on a northward current to the south of the front, which actually comes from the north of the front through a subsurface passage. We identify a strong subsurface temperature bias caused by a too-deep and diffused simulated thermocline along the coast of Angola, originating from the equatorial thermocline, advected by the Angola Current and an undercurrent beneath the Benguela current, and then brought to the surface by the coastal upwelling along the Benguela coast, contributing to the warm SST bias south of the front.

Consistency modeling for gene selection is a new topic emerging from recent cancer bioinformatics research. The result of classification or clustering on a training set was often found very different from the same operations on a testing set. Here, the issue is addressed as a consistency problem. In practice, the inconsistency of microarray datasets prevents many typical gene selection methods working properly for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. In an attempt to deal with this problem, a new concept of performance-based consistency is proposed in this thesis.An interesting finding in our previous experiments is that by using a proper set of informative genes, we significantly improved the consistency characteristic of microarray data. Therefore, how to select genes in terms of consistency modelling becomes an interesting topic. Many previously published gene selection methods perform well in the cancer diagnosis domain, but questions are raised because of the irreproducibility of experimental results. Motivated by this, two new gene selection methods based on the proposed performance-based consistency concept, GAGSc (Genetic Algorithm Gene Selection method in terms of consistency) and LOOLSc (Leave-one-out Least-Square bound method with consistency measurement) were developed in this study with the purpose of identifying a set of informative genes for achieving replicable results of microarray data analysis.The proposed consistency concept was investigated on eight benchmark microarray and proteomic datasets. The experimental results show that the different microarray datasets have different consistency characteristics, and that better consistency can lead to an unbiased and reproducible outcome with good disease prediction accuracy.As an implementation of the proposed performance-based consistency, GAGSc and LOOLSc are capable of providing a small set of informative genes. Comparing with those traditional gene selection methods without using consistency measurement, GAGSc and LOOLSc can provide more accurate classification results. More importantly, GAGSc and LOOLSc have demonstrated that gene selection, with the proposed consistency measurement, is able to enhance the reproducibility in microarray diagnosis experiments.