The Generalized Unsafety Theory of Stress proposes that physiological markers of generalized stress impair learning of safe cues in stressful environments. Based on this model, chronic problems inhibiting physiological arousal lead to a heightened perception of threat, which involves experiencing anxiety symptoms without any obvious precipitating stressful or traumatic event. This investigation aims to determine the impact of stressor- versus context-related emotional learning on generalized unsafety, using a Pavlovian threat-conditioning paradigm. The difference in learning threatening cues ([CS+] paired with an aversive stimulus) compared to safety cues ([CS-] not paired with an aversive stimulus) was used as a proxy measure of generalized unsafety, as conceptualized by the GUTS model. This difference is expected to be moderated by individual differences in tonic cardiac regulation (i.e. heart rate variability). Lastly, a temporal-differences learning model was used to predict skin-conductance learning during stressor, stressor context and general contexts to determine which best predicts Pavlovian learning. TD learning is expected to better predict skin-conductance in individuals with higher fear inhibition in comparison to those with low fear inhibition. / Doctor of Philosophy / This study examined the claims of a theory about how human bodies respond to stress and what this tells us about how anxiety develops in and affects the mind and body. The theory is named the Generalized Unsafety Theory of Stress (GUTS) and two main hypotheses were tested in this study: 1) the theory suggests that a person's feeling of safety is affected by the variation in their heart rate at rest, and 2) that a person's feeling of safety could be observed most accurately by their body's defense responses when they are experiencing a threatening situation that is objectively safe. Individuals experiencing anxiety often report being aware that they are safe, yet their heart rate remains elevated and palms remain sweaty. Most studies that have examined the body's defense response have focused almost solely on reactions to a threat by looking at the reactions of one or more organs that make up the body's defense-response systems (e.g., heart). Results of this study confirmed the unique GUTS perspective. Specifically, the heart rate's variation at rest affects the defense response (sweaty hands) during threatening and objectively safe contexts, which in turn, predicts a person's feeling of safety. These results confirm that there are measurable biological constraints that change the way people learn about and react to their environments, which is very important for understanding the development and maintenance of anxiety physiology and behavior. The way a person learns to associate emotional responses to certain cues in their environment, particularly threat and safety cues, can be measured as defense responses in the body in response to a series of trials. Exploratory analyses examined human threat learning in comparison with mathematically-generated learning in order to better model the processes whereby anxiety develops based on learning of threat and safety cues.

Individuals with high anxiety levels from clinical and non-clinical populations tend to exhibit an attentional bias where they selectively allocate more attention to threat stimuli than neutral stimuli, in comparison to individuals with lower anxiety levels. However, longitudinal studies investigating the relations between attentional bias to threat and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and social anxiety––some of the most common mental disorders––are scarce. Using a concurrent and longitudinal design, we investigated the relations between attentional bias to threat and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and social anxiety; concurrently in adulthood (the 30s) as well as longitudinally between young adulthood (the 20s) and adulthood (the 30s). We also investigated whether attentional bias to threat in the 30s moderated and/or mediated the relation between symptoms of psychopathology in the 20s and the same symptoms in the 30s. We found significant concurrent correlations between attentional bias to threat and greater symptoms of anxiety, depression, and social anxiety in the 30s. We also found positive longitudinal correlations between attentional bias to threat in the 30s and symptoms of anxiety (approached significance) and depression (significant) in the 20s. Thus, greater symptoms of internalizing-related psychopathology were associated with greater attentional bias to threat. Attentional bias to threat did not mediate the relation between early psychopathology and later psychopathology, but it did moderate the relation between anxiety in the 20s and social anxiety nearly a decade later. In individuals with greater attentional bias to threat, early anxiety was significantly associated with and predicted greater future social anxiety, but this was not the case for individuals with lower attentional bias to threat. Hence, attentional bias to threat may have a critical role in internalizing-related psychopathology, and interventions targeting it may have preventative and therapeutic potential for mitigating the likelihood of the development and/or persistence of internalizing-related psychopathology. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / People with higher anxiety levels pay more attention to threatening information than neutral information, compared to people with lower anxiety levels. Relatively few studies have investigated the long-term relation between attentional bias to threat and symptoms of mental disorder. Our study investigated the concurrent and longitudinal relations between attentional bias to threat and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and social anxiety. We found that anxiety, depression, and social anxiety in the 30s were concurrently related to greater attentional bias to threat. Additionally, anxiety and depression in the 20s were longitudinally related to greater attentional bias to threat 10 years later. Moreover, people with high anxiety and high attentional bias to threat were more likely to experience social anxiety in the future than people with high anxiety but low attentional bias to threat. Therefore, attentional bias to threat might have a critical role in the development and/or persistence of some mental disorders.

No / A realisation of the relationships among the security terms threat, vulnerability and risk, led to a perception of inconsistency about the security assessment procedure in the defence and public security industry in Nigeria. This is a practice whereby threat analysis is usually over-emphasised to the detriment of vulnerability and risk analyses. An original misconception surrounding the term analysis, as employed in the Intelligence Cycle, and its opposite counterpart, synthesis, was suspect. This paper was designed to sort out the technical relationship between analysis and synthesis, with a view to exploiting the implications optimally. It was revealed that the two terms are opposite in meaning but need to be intricately inter-woven in their employment as evaluation techniques. Unfortunately, most intelligence and security “analysts” embark on analysis with little or no idea about synthesis, thus muddling up the two concepts to the advantage of analysis. This original misconception led to a culture of non systematism and haphazardness in the intelligence assessment procedure. This culture was transmitted, in situ, from intelligence „analysis‟ to security „analysis.‟ Thus, the terms vulnerability and risk in security assessment suffer an almost identical fate with synthesis. It is the same reason that is most probably responsible for the divergence in the security assessment procedure between the public and private segments of the security industry. The implications of this anomaly include the virtual disappearance of synthesist in the global professional vocabulary of intelligence and security organisations, except for India; with resultant inconsistencies in the definition of intelligence analysis, and a culture of lack of systematism and accountability in the security assessment procedure. It is proposed that the phrase intelligence analysis, as employed in intelligence processing, should be replaced with intelligence synthesis. Intelligence products should be made amenable to re-evaluation and accountability. In military and security operations, the object of security assessment should be risk analysis, as opposed to threat analysis. Newly suggested terminologies are analosynthesis, synthonalysis and equisynalysis. Similarly, thesis, as a synonym of dissertation, should be replaced with synthesis. / Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF)

Through persuasive communication, IT executives strive to align the actions of end users with the desired security posture of management and of the firm. In many cases, the element of fear is incorporated within these communications. However, within the context of computer security and information assurance, it is not yet clear how these fear-inducing arguments, known as fear appeals, will ultimately impact the actions of end users. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of fear appeals on the compliance of end users with recommendations to enact specific individual computer security actions toward the amelioration of threats. A two-phase examination was adopted that involved two distinct data collection and analysis procedures, and culminated in the development and testing of a conceptual model representing an infusion of theories based on prior research in Social Psychology and Information Systems (IS), namely the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Results of the study suggest that fear appeals do impact end users attitudes and behavioral intentions to comply with recommended individual acts of security, and that the impact is not uniform across all end users, but is determined in part by perceptions of self-efficacy, response efficacy, threat severity, threat susceptibility, and social influence. The findings suggest that self-efficacy and, to a lesser extent, response efficacy predict attitudes and behavioral intentions to engage individual computer security actions, and that these relationships are governed by perceptions of threat severity and threat susceptibility. The findings of this research will contribute to IS expectancy research, human-computer interaction, and organizational communication by revealing a new paradigm in which IT users form perceptions of the technology, not on the basis of performance gains, but on the basis of utility for threat amelioration.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.