This study investigates the effects of traumatic experiences on emotional content of dreams. The theoretical framework of the present study is both the threat simulation theory and Hartmann’s theory of dreams as a mechanism for handling emotions after traumatic events. Both theories predict an increase in negative emotions after trauma but assign a different function for this increase. The subjects in this study (N = 16) were regularly writing dream diaries which after the 9/11 attack gave the researchers an unique opportunity to study the exact impact of events on dream content. Each subject’s ten last dreams before 9/11, and ten first dreams after 9/11, were analysed according to the emotional content. The results showed no significant differences in the number or tone of emotions in the before dreams compared to the after dreams. Possibly because none of the subjects experienced the event first hand.

Threat evaluation is used in various applications to find threatening objects or situations and neutralize them before they cause any damage. To make the threat evaluation as user-friendly as possible, it is important to know where the uncertainties are. The method Traceable Uncertainty can make the threat evaluation process more transparent and hopefully easier to rely on. Traceable Uncertainty is used when different sources of information are combined to find support for the decision making process. The uncertainty of the current information is measured before and after the combination. If the magnitude of uncertainty has changed more than a threshold, a new branch will be created which excludes the new information from the combination of evidence. Traceable Uncertainty has never been tested on any realistic scenario to investigate whether it is possible to implement the method on a large scale system. The hypothesis of this thesis is that Traceable Uncertainty can be used on large scale systems if its threshold parameter is tuned in the right way. Different threshold values were tested when recorded radar data were analyzed for threatening targets. Experiments combining random generated evidence were also analyzed for different threshold values. The results showed that a threshold value in the range [0.15, 0.25] generated a satisfying amount of interpretations that were not too similar to eachother. The results could also be filtered to take away unnecessary interpretations. This shows that in this aspect and for this data set, Traceable Uncertainty can be used on large scale systems.

Våld och hot från klienter inom socialtjänsten är vanligt förekommande visar en stor andel tidigare forskning. Forskning angående relationens betydelse för uppkomsten av detta fenomen är däremot svårare att finna. Vi har valt att undersöka socialarbetares syn på relationens betydelse för socialt arbete och om den kan påverka uppkomsten av hot och våld inom socialtjänsten. Studien är genomförd i två kommuner i Sverige, respondenterna består av 11 stycken socialarbetare inom försörjningsstöd och en enhetschef. Detta är en kvalitativ undersökning där vi använt oss av semistrukturerade intervjuer. Relationen lyfts som det primära inom de socialkontor vi studerat och våra respondenter menar att utan en god relation blir arbetet mycket svårt att genomföra. Respondenterna menar att en god relation byggs genom empati, förståelse, ödmjukhet och kommunikation samt en tydlighet i vilken roll socialarbetaren befinner sig igenom sitt arbete och sitt uppdrag som myndighetsperson. Resultatet av denna studie tyder på vikten av en god och professionell relation i arbetet med människor och hur viktigt det är att rikta mer forskning mot relationens betydelse.

This thesis examines the phenomenon of Chechen population growth in the context of the protracted Russo-Chechen conflict. It argues that the conflict was the main causative reason for the growth of the Chechen population. This hypothesis was confirmed by fieldwork, which allowed for the detection of a positive correlation between the nation's demographic growth and the perception of the own physical existence as endangered. The results of fieldwork demonstrated that the majority of the informants connected high Chechen birth rates with the necessity of physical survival, restoration of losses, and strengthening the nation numerically. The threat to Chechen ethnic identity did not show as strong correlation with demographic growth as did the threat to physical existence. Nevertheless, Chechen ethnic identity, which favours resistance to a foreign rule, was confirmed to be the crucial variable in determining the demographic dynamics of the nation. This in turn suggested an additional correlation: in the context of an existential threat salient ethnic identity would prompt a population growth. The latter, in such cases, is considered as a way of continuing the resistance in a non-violent way. The restoration of the losses experienced and the survival of the nation is seen as a victory and at the same time as a preparation for the next outbreak of violence. With all of this in mind, this thesis suggests considering Chechen demographic growth as the reaction (which itself was determined by ethnic identity) to the existential threat imposed by Russia.

Notre recherche porte sur la participation d’individus âgés fragilisés à un essai clinique destiné à prévenir les syndromes démentiels dégénératifs. 812 personnes âgées, dont 527 ayant accepté de participer à une étude destinée à prévenir la maladie d’Alzheimer et 285 ayant refusé de participer à ce même essai ont rempli un questionnaire comprenant des renseignements sociodémographiques et des échelles évaluant les variables psychologiques suivantes : le soutien social perçu, le lieu de contrôle de la santé, la facette anxiété du Névrosisme, la menace perçue de la maladie d’Alzheimer, les motifs d’acceptation et de refus de participer un une étude destinée à prévenir la maladie d’Alzheimer. Les résultats mettent en évidence que le niveau d’étude, l’âge, la menace perçue de la maladie d’Alzheimer, le contrôle interne et le contrôle externe «personnages puissants» participent à distinguer les « acceptants » et les « refusants ». Les «acceptants» ont un niveau d’étude plus élevé et sont plus jeunes que les «refusants». Les « acceptants » se sentent davantage menacés par la maladie d’Alzheimer et ont plus tendance à présenter un contrôle de la santé de type interne ou externe «personnages puissants» que les «refusants». Trois facteurs motivationnels d’acceptation de participer ont été mis en évidence : le facteur I «Bénéfices perçus», le facteur II «Influence sociale» et le facteur III «Orientation sur soi». Trois facteurs motivationnels de refus de participer ont émergé : le facteur I «Manque d’intérêt», le facteur II «Raisons médicales» et le facteur III «Contraintes perçues». La présente étude contribue à une meilleure compréhension des caractéristiques psychologiques des individus âgés acceptant ou refusant de participer à une étude préventive conduite dans le domaine de la maladie d’Alzheimer, ce qui pourrait notamment aider à la mise en place d’actions améliorant la participation des personnes âgées. / Our research deals with frail elderly persons participation in a dementia preventive study. 812 elderly persons: 527 which accepted and 285 which refused participation in an Alzheimer disease preventive program, completed a questionnaire which evaluated sociodemographic variables and psychological variables: social support, health locus of control, anxiety facet of Neuroticism, perceived threat about Alzheimer disease, motives to accept or to refuse to take part in an Alzheimer disease preventive study. Results show that level of education, age, threat about Alzheimer disease, internal control and external «powerful others» control, contribute to discriminate «acceptors» and «refusers». Persons who accepted participation have a higher level of education and are younger than people in the refusing-to-participate group. Persons who accepted to take part in the study showed an internal control, a «powerful others» control, and felt more threatened by Alzheimer disease than people in the refusing-to-participate group. Motivational factors to accept to take part in a dementia preventive study are: factor I «Perceived benefits», factor II «Social influence», factor III «Focus on self». Motivational factors to refuse to take part are: factor I «Lack of interest, factor II «Medical reasons», factor III «Perceived constraints». This study contributes to a better understanding of psychological characteristics of elderly people which accept or refuse to take part in an Alzheimer disease preventive study. This knowledge could help to develop actions improving elderly’s participation.

Advances in mobile and pervasive computing, social network technologies and the exponential growth in Internet applications and services will lead to the development of the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT services will be a key enabling technology to the development of smart infrastructures that will revolutionize the way we do business, manage critical services, and how we secure, protect, and entertain ourselves. Large-scale IoT applications, such as critical infrastructures (e.g., smart grid, smart transportation, smart buildings, etc.) are distributed systems, characterized by interdependence, cooperation, competition, and adaptation. The integration of IoT premises with sensors, actuators, and control devices allows smart infrastructures to achieve reliable and efficient operations, and to significantly reduce operational costs. However, with the use of IoT, we are experiencing grand challenges to secure and protect such advanced information services due to the significant increase in the attack surface. The interconnections between a growing number of devices expose the vulnerability of IoT applications to attackers. Even devices which are intended to operate in isolation are sometimes connected to the Internet due to careless configuration or to satisfy special needs (e.g., they need to be remotely managed). The security challenge consists of identifying accurately IoT devices, promptly detect vulnerabilities and exploitations of IoT devices, and stop or mitigate the impact of cyberattacks. An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is in charge of monitoring the behavior of protected systems and is looking for malicious activities or policy violations in order to produce reports to a management station or even perform proactive countermeasures against the detected threat. Anomaly behavior detection is a technique that aims at creating models for the normal behavior of the network and detects any significant deviation from normal operations. With the ability to detect new and novel attacks, the anomaly detection is a promising IDS technique that is actively pursued by researchers. Since each IoT application has its own specification, it is hard to develop a single IDS which works properly for all IoT layers. A better approach is to design customized intrusion detection engines for different layers and then aggregate the analysis results from these engines. On the other hand, it would be cumbersome and takes a lot of effort and knowledge to manually extract the specification of each system. So it will be appropriate to formulate our methodology based on machine learning techniques which can be applied to produce efficient detection engines for different IoT applications. In this dissertation we aim at formalizing a general methodology to perform anomaly behavior analysis for IoT. We first introduce our IoT architecture for smart infrastructures that consists of four layers: end nodes (devices), communications, services, and application. Then we show our multilayer IoT security framework and IoT architecture that consists of five planes: function specification or model plane, attack surface plane, impact plane, mitigation plane, and priority plane. We then present a methodology to develop a general threat model in order to recognize the vulnerabilities in each layer and the possible countermeasures that can be deployed to mitigate their exploitation. In this scope, we show how to develop and deploy an anomaly behavior analysis based intrusion detection system (ABA-IDS) to detect anomalies that might be triggered by attacks against devices, protocols, information or services in our IoT framework. We have evaluated our approach by launching several cyberattacks (e.g. Sensor Impersonation, Replay, and Flooding attacks) against our testbeds developed at the University of Arizona Center for Cloud and Autonomic Computing. The results show that our approach can be used to deploy effective security mechanisms to protect the normal operations of smart infrastructures integrated to the IoT. Moreover, our approach can detect known and unknown attacks against IoT with high detection rate and low false alarms.

This study was conducted within two forensic settings, the high security correctional facility Saltviksanstalten, and the forensic psychiatric institution Karsudden hospital. 66 staff members from Saltvik and 39 from Karsudden participated by answering a questionnaire about threat and physical violence perpetrated towards them by inmates/patients. The aim of the present study was to analyze and compare the prevalence of threat and physical violence and related factors perpetrated by inmates/patient towards staff within these two forensic settings with the objectives to compare and analyse the prevalence, characteristics, situations and consequences of the threat and physical violence. The results showed that a higher percentage of participants were exposed to threats and physical violence within the forensic psychiatric setting. As regards to the intentions behind the threats and physical violence, inmates within high security correctional facilities was to a higher degree instrumental whereas patients within the forensic psychiatry showed a higher degree of reactive intentions. The conclusion is that victimization in the form of threat and physical violence is comprehensive, especially within the forensic psychiatry. Due to that victimization increases both the risk of revictimization, and have a number of negative personal- and societal consequences, this is an issue that needs to be highlighted in order to improve both the work environment and the mental health for the staff. / <p>2017-06-01</p>

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / L. Susan Williams / Building upon macrostructural “social threat” (Blalock, 1967) research, the current study develops a theoretical model of judicial decision-making processes that focuses upon racial threats perceived within individual court contexts and the corresponding effects on individual sentencing outcomes. This model recognizes that in the absence of a true-measure of a defendant’s threat to the community (likelihood to re-offend) judicial decision makers often rely upon stereotypical generalizations regarding offender populations to render decisions. Although actors develop biases and stereotypes through interactions with society in general, the most relevant knowledge affecting sentencing decisions is perceptions gained through the course of work. Similar to the influential “Pygmalion in the Classroom” study, biases and stereotypes regarding the criminality of groups of criminal defendants are pervasive in contemporary society, undoubtedly influencing sentencing outcomes. Therefore, the most meaningful measurement of threat, as it pertains to sentencing, is the contextual composition of court caseloads. Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics-State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) program, this study examines court-contextual or caseload level threats and the interaction between courtroom context and individual offense/offender characteristics and the corresponding impact on sentencing outcomes. Findings demonstrate that courts of high minority defendant volume apply more punitive sanctions to (increased sentence length and odds of incarceration) to all defendants within this context, while black defendants receive the greatest sanctions. These findings support assertions regarding the impact of threatening populations within courtroom contexts.

Une communication menaçante est une stratégie persuasive se caractérisant par l’exposition à une menace (i.e., une conséquence négative causée par l’adoption d’un comportement risqué) en vue d’inciter à l’application d’une recommandation (i.e., une action permettant la protection face à la menace). Si de nombreux travaux ont été réalisés afin de comprendre les effets de la menace sur la persuasion, peu d’entre eux se sont néanmoins intéressés au format de présentation de la menace et à l’influence qu’il exerce dans une communication menaçante. La présente thèse vise à pallier cette lacune et évalue l’effet de la vividité de la menace (i.e., le degré avec lequel une menace est claire et concrète). Notre programme de recherche se décline en huit expérimentations : quatre expérimentations testent l’effet de la vividité sur la persuasion (i.e., élaboration, attitude, intention), quatre autres testent l’effet de la vividité sur l’attention (i.e., évitement, vigilance). Nos principaux résultats montrent qu’une communication menaçante produit un impact différencié selon la vividité de la menace. Si la vividité est forte, la menace est en mesure d’améliorer l’acceptation du message via l’expression d’une plus grande vigilance attentionnelle sur la recommandation. A l’inverse, si la vividité est faible, la menace ne produit aucun impact, aussi forte soit-elle. Ainsi, l’influence d’une communication menaçante est-elle dépendante du format de présentation de la menace. Les implications théoriques et pratiques auxquelles conduisent ces résultats, ainsi que des perspectives de recherches, seront finalement discutées. / A threatening communication is a persuasive strategy including the presence of a threat (i.e., a negative consequence due to the adoption of maladaptive behaviors) to incite the use of an action recommendation (i.e., a protective solution to cope with the threat). Despite a large body of research, few of them were interested in the presentation format of the threat and the influence that it is likely to exert in a threatening communication. The present thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of threatening communications by focusing on the effects of the vividness of the threat (i.e., the extent to which a threat is clear and concrete). Our research program is divided into eight independants experiments: four experiments assessing the effect of vividness on persuasion (i.e., elaboration, attitude, and intention), four others experiments assessing the effect of vividness on attention (i.e., avoidance, vigilance). Our main results showed that a threatening communication differentially impacts persuasion depending on how much the threat is vivid. If vividness is high, a threat is actually likely to increase the acceptance of the message and greater attentionnal vigilance toward the recommendation. Conversely, if vividness is low, the threat has no impact, no matter how threatening. Therefore, the influence of a threatening communication is function of the presentation format of the threat. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings, as well as research perspectives, will finally be discussed.

Organizations have become increasingly concerned with developing and protecting their information security systems. Despite attempts to secure the information infrastructure, employees inside of organizations remain the largest source of threat to information cyber-security. While previous research has focused on behavioral and situational factors that influence cyber-security behaviors, the measurement of cyber behaviors and their relationship to other performance variables is poorly understood. The purpose of the present study is to 1) determine the underlying factor structure of a cyber-security behavior scale, 2) assess if individual personality traits predict four types of cyber-security behaviors: security assurance, security compliance, security risk, and security damaging behaviors, and 3) explore the relationship between citizenship and counterproductive work behaviors and cyber-security behaviors. Results indicate that cyber-security behavior can be separated into four distinct dimensions and that personality traits such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience are predictive of these behaviors. Additionally, positive cyber behaviors are related organizational citizenship behaviors, and potentially harmful cyber behaviors related to counterproductive work behaviors. This research has implications for using personality to predict cyber-security behaviors and reduce insider threat in the workplace.