The present study examined the effects of societal threat on levels of authoritarianism and social dominance orientation and investigated if those self-report measures were consistent or inconsistent with a measure of implicit attitudes regarding Americans and Immigrants. Exposure to societal threat was hypothesized to increase authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, as well as to increase implicit prejudicial attitudes, as measured by the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), towards out-group members. Based on prior findings, men were expected to have higher levels of social dominance orientation. As predicted, exposure to societal threat significantly increased right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. Additionally, men endorsed greater levels of social dominance orientation than did women. However, there were no statistically significant differences in implicit attitudes between the participants who were exposed to societal threat and those who were not (all p’s > .05).

Many scholars observed that the "China threat" narrative greatly influenced the contours of Chinese foreign policy beginning in the mid-1990s. While scholars initially devoted significant attention to this change, there is little systematic analysis of the actual policy shift, particularly over the past decade. This thesis explores current manifestations of China's "Goodwill Agenda," examining three strains of Chinese foreign policy in the 21st century: culture, institutions and aid. The paper also evaluates the success of this so-called campaign, using global surveys to determine if the new orientation correlates with changed global opinions about China. Despite extensive efforts, my findings indicate that the Goodwill Agenda has not been successful at improving China's reputation abroad.

Hot och våld mot sjuksköterskor förekommer inom sluten vården och det är ett växande problem. Detta ses både inom somatisk och psykiatrisk vård. Hot och våld är underrapporterat, vilket är problematiskt ur synpunkten att det minskar möjligheterna att motverka, förhindra och hantera fenomenet. Olika strategier kan användas för att hantera konsekvenserna hos den enskilda sjuksköterskan efter att denne utsatts för hot och våld. Att drabbas av detta leder inte sällan till psykisk ohälsa och/eller fysisk skada som kan resultera i sjukskrivning. Arbetsmiljön är betydelsefull inom vården och patient/sjuksköterskerelationen bygger på en ömsesidig respekt samt empati. Denna vårdrelation kan vara svår att upprätthålla då hot och våld förekommer. En litteraturbaserad studie valdes till examensarbetet för att beskriva sjuksköterskors upplevelse av hot och våld inom sluten vården. Tio artiklar ur vetenskapliga tidskrifter granskades. Ett resultat sammanställdes utefter vad dessa studier kommit fram till. Utefter resultaten bildades tre teman och tio underteman som svarade till syftet i denna litteraturstudie.  Temana som framkom var, att känna sig utsatt, att inte känna stöd och att behöva hitta en lösning för att hantera hot och våld. Sjuksköterskorna önskade mer stöd från verksamheten de arbetade i för att kunna hantera fenomenet. Stödet de önskade låg i omgivningen i form av säkerhetsaspekter i arbetsmiljön. Även känslomässigt stöd upplevde sig sjuksköterskorna vara i behov av efter att de konfronterats med hot och våld. Detta för att kunna hantera sina känslor samt utveckla strategier att hantera liknande situationer i framtiden. Arbetsplatsen kan förbättra sin arbetsmiljö genom att erbjuda sjuksköterskor stöd samt hjälp att skapa personliga strategier att hantera hot och våld. Arbetsplatsen kan lära sig om utlösande faktorer och skapa ett aktivt förebyggande arbete för att förhindra hot och våld mot sjuksköterskor i framtiden. / Background: Within inpatient care violence and threats are a growing problem, which nurses are particularly exposed to in their workplace, especially by patients. It makes an impact on the relationship between them and it also creates consequences in the care of the patient and the ability of the nurse to provide it.  Aim: The aim of this study was to describe nurse experiences of threats and violence within inpatient care. Method: A literature study based on qualitative articles. Ten qualitative articles were used and analysed. Results: The results are grounded in three themes and ten sub-themes. Nurses experiences of violence and threats resulted in feelings of fear and concern when they were exposed to it. They felt difficulties to handle the problems and they asked for more strategies, both personally and in the working environment to deal with the issue.   Conclusion: The results showed that nurse's feelings in this subject were fear and concern in their profession were they need more strategies to handle situations in violence and threat. In the articles nurse's asked for more support programs and reflections from their managers.

Moral issues such as abortion, immigration, and gun rights are subject to constant debate. Yet such discussions are increasingly unproductive, perhaps because we enter such debates with closed, rather than open mindsets, which might rigidify our views, leading to perceptions of an objectively ‘correct’ answer to moral issues. This study tested whether different modes of interaction led to differences in levels of this ‘objectivist’ thought. The study also tested whether and whether threat, experienced in anticipation of a contentious interaction, mediated this effect. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions in which they received instructions on how they should approach an upcoming interaction on the topic of abortion. Instruction conditions included: competition, cooperation, persuasion, learning, neutral control, and no-opposition control (except for no-opposition control, all conditions specified that the other person disagreed with the participant on abortion). Although hypothesized group differences were not found, hypothesized mediation analyses were significant, such that competition, cooperation, and neutral control conditions produced increased threat for participants, while learning, persuasion, and no opposition control conditions produced reduced threat. Threat level positively predicted moral objectivity level for both abortion (the topic of discussion) and other moral issues. These results provide insight into why debating morally contentious issues can seem futile at best, and provides a glimpse of why this does not have to be the case.

Malware analysts and researchers around the world are looking for innovative means of malware detection and classification. However, one concept of malware analysis that lacks focus is the rating of malware based on their feature set and capabilities. Malware severity rating is needed in order to prioritize the utilization of resources towards the analysis of a malware by an organization. This thesis proposes the utilization of threat trees for calculating malware severity using a goal oriented approach. This approach is applied to a set of sophisticated malware to study its contribution towards articulation of a useful severity rating.

No description available.

<p><strong>INTRODUCTION:</strong> Cyber Threat Hunting (TH) is the activity of looking for potential</p> <p>compromises that other cyber defenses may have missed. These compromises cost organiza-</p> <p>tions an estimated $10M each and an effective Threat Hunt can reduce this cost. TH is a</p> <p>new discipline and processes have not yet been standardized. Most TH teams operate with</p> <p>no defined process. This is a problem as repeatable processes are important for a mature</p> <p>TH team.</p> <p><strong>OBJECTIVES:</strong> This thesis offers a Threat Hunt process as well as lessons learned</p> <p>derived from government TH practice.</p> <p><strong>METHODS:</strong> To achieve this I conducted 12 interviews, 1 hour in length, with govern-</p> <p>ment threat hunters. The transcripts of these interviews were analyzed with process and</p> <p>thematic coding. The coding was validated with a second reviewer.</p> <p><strong>RESULTS:</strong> I present a novel TH process depicting the process followed by government</p> <p>threat hunters. Common challenges and suggested solutions brought up by threat hunters</p> <p>were also enumerated and described. The most common problems were minimal automation</p> <p>and missing measures of TH expertise. Challenges with open questions were also identified.</p> <p>Open questions include: determining how to identify the best data to collect, how to create</p> <p>a specific but not rigid process and how to measure and compare the effectiveness of TH pro-</p> <p>cesses. Finally, subjects also provided features that indicate expertise to TH team members</p> <p>and recommendations on how to best integrate newer members into a TH team.</p> <p><strong>CONCLUSION:</strong> This thesis offers a first look at government TH processes. In the short</p> <p>term, the process recommendations provided in this thesis can be implemented and tested.</p> <p>In the long term, experiments in this sensitive context remain an open challenge.</p>

The present study compared the effectiveness of different mentoring programs at reducing feelings of stereotype threat experienced by women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Stereotype threat refers to the extra pressure a person feels to disprove a negative stereotype that applies to him or her. Because stereotype threat has been found to undermine performance and interest in stereotyped domains, it may be a key factor contributing to female underrepresentation in STEM fields. Mentors and proteges were placed in either a stereotype threat reduction condition in which mentors and proteges were encouraged to participate in discussions designed to reduce stereotype threat, an academic condition in which mentors and proteges were encouraged to discuss academic goals and challenges, or a non-academic condition in which mentors and proteges were encouraged to discuss the challenges of balancing non-school commitments. It was hypothesized that mentoring that focused specifically on stereotype threat reduction would be the most effective in reducing stereotype threat and increasing intentions to remain in STEM fields. In addition, it was hypothesized that stereotype threat reduction mentoring would be the most effective at increasing beliefs in an incremental theory of intelligence (i.e., the belief that intelligence can be developed through hard work) and decreasing beliefs in an entity theory of intelligence (i.e., the belief that intelligence is innate and is unalterable). Mentors were 36 male and 74 female upper-level STEM college students and proteges were 137 female lower-level STEM college students. Participants met online for 30 minutes, once per week, for 3 weeks. Results indicated that both mentors and proteges in the stereotype threat reduction mentoring condition reported feeling less stereotype threat in their STEM classes than mentors and proteges in the other mentoring conditions. Additionally, the frequency in which self-theories were discussed in the mentoring sessions partially mediated the effects of the stereotype threat reduction condition on proteges' feelings of stereotype threat in their STEM classes. Mentors and proteges in the stereotype threat reduction mentoring condition also reported endorsing incremental theories of intelligence more and endorsing entity theories of intelligence less than mentors and proteges in the other conditions. In summary, the present study's findings suggest that in order maximum stereotype threat reduction to occur in a mentoring relationship, mentors and proteges engage in activities and discussions designed to reduce stereotype threat. Given that prior research has found that decreased stereotype threat, decreased entity theories of intelligence, and increased incremental theories of intelligence are associated with greater interest and performance in STEM domains, the utilization of a stereotype threat reduction mentoring program can help address the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and math related fields.

Threat perception is an important issue in today's world. As the line between hostile and non-hostile entities is blurred, it becomes more important for individuals to clearly distinguish between those who would present danger and those who would not. This series of experiments tested whether observers engaged in a dual-task paradigm perceived a greater amount of threat from target stimuli than they did when they were engaged in the threat task alone. The first experiment revealed that observers rated targets as more threatening when they were engaged in the additional task than when they only rated the targets themselves. Response time to the targets was also slower when a secondary task was present. This difference was more pronounced when the secondary task was presented via the auditory channel. Participants also rated overall workload higher when performing a secondary task, with the highest ratings being associated with the dual-task auditory condition. In the second experiment, the design crossed sensory modality with the presence or non-presence of threat. Inter-stimulus interval was also manipulated. The presence of threat was associated with faster response times, though when both tasks had threat components, response time was not the fastest. Additionally, when images came first in the stimulus pairs, observers were slower to respond to the first stimulus than when the sounds were presented first. Results supported the conclusion that additional task loading can affect the perception of threat. The modality of the additional task seems to also play a role in threat assessment performance. Results also led to the conclusion that threat-related visual stimuli are more challenging to process than threat-related auditory stimuli. Future research can now investigate how different types of tasks affect the threat perception task. Implications for better training of soldiers and for the design of automated systems are presented.

The development of threat assessment protocols has largely neglected a theoreticalfoundation, leading to a multitude of protocols with little shared in the way of scientificfoundation. The focus of this study is to test components of two theories – Sternberg’s (2018) FLOTSAM Model and Maynard and Benesch’s (2016) Integrated Model of Dangerous Speech (IMDS) – as potential criteria to use in assessing the seriousness of online threats. This study utilized a dataset of 500 open-source online communications linked to the extremist QAnon movement. An EFA was used to pull an empirical model from the data. Three CFA and SEM were performed to assess model fit and threat prediction. The EFA found three factors of QAnonposts: foot soldier posts, fearmonger posts, and true believer posts. Overall, the study found support for the use of the IMDS in analyzing online threat. Future research should incorporate other ideologies and theories into further analysis.