Distinct Threat Research Articles

Perceived Similarity as the Source of the Feeling of Intergroup Threat

In Cameroon, a country which has undergone a double French/British administration (1916-1961), the cohabitation between Francophones and Anglophones since 1961 is far from having erased the intergroup differences linked to their respective colonial pasts. On the contrary, over time, it has generated what has been called the Anglophone problem. In this context, is the strong tendency towards the schooling of students from francophone families in schools of the anglophone sub-system of education likely to attenuate intergroups cleavages? From the theoretical perspective of social identity, this research suggests that the perceived similarity between Anglophones and anglophonized francophones generates a threat to the specific Anglophones' linguistic identity. To test this hypothesis, the optimal distinctiveness and intergroup threat scales were administered to 462 Anglophones participants of both sexes. The correlation and linear regression analyzes provide empirical support for the hypothesis of the study. An adjusted R2 index validates the existence of a causal relationship between perceived similarity and intergroup threat.

The effect of gender and male distinctiveness threat on prejudice against homosexuals.

Positive distinctiveness threat is central for understanding ingroup bias, but its role in gender differences in the expression of sexual prejudice is not yet satisfactorily elucidated. We analyzed this issue by proposing that sexual prejudice is a defensive reaction to ensure intergroup distinctiveness, so that heterosexual men are more prejudiced against homosexuals than heterosexual women because they strive more for positive distinctiveness. In Study 1 (N = 232), we found that men exhibited more prejudice against gay men than lesbians, while women did not significantly differentiate their prejudice against these target groups. In Study 2, we manipulated the target group of prejudice (gay men vs. lesbians) in a sample of heterosexual men (N = 79) and confirmed that they differentiated more between heterosexual men and gay men than between heterosexual women and lesbians. In Study 3 (N = 177), we manipulated the threat to the distinctiveness between the ingroup (i.e., heterosexual men and heterosexual women) and the outgroup (i.e., gay men and lesbians) and demonstrated that the perceived distinctiveness mediates the relationship between gender and sexual prejudice in men but not in women. Finally, in Study 4 (N = 75), we manipulated the distinctiveness threat for men and women and measured sexual prejudice by using an implicit measure. The results showed more implicit prejudice in men than in women when intergroup distinctiveness was threatened (vs. affirmed). Our results have important implications for understanding sexual prejudice by shedding light on the role played by the distinctiveness threat of gender differences in expressing homophobia. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Gaslighting Citizens

AbstractGaslighting brings its victims to doubt the sources of their evidence. This article holds that political gaslighting, by leading citizens to hold beliefs disconnected from the available evidence, poses a distinctive threat to democratic politics. But holding “audacious beliefs”—beliefs that are ahead of the evidence—can serve as a core ingredient for democratic movements. This creates a dilemma for citizens, who must choose between two kinds of evidential policies. How can they protect themselves from gaslighting without rendering themselves insusceptible to the mobilizing efforts central to democratic politics? Citizens, then, face a standing challenge: to remain open to the bully pulpit while vigilant against the gaslighter's epistemic bullying.

Similar outgroups: Threatening or likable?

Do we like or dislike members of outgroups who seem similar to our ingroup? The psychological literature has offered two opposing answers. Research on distinctiveness threat suggests that we are more likely to perceive members of similar outgroups as threatening: outgroup members sharing high similarity with the ingroup may blur group boundaries, endangering clear ingroup identity and positive self‐regard. The literature on similarity attraction, however, suggests that outgroup members resembling the ingroup should be likable. Taking advantage of common Han ethnicity and Chinese culture, two studies (N1 = 247, N2 = 318) in Taiwan manipulated the degree of similarity between ingroup (Taiwanese) and outgroup (people from the People’s Republic of China), exploring its effects on intergroup attitudes. Study 2 further investigated other potential moderators (Taiwanese identification and source of similarity information). Although Taiwan presents a difficult case for similarity attraction, it was supported across both studies: similar others were more likable. In particular, the similarity attraction evidence was stronger among those with a more pro‐independence political party preference, especially for those low on Taiwanese identification. Implications for distinctiveness threat, similarity attraction, and intergroup relations are further discussed.

Evoking gender distinctiveness threat in cisgender women lowers their support for gender-inclusive bathroom policies

Some cisgender women oppose policies granting transgender women access to women-only bathrooms. We examined whether this opposition stems from perceiving that transgender women threaten the distinctiveness of the social category “women” (gender distinctiveness threat). Cisgender women ( N = 520) read about a state bill enabling transgender women to use women’s bathrooms. Participants further read that enacting the bill would mean their state officially believes that “transgender women are real women” or “transgender rights are human rights”; in the control condition, this information was omitted. Participants reported their support for the bill and level of gender distinctiveness threat. Cisgender women who read that the bill would imply their state believes transgender women are real women (vs. transgender rights are human rights) reported lower bill support, and this effect was mediated by distinctiveness threat. Perceived threat to the distinctiveness of womanhood may help explain cisgender women’s reluctance to include transgender women in women-only spaces.

The new identity theft: Perceptions of cultural appropriation in intergroup contexts.

Cultural appropriation has been described and discussed within academic and everyday discourse, but little research has examined its role in the psychological context of intergroup relations. We sought to examine whether minority and majority group members (i.e., Black and White Americans) would differentially judge instances of cultural exchange as cultural appropriation. Five experiments (3 were preregistered on OSF) using a variety of potential cases of cultural appropriation demonstrated that Black participants were more likely than White participants to view these incidents as appropriation when they involved White perpetrators appropriating Black culture (vs. scenarios of Black perpetrators appropriating White culture), an effect mediated by distinctiveness threat. Black (vs. White) participants were also more likely to perceive White actors who appropriate Black culture as harmful and as intentional. In Study 4, explicit manipulation of distinctiveness threat eliminated the participant race effect: Perceivers viewed White perpetrators as more appropriative than Black perpetrators. When actors were portrayed as using either an ingroup or outgroup cultural product (Study 5), participants perceived use of an outgroup cultural product as more appropriative. Studies 3-5 were preregistered on OSF. This research illuminates how group-based status interacts with and adds to perpetrator prototypically to influence perceptions of cultural appropriation, distinguishes perception of appropriation from perception of racism, and points to the importance of distinctiveness threat as a contributor to differential race-based perceptions. Implications of perceiving cultural appropriation for intergroup relations are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The effect of COVID-19 pandemic on the mental wellbeing and coping strategies of health care providers in Kasr Al-Ainy Hospital

Objective The pandemic of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) in Egypt has represented a distinctive threat in terms of psychological distress for health care providers. The first studies on the effect of the COVID pandemic on health care professionals were developed in China, but with the spread of the pandemic, other countries started to conduct studies analyzing the psychological response of health care workers to the pandemic. This study aims to investigate the mental well-being in terms of depression and anxiety, coping strategies, along with quality of life (QoL) among health care providers working in Kasr Al-Ainy Hospital during the COVID-19 outbreak.Patients and methods Self-administered questionnaires were distributed online through Google forms to health care providers (N=108) working in Kasr Al-Ainy Hospital from beginning of June to end of August 2020. The questionnaires measured depression, anxiety, coping strategies, QoL, and COVID-19 exposure among Egyptian health care providers.Results Overall, ∼40% of health care providers in our study were directly involved in the management of patients infected with COVID-19. They showed higher mean Beck Depression and Beck Anxiety Inventories total scores. Participants perceived their current mental health to be worse during the COVID-19 pandemic as compared with before the outbreak.Conclusions Both immediate-term and long-term psychiatric services for health care workers in Kasr Al-Ainy Hospital should be implemented to re-establish psychological well-being and enhance QoL and resilience for them during times of severe distress.

Adversarial Attacks and Defense in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-Based Traffic Signal Controllers

Security attacks on intelligent transportation systems (ITS) may result in life-threatening situations. Combining deep neural networks with reinforcement learning (RL) models called DRL shows promising results when applied to urban Traffic Signal Control (TSC) for adaptive adjustment of traffic light schedules. In this paper, first, we explore the security vulnerabilities of DRL-based TSCs in the presence of adversarial attacks. We investigate the impact of the two distinct threat models with two state-of-the-art adversarial attacks using white-box and black-box settings. The attacks are simulated on different DRL-based TSC algorithms in a single intersection and multiple intersections. The results show that the performance of the DRL learning agent decreases in both adversarial attack models with white-box and black-box settings resulting in higher levels of traffic congestion. After analysing the adversarial attack models, we explored several sequential anomaly detection models. While sequential anomaly detection models minimizes the detection delays, it also achieves lower false alarm rates due to cumulative anomaly inspection. We also proposed an ensemble model that works with all the attack models without any model assumption. The results of anomaly detectors indicates that low-cost ensemble model achieves the best anomaly detection performance in all attack models and DRL settings.

The Impact of Christianity on the Igbo and the Gikuyu Community in Africa as Revealed in Arrow of God and The River Between

Religious conversion was an extremely important and effective strategy for the European colonizers to establish their colonial dominance in Africa. The diffusion of Christianity across Africa helped the colonizers gain acceptance and support among the natives, which in turn gave the colonizers more control over Africa. During the inception of European Christian missionary activities in Africa, those who accepted Christianity were favored by the colonial administration; but those who opposed, faced persecution. As more and more native Africans espoused Christianity and eschewed their native religions, Christianity emerged as a distinct threat to the native African cultures, religions, and associated rituals. But such mass proselytization hardly had any altruistic cause; rather, the conversion game helped the colonizers hide how they exploited Africa under the cloak of philanthropy. The newly-converted Christians were indoctrinated by the missionaries to such an extent that they started to loathe indigenous culture. In some cases, they channeled their loathing for indigenous belief system into actively opposing and obstructing the practice of native African religions and rituals. This paper examines Achebe’s Arrow of God and Thiong’o’s The River Between to discover how Christianity helped the European colonizers expand colonial territory and tighten their stranglehold on native African cultures.

An intergroup approach to collective narcissism: Intergroup threats and hostility in four European Union countries

Although it is known that collective narcissism is associated with problematic intergroup relations, its predictors are less well understood. Two studies, conducted in four European Union countries (Germany, Greece, Portugal, the United Kingdom [UK]), tested the hypotheses that integrated (i.e., realistic and symbolic) threat (Study 1, N = 936) as well as distinctiveness threat (Study 2, N = 434) positively predict national collective narcissism and national ingroup satisfaction, but that only national collective narcissism predicts problematic intergroup relations in reference to threatening outgroups. The results were consistent with those hypotheses. The two types of threat predicted increased national collective narcissism and national ingroup satisfaction. However, only national collective narcissism was associated with negative emotions and hostile behavioral intentions toward the threatening outgroups, when its overlap with national ingroup satisfaction was partialled out. These cross-national findings advanced knowledge of predictors, as well as consequences, of collective narcissism.

Divided groups need leadership: A study of the effectiveness of collective identity, dual identity, and intergroup relational identity rhetoric

AbstractReducing intergroup conflict is a significant leadership challenge. Leaders can alleviate conflict by promoting a collective, dual, or intergroup relational identity, but they should avoid provoking subgroup identity distinctiveness threat. Drawing on intergroup leadership theory, we conducted an experiment (N = 184) examining evaluations of a leader who promoted a dual, collective, or intergroup relational identity under low or high subgroup identity distinctiveness threat. We hypothesized that identity distinctiveness threat would improve evaluations of a leader promoting an intergroup relational identity, and worsen evaluations of a leader promoting a collective identity. Although a leader promoting a dual identity is typically preferred to one promoting a collective identity, we expected a leader promoting dual identity to receive worse evaluations than a leader promoting an intergroup relational identity. These hypotheses were supported, providing additional support for intergroup leadership theory and demonstrating the utility of employing intergroup relational identity rhetoric.

Parsing the backstop: Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement in the Brexit debates

This article examines the challenges Brexit poses to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in Northern Ireland (NI) by considering how political leaders frame the problem of reconciling Brexit with the GFA. Analyzing the Hansard record of four key debates on the European Union (Withdrawal) Act of 2018 in the House of Commons (the first Withdrawal Agreement), we conclude that the Brexit debate reveals a distinct new threat to the peace accord: its nestedness in British politics. The primary objection MPs raised was that the withdrawal deal would undermine UK sovereignty. In fact, opposition to the multiple sovereignties that the GFA enshrined appeared to be one of the principal reasons for the withdrawal act’s defeat. Second, MPs objected to the way the backstop’s multiple exercise of sovereignty and multilateralism would impact the union between NI and Great Britain, if not its impact on NI itself. Indeed, they tended to decouple discussion of the backstop from previous violence or the peace process. Third, debate was heavily skewed in favor of Unionism, rather than the balanced and plural mechanisms typical of British policy. Fourth, MPs were not coherent in how they understood the GFA. We find that the British Parliament has departed markedly from its established pattern of bilateralism, bipartisanship and deference to government in dealing with Northern Ireland. The consequence is that the British parliament, rather than armed actors in the province, may well undo one of the most successful peace agreements and for reasons that have little to do with NI.

Aristolochic acid and its effect on different cancers in uro-oncology.

To acquaint urologists with aristolochic acid nephropathy, an iatrogenic disease that poses a distinct threat to global public health. In China alone, 100 million people may currently be at risk. We illustrate the power of molecular epidemiology in establishing the cause of this disease. Molecular epidemiologic approaches and novel mechanistic information established a causative linkage between exposure to aristolochic acid and urothelial carcinomas of the bladder and upper urinary tract. Noninvasive tests are available that detect urothelial cancers through the genetic analysis of urinary DNA. Combined with cytology, some of these tests can detect 95% of patients at risk of developing bladder and/or upper urothelial tract cancer. Robust biomarkers, including DNA-adduct and mutational signature analysis, unequivocally identify aristolochic acid-induced tumours. The high mutational load associated with aristolochic acid-induced tumours renders them candidates for immune-checkpoint therapy. Guided by recent developments that facilitate early detection of urothelial cancers, the morbidity and mortality associated with aristolochic acid-induced bladder and upper tract urothelial carcinomas may be substantially reduced. The molecular epidemiology tools that define aristolochic acid-induced tumours may be applicable to other studies assessing potential environmental carcinogens.

Killing and Rescuing: Why Necessity Must Be Rethought

This article addresses a previously overlooked problem in the ethics of defensive killing. Everyone agrees that defensive killing can only be justified when it is necessary. But necessary for what? That seemingly simple question turns out to be surprisingly difficult to answer. Imagine Attacker is trying to kill Victim, and the only way one could save Victim is by killing Attacker. It would seem that, in such a case, killing is necessary. But now suppose there is some other innocent person, suffering some entirely distinct threat, whose life one could save instead. Is killing still necessary? The seemingly obvious answer is “yes.” Killing is necessary since it is the only means to achieve the goal that stands to justify killing. The problem with this answer is that it presupposes a certain description of that goal as something like “saving Victim’s life” or “saving Victim’s life from Attacker.” Other descriptions are plausible, such as “saving a life.” On that latter description, killing is unnecessary in this case. The problem we are encountering is the problem of finding the right description of the goal of killing. Call this the “description problem.” This article sets out to solve the description problem and arrives at a radical conclusion. In a variety of cases, we should describe the goal of killing in broad terms, without reference to a specific victim or a specific threat. These broad descriptions—such as “saving a life”—make it easier to find relevant alternatives. Killing, it turns out, is much harder to justify than we might otherwise have thought.

Patient Privacy Violation Detection in Healthcare Critical Infrastructures: An Investigation Using Density-Based Benchmarking

Hospital critical infrastructures have a distinct threat vector, due to (i) a dependence on legacy software; (ii) the vast levels of interconnected medical devices; (iii) the use of multiple bespoke software and that (iv) electronic devices (e.g., laptops and PCs) are often shared by multiple users. In the UK, hospitals are currently upgrading towards the use of electronic patient record (EPR) systems. EPR systems and their data are replacing traditional paper records, providing access to patients’ test results and details of their overall care more efficiently. Paper records are no-longer stored at patients’ bedsides, but instead are accessible via electronic devices for the direct insertion of data. With over 83% of hospitals in the UK moving towards EPRs, access to this healthcare data needs to be monitored proactively for malicious activity. It is paramount that hospitals maintain patient trust and ensure that the information security principles of integrity, availability and confidentiality are upheld when deploying EPR systems. In this paper, an investigation methodology is presented towards the identification of anomalous behaviours within EPR datasets. Many security solutions focus on a perimeter-based approach; however, this approach alone is not enough to guarantee security, as can be seen from the many examples of breaches. Our proposed system can be complementary to existing security perimeter solutions. The system outlined in this research employs an internal-focused methodology for anomaly detection by using the Local Outlier Factor (LOF) and Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithms for benchmarking behaviour, for assisting healthcare data analysts. Out of 90,385 unique IDs, DBSCAN finds 102 anomalies, whereas 358 are detected using LOF.

Mitigating NDN-Based Fake Content Dissemination in Opportunistic Mobile Networks

In this work, we address the problem of Named Data Networking (NDN)-based fake content dissemination in Opportunistic Mobile Networks (OMNs), where nodes have intermittent connectivity and typically lack in end-to-end communication paths. It is important to mitigate the dissemination of such fake contents not only because they waste bandwidth for legitimate communication, but also because such files can be harmful for devices. However, the inherent characteristics of OMNs make such mitigation a challenging task. In this context, we consider a group of nodes, Fake Content Providers (FCPs), who, on receiving content requests, respond with fake contents, rather than the real version. In particular, we consider four different behaviors of the FCPs—referred to as threat scenarios—depending on whether or not they always respond to all requests with fake contents. We analyze these distinct threat scenarios, and characterize the relative performance degradation arising because of them. To mitigate the adverse effects of FCPs, we propose two schemes, wherein the identified FCPs are blacklisted permanently or temporarily, and communication with them is restricted. Results of simulation-based experiments using real-life connection traces show that, compared to the normal scenario with no FCP, the percentage of content requests satisfied decreases by 20–40 percent in the presence of 40 percent FCPs in the OMN. Moreover, in the same scenario, the average latency of content satisfaction relatively increases by up to 176 percent with respect to the normal scenario. However, on using the proposed mitigation schemes, the latency can be reduced by about 13–36 percent together with up to 9 percent improvement in the number of interests satisfied.

Wireless Sensor Networks for Noise Measurement and Acoustic Event Recognitions in Urban Environments.

Nowadays, urban noise emerges as a distinct threat to people’s physiological and psychological health. Previous works mainly focus on the measurement and mapping of the noise by using Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks (WASNs) and further propose some methods that can effectively reduce the noise pollution in urban environments. In addition, the research on the combination of environmental noise measurement and acoustic events recognition are rapidly progressing. In a real-life application, there still exists the challenges on the hardware design with enough computational capacity, the reduction of data amount with a reasonable method, the acoustic recognition with CNNs, and the deployment for the long-term outdoor monitoring. In this paper, we develop a novel system that utilizes the WASNs to monitor the urban noise and recognize acoustic events with a high performance. Specifically, the proposed system mainly includes the following three stages: (1) We used multiple sensor nodes that are equipped with various hardware devices and performed with assorted signal processing methods to capture noise levels and audio data; (2) the Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) take such captured data as inputs and classify them into different labels such as car horn, shout, crash, explosion; (3) we design a monitoring platform to visualize noise maps, acoustic event information, and noise statistics. Most importantly, we consider how to design effective sensor nodes in terms of cost, data transmission, and outdoor deployment. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system can measure the urban noise and recognize acoustic events with a high performance in real-life scenarios.

Allopatric divergence and hybridization within Cupressus chengiana (Cupressaceae), a threatened conifer in the northern Hengduan Mountains of western China.

Having a comprehensive understanding of population structure, genetic differentiation and demographic history is important for the conservation and management of threatened species. High-throughput sequencing (HTS) provides exciting opportunities to address a wide range of factors for conservation genetics. Here, we generated HTS data and identified 266,884 high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms from 82 individuals of Cupressus chengiana, to assess population genomics across the species' full range, comprising the Daduhe River (DDH), Minjiang River (MJR) and Bailongjiang River (BLJ) catchments in western China. admixture, principal components analysis and phylogenetic analyses indicated that each region contains a distinct lineage, with high levels of differentiation between them (DDH, MJR and BLJ lineages). MJR was newly distinguished compared to previous surveys, and evidence including coalescent simulations supported a hybrid origin of MJR during the Quaternary. Each of these three lineages should be recognized as an evolutionarily significant unit (ESU), due to isolation, differing genetic adaptations and different demographic history. Currently, each ESU faces distinct threats, and will require different conservation strategies. Our work shows that population genomic approaches using HTS can reconstruct the complex evolutionary history of threatened species in mountainous regions, and hence inform conservation efforts, and contribute to the understanding of high biodiversity in mountains.

Governance challenges for tropical nations losing fish species due to climate change

Climate change is driving fishery stocks out of their historical ranges. Along with the management challenge of species entering new jurisdictions, the exit of species from countries’ waters poses distinct threats to those resources and the economies that depend on them. We show that this risk is particularly acute in the tropics, where projected exits are highest and entries are fewest. We find that existing policy frameworks are poorly equipped for this challenge, and we suggest a way forward that draws on climate policy. Climate change is driving fishery stocks out of their historic ranges. This study finds that the risk of such fishery exits is greatest in the tropics and that policy frameworks are poorly equipped to grapple with this challenge.

Why Wicked Never Wins: An Examination of the Early Origins of the Evil Female Villain of the Fairy Tale Narrative

Why Wicked Never Wins: An Examination of the Early Origins of the Evil Female Villain of the Fairy Tale Narrative