Potential Allies Research Articles

Social motivations in Mapuche trafkintu: toward cosmology, recovery, and critique

This article investigates social motivations in trafkintu (exchange), a concept derived from the Mapuche (Indigenous people of southcentral Chile and southwestern Argentina: literally, people of the land). We propose five key motivations for trafkintu, reciprocity, solidarity, cosmological, recovery, and critique. While reciprocity and solidarity are commonly associated with exchanges, we argue that from a Mapuche perspective it is essential also to relate them to a cosmological motivation, something often neglected by the anthropocentric focus of western academics. The motivations of recovery and critique reject the idea that Indigenous economical concepts only explain the past by considering the contemporary context of trafkintu. Recovery and critique testify to the colonial economic onslaught and the difficulty of reproducing the motivations of reciprocity, solidarity, and cosmology within a market-driven economy. Recovery and critique motivate trafkintu as a heterodox economic institution with strategic similarities to other anti-hegemonic forces, making them potential allies.

Fragile States, Co-Optation, and the Logic of Political Survival

This article analyzes the issues of managing crises in the context of fragile states, co-optations and, consequently, focuses on the logic of political survival. Excluding particular social groups from exercising power increases the risk of serious internal political tensions and even civil war. Yet, the question remains: why do fragile state governments exclude social groups in the first place if this threatens the survival of the regime? In the political regimes of fragile states, an important response to patterns of social exclusion can be found in the formation of political coalitions. Ruling social groups have sufficient incentive to exclude groups even more powerful than themselves because they cannot credibly pledge loyalty to the ruling group. Hence, potential allies avoid joining coalitions with stronger ruling parties. The above problem of mutual support and joint commitment leads to potentially power-equivalent political alliances. Yet, political regimes of fragile states facilitate the creation of coalitions of less balanced power (co-option) with institutions that alleviate the problems of political tensions and differences. The above arguments regarding forming alliances and political parties are tested based on data on the political groups “grasping” power and their status. Moreover, in political regimes of fragile states, the elites “holding power” are more willing to conclude agreements that balance the political power of all possible coalition partners. In this context, however, the diverse specificity of political groupings determines the degree of balance of the particular political scene.

In Silico Screening of Therapeutic Targets as a Tool to Optimize the Development of Drugs and Nutraceuticals in the Treatment of Diabetes mellitus: A Systematic Review.

The Target-Based Virtual Screening approach is widely employed in drug development, with docking or molecular dynamics techniques commonly utilized for this purpose. This systematic review (SR) aimed to identify in silico therapeutic targets for treating Diabetes mellitus (DM) and answer the question: What therapeutic targets have been used in in silico analyses for the treatment of DM? The SR was developed following the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items Checklist for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, in accordance with the protocol registered in PROSPERO (CRD42022353808). Studies that met the PECo strategy (Problem, Exposure, Context) were included using the following databases: Medline (PubMed), Web of Science, Scopus, Embase, ScienceDirect, and Virtual Health Library. A total of 20 articles were included, which not only identified therapeutic targets in silico but also conducted in vivo analyses to validate the obtained results. The therapeutic targets most frequently indicated in in silico studies were GLUT4, DPP-IV, and PPARγ. In conclusion, a diversity of targets for the treatment of DM was verified through both in silico and in vivo reassessment. This contributes to the discovery of potential new allies for the treatment of DM.

Adipose Tissue Derivatives in Peripheral Nerve Regeneration after Transection: A Systematic Review.

Peripheral nerve injury (PNI) is increasingly prevalent and challenging to treat despite advances in microsurgical techniques. In this context, adipose tissue derivatives, such as adipose-derived stem cells, nanofat, and stromal vascular fraction have been gaining attention as potential allies in peripheral nerve regeneration. This study aims to explore the use of adipose tissue derivatives in nerve regeneration following peripheral nerve transection in murine models. Thus, we assess and synthesize the key techniques and methods used for evaluating the obtained nerve regeneration to guide future experimental research and clinical interventions. A systematic review was conducted in February 2024, adhering to the Cochrane and PRISMA 2020 guidelines, using the PubMed, SciELO, and LILACS databases. The focus was on experimental studies involving adipose tissue derivatives in nerve regeneration in animal models post-transection. Only experimental trials reporting nerve regeneration outcomes were included; studies lacking a comparator group or evaluation methods were excluded. Out of 273 studies initially identified from MEDLINE, 19 were selected for detailed analysis. The average study included 32.5 subjects, with about 10.2 subjects per intervention subgroup. The predominant model was the sciatic nerve injury with a 10 mm gap. The most common intervention involved unprocessed adipose-derived stem cells, utilized in 14 articles. This review underscores the significant potential of current methodologies in peripheral nerve regeneration, particularly highlighting the use of murine models and thorough evaluation techniques.

Structuring a Conversation Across Time, Space and Political Distance

This article examines challenges to the construction of climate solidarity between different social actors in and beyond the petroleum industry, using the vantage point of oil workers. Theoretically, we use the notion of alienation to show how oil workers experience challenges to climate solidarity with different potential allies. We argue that oil workers have become polarized subjects in the politics of climate change mitigation, and acknowledge the need for a politics of reconnection between this polarized subject and various designated ‘others’, albeit one that is cognizant of the power asymmetries of these relations. Through innovative qualitative methods, we explore ways to help the social and political distance between research subjects. We detail how an ongoing research project has explored a politics of reconnection through the production of four short films. We conclude by offering some evaluative reflections on this exercise.

Elite Coalitions and Rebel Control in Northern Côte d’Ivoire

ABSTRACT How do armed movements gain civilian compliance and prevent counter-mobilization in localities under their wartime control? This paper argues that rebel capacity to control civilians is contingent on the coalitions formed between rebel mid-level commanders and elite groups embedded in local communities. Rebels are confronted with coalitional choices because local communities are contested and comprised of multiple sets of elite groups. Coalitional choices influence rebel control because they determine whether rebels ally with strong or weak local partners. Where rebel allies are weak, they should confront serious challenges to eliciting civilian compliance. Where rebel allies are stronger, rebels should confront less resistance. I argue that the availability of elites as potential allies for armed movements depends on their pre-conflict proximity to the state. This paper develops this argument through a comparison of three localities governed by the Forces Nouvelles (FN) in Côte d’Ivoire (2002–2011).

VICTOR ORBAN: POLITICAL CONSERVATISM AND ANTIMIGRANT RHETORIC

This article examines several issues related to Hungary, the personality and management style of its leader Viktor Orban, and the policies pursued by this European country towards migrants and refugees. Hungary is a state whose migration policy over the past years has been at odds with the European mainstream. This is largely due to the views of Orban himself. For him, the issue of migration is central, axial in his worldview. This course is perceived differently: the Hungarian Prime Minister has both supporters and opponents. In the scientific research literature one can also find polar assessments. At the same time, Orban is a significant figure for the study of migrant discourse, and his policies obviously strive to be framed in a new eclectic ideology. The Prime Minister of Hungary continues to pursue his course, maneuvering between various forces and interest groups - potential allies from other states, opponents from the European liberal establishment, his own electorate, and voters of other Hungarian parties.

Hydrogen Sulfide and Irisin, Potential Allies in Ensuring Cardiovascular Health.

Irisin is a myokine secreted under the influence of physical activity and exposure to low temperatures and through different exogenous stimuli by the cleavage of its precursor, fibronectin type III domain-containing protein 5 (FNDC5). It is mainly known for maintaining of metabolic homeostasis, promoting the browning of white adipose tissue, the thermogenesis process, and glucose homeostasis. Growing experimental evidence suggests the possible central role of irisin in the regulation of cardiometabolic pathophysiological processes. On the other side, hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is well recognized as a pleiotropic gasotransmitter that regulates several homeostatic balances and physiological functions and takes part in the pathogenesis of cardiometabolic diseases. Through the S-persulfidation of cysteine protein residues, H2S is capable of interacting with crucial signaling pathways, exerting beneficial effects in regulating glucose and lipid homeostasis as well. H2S and irisin seem to be intertwined; indeed, recently, H2S was found to regulate irisin secretion by activating the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha (PGC-1α)/FNDC5/irisin signaling pathway, and they share several mechanisms of action. Their involvement in metabolic diseases is confirmed by the detection of their lower circulating levels in obese and diabetic subjects. Along with the importance of metabolic disorders, these modulators exert favorable effects against cardiovascular diseases, preventing incidents of hypertension, atherosclerosis, heart failure, myocardial infarction, and ischemia-reperfusion injury. This review, for the first time, aims to explore the role of H2S and irisin and their possible crosstalk in cardiovascular diseases, pointing out the main effects exerted through the common molecular pathways involved.

Military Alliances under International Law

Abstract While military alliances have always been an important subject of research in international relations, relatively little study has been conducted on them in international law. Even though military alliances have been featured in the wider discussions on regional orders under international law, little systematic effort has been made to assess the extent to which various actions that are routine for or structured into the design and operation of military alliances are compatible with international law. This article aims to fill this gap by examining the implications of certain activities of military alliances under three areas of international law and is divided into three substantive sections. The first section examines how activities such as military exercises, force concentration and coercive demands, when undertaken by a military alliance, could heighten the risk of their violation of the prohibition of the threat of force under the UN Charter. The second section examines how certain standing arrangements of military alliances pre-dispose them to intervene in civil strife in allies or potential allies in potential violation of the norm against intervention in the domestic affairs of another State. The third section examines how, despite their often-explicit deference to the UN Charter, military alliances operate in tension with the collective security architecture of the UN and suggests ways to harmonise them. The article concludes that the sovereign rights of States to form military alliances do not create a carte blanche for military alliances to operate freely from any restraint of international law and calls for a more proactive approach to maintaining international peace and security in view of the complex nature of certain activities of military alliances under international law.

Abstract B074: Clinical inference of location and trajectory of pancreatic cancer from radiology reports using zero-shot LLM

Abstract Importance: Recent breakthroughs in Large Language models (LLM) have shown impressive reasoning capabilities. Inferring disease trajectory from radiology reports is a central task in clinical oncology, and radiographic interpretation of disease state and treatment benefits in pancreas cancer can be particularly challenging. We assess the performance of LLMs (GPT3.5-turbo and GPT4) to infer disease status, response to treatment, and location of disease for patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma from clinical radiology reports. We also assess the ability of LLMs to extrapolate from objective findings, vs. their reliance on radiologist’s summaries. Experimental Design: We used 200 deidentified radiology reports from pancreatic cancer patients at different stages of treatment and submitted these reports to the GPT3.5 and GPT4 models via an Microsoft Azure HIPAA compliant instance. We assess the reasoning capabilities of these two models in the three independent tasks in pancreatic cancer imaging. 1) disease status/response to treatment, 2) disease location, and 3) presence of indeterminate nodules requiring further follow up. Evaluation of response was compared to a medical oncologist’s interpretation of each report. A second medical oncologist served as adjudicator for discrepancies between human and GPT models and rates of data fabrication. We also assessed importance of Radiologists summaries vs Objective finding sections, as well as different prompt engineering approaches. Results: We found a maximum performance of 71% and 85% of GPT3.5 and GPT4 respectively when asked to classify radiology reports into seven categories of malignancy presence and trajectory, as compared to a medical oncologist’s interpretation. This accuracy was strongly dependent on requesting the model demonstrate its reasoning process before providing an answer; though this dependency was abrogated by providing the Radiologist’s impression section. We also found the main source of mis-classification was incongruence between reasoning and the final classification (as opposed to incorrect medical reasoning). Finally, we showed that GPT4 performs strongly on identifying specific organ sites of disease, as well as presence of indeterminate findings requiring further follow up. Conclusion: GPT algorithms accurately interpret multiple clinically relevant features in radiology reports for Pancreatic adenocarcinoma patients. Precision improved markedly with GPT 4 compared to GPT-3.5. This suggests GPT-based tools are potential valuable clinical allies in interpreting radiologist-produced text and could be valuable aids in cohort identification for large scale real-world data research and eventually clinical management support. Citation Format: Travis Ian Zack, Madhumita Sushil, Brenda Miao, Arda Demirci, Corynn Kasap, Margaret Tempero, Atul Butte, Eric Collisson. Clinical inference of location and trajectory of pancreatic cancer from radiology reports using zero-shot LLM [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference in Cancer Research: Pancreatic Cancer; 2023 Sep 27-30; Boston, Massachusetts. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(2 Suppl):Abstract nr B074.

Wonder with Care: How "Crip Participation" Engages Activism.

This essay explores how the authors' curatorial process has roots in wonder: how it is one of inquiry, beginning and ending with open questions. The authors describe how their "crip" curatorial methods can be used to refuse extractive practices that might result from a disengaged wonder and to generate exhibitions that hold both the viewers and the artists with the care necessary to move passive viewing into a reciprocal engagement that can lead to an activist turn. These curatorial methods acknowledge and embrace medical professionals as potentially fellow disabled people and view them as current or potential allies. Through the participatory nature of the art in the exhibitions, the gallery becomes a space of encounter, one that creates support structures for people to build out from their individual, personal experiences and to become part of something shared across people, objects, memory, and experience. However, this shared space is not intended to collapse into ever fully knowing or understanding another person's experience. Critically, it is also a shared engagement where access to someone else's story, or body, or memories is not freely granted. Crip curation takes seriously the intentional omissions of both viewers and artists that upend not only what we get to know but how we get to know it and emphasizes that what we get to know and how we know it necessarily remains incomplete; viewers and artists alone retain full access to their own experiences.

Mistrust in government and National Health Insurance: A qualitative study of solo private practitioners in Cape Town.

The participation of independent private general practitioners (GPs) is of fundamental importance to the successful implementation of key elements of the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) reform, notably the contracting units for primary health care (CUPS). This study explored knowledge and perceptions of the NHI reforms of private GPs following the tabling of the NHI Bill in parliament in 2019. An explorative qualitative research methodology was adopted. Using a semi-structured guide, nine solo private GPs, purposefully selected to represent the range of practices in the southern peninsula of Cape Town were interviewed in depth by B.L.P. over the period from January 2021 to March 2022. The GPs indicated support for the values of greater equity outlined in the NHI proposals. However, they had little engagement on or knowledge of their potential future roles in NHI. Concerns over financial viability and design were underpinned by an overall mistrust in the public sector to implement and manage NHI. The study concurs with previous research that private GPs are broadly in support of the principles of, and are potential allies, in advancing NHI. General practitioners need a platform to share their concerns and contribute as co-designers of NHI reforms. In the interim, steps to increase collaboration between private and public sectors at local and provincial level through, for example, referral processes may help to build the trust that is necessary between the sectors.Contribution:This study foregrounds the role of trust relationships in advancing NHI.

Application of Silica-Aerogel-Fibre-Based Thermal Renders for Retrofits in Building Walls: A Comparative Assessment with Benchmark Solutions.

The current climate change context raises the demand for reducing energy and environmental impacts while keeping an economic balance and building users' comfort. Thermal insulation solutions are potential allies in ensuring the adequacy of existing buildings for challenging sustainability requirements. In this scenario, silica-aerogel-fibre-based thermal renders are innovative solutions for which integrated approaches still lack information, and they should be compared with benchmark multilayer solutions, such as those based on expanded polystyrene (EPS), extruded polystyrene (XPS), mineral wool (MW), and insulated corkboard (ICB), to evidence their prospective economic, environmental, and energy benefits. This paper quantifies the optimum insulation thicknesses, life cycle savings, payback periods, and environmental impacts of innovative thermal renders compared to conventional thermal insulation materials when applied as a retrofit in existing facade walls. The results show that cost-optimised thermal renders with sisal fibres led to the best overall performance. Higher heating needs led to higher optimum render thicknesses and life cycle savings. With a 0.02 m thickness, aerogel-fibre-based thermal renders outperformed other materials in terms of heating-degree days (HDD) from 1000 °C·day onwards; they can save approximately EUR 60∙m-2, 1000 MJ∙m-2, and 100 kg CO2 eq∙m-2 while presenting a U-value 13% lower throughout their 30-year lifetime when compared with the second-best multilayer solution with XPS.

Biologic drugs and allergen immunotherapy: potential allies

Allergen-specific immunotherapy (AIT) is a proven efficacy treatment for allergic rhinitis (AR), asthma, and Hymenoptera venom allergy, but its use in food allergy (FA) is still under investigation. Because some efficacy and safety concerns still remain, biologic drugs, including omalizumab and dupilumab, have been studied as an adjunctive therapy to AIT for these conditions. In this article, the evidence supporting the use of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) as an add-on therapy to AIT for FA, AR, asthma, and Hymenoptera venom allergy has been reviewed. The review will delve into the mechanisms of action of different mAbs, their efficacy, and how they can be integrated into personalized medicine approaches to treat allergic diseases. Furthermore, future research areas will be considered. Evidence suggests that omalizumab in combination with AIT may be a beneficial option for respiratory allergies or food desensitisation, especially during the escalation or build-up phase, when adverse events are more frequent. Currently, there is a small number of well-structured clinical trials in Hymenoptera venom allergy, and the available data consist mainly of single-case reports that provide information of limited value. Dupilumab has been studied as adjunctive therapy in patients with respiratory and FAs. Clinical trials are ongoing to evaluate the efficacy of dupilumab as monotherapy or as an adjunct to oral immunotherapy (OIT) in peanut allergy. Other studies are investigating the use of dupilumab in patients with multiple FAs and as an adjunct to milk OIT. Overall, mAbs have the potential to improve outcomes in various allergic conditions when used as an add-on to AIT, especially during the build-up phase. Further research is needed to fully understand their optimal dosing and duration of treatment, as well as to identify which patients may benefit the most from these therapies.

Global priority for the care of orphans and other vulnerable children: transcending problem definition challenges

BackgroundTens of millions of children lack adequate care, many having been separated from or lost one or both parents. Despite the problem’s severity and its impact on a child’s lifelong health and wellbeing, the care of vulnerable children—which includes strengthening the care of children within families, preventing unnecessary family separation, and ensuring quality care alternatives when reunification with the biological parents is not possible or appropriate—is a low global priority. This analysis investigates factors shaping the inadequate global prioritization of the care of vulnerable children. Specifically, the analysis focuses on factors internal to the global policy community addressing children’s care, including how they understand, govern, and communicate the problem.MethodsDrawing on agenda setting scholarship, we triangulated among several sources of data, including 32 interviews with experts, as well as documents including peer-reviewed literature and organizational reports. We undertook a thematic analysis of the data, using these to create a historical narrative on efforts to address children’s care, and specifically childcare reform.ResultsDivisive disagreements on the definition and legitimacy of deinstitutionalization—a care reform strategy that replaces institution-based care with family-based care—may be hindering priority for children’s care. Multiple factors have shaped these disagreements: a contradictory evidence base on the scope of the problem and solutions, divergent experiences between former Soviet bloc and other countries, socio-cultural and legal challenges in introducing formal alternative care arrangements, commercial interests that perpetuate support for residential facilities, as well as the sometimes conflicting views of impacted children, families, and the disability community. These disagreements have led to considerable governance and positioning difficulties, which have complicated efforts to coordinate initiatives, precluded the emergence of leadership that proponents universally trust, hampered the engagement of potential allies, and challenged efforts to secure funding and convince policymakers to act.ConclusionIn order to potentially become a more potent force for advancing global priority, children’s care proponents within international organizations, donor agencies, and non-governmental agencies working across countries will need to better manage their disagreements around deinstitutionalization as a care reform strategy.

Deterrence and Security： The Impact of Military Conflicts on Global Peace

Deterrence theory is one of the important theories of international relations research during the Cold War. From the birth of deterrence theory to today, its main meaning has developed from nuclear deterrence as the core to conventional deterrence. By studying the impact of the Gulf War on the US deterrence capability and the impact of the Russia-Ukrainian War on Russia's deterrence capability, this paper argues that military conflict is not only a test of deterrence capability, but also a shaping process of deterrence capability. In military conflict, a country's performance will affect its opponents and other countries' perception of its strength and will, thereby increasing or decreasing its deterrence capability. The United States established a strong conventional deterrence capability in the global scope through the Gulf War, which enabled the United States to obtain a large number of potential allies and national interests after the Cold War. Russia's mediocre performance in the Russia-Ukrainian War is undermining its conventional deterrence that it established after the Cold War through military reform and a series of military actions, and its geo-security environment is deteriorating due to its reduced deterrence capability. Based on this, countries should correctly assess their own and other countries' strength and will, avoid overestimating or underestimating their own or others' deterrence capabilities, and thus avoid military adventures. At the same time, they should also abide by international laws and rules, respect other countries' sovereignty and interests, in order to achieve lasting peace and common security.

Taking a bird’s-eye view: infrastructuring bird-turbine relations during wind power controversies

In this paper, we explore bird-turbine relations, which are becoming a point of contention in controversies over local wind-farm projects. We conceptualize potential wind farms, together with the planning process preceding them, as a single ‘infrastructural arrangement’ that organizes how environments are known and affected by wind farms. Within the context of this infrastructural arrangement, we trace how two groups – opponents and developers of wind farms – discover birds as potential allies in defining specific bird-turbine relations that will help in either stopping or promoting wind farm projects. We observe two types of bird-turbine relations. In the first, which is present in current environmental regulations and is mobilized by wind farm opponents, birds are considered fragile and endangered by turbines. The second, proposed by a developer, problematizes current regulation through an alternative relationship of co-existence between birds and turbines, according to which birds are more robust and turbines less dangerous. This account of birdwatching leads us to discuss the many forms of politics that occur within or against the infrastructural arrangements of wind farm planning. We find that these politics have important consequences for whether or not wind farm projects are realized and for the way wind farms affect their surrounding environments.

The Role of European Think Tanks as a Channel of the EU Public Diplomacy Towards Domestic and Foreign Publics

<p>This article examines the role of European think tanks in public diplomacy efforts of the EU. It builds on Bourdieu’s field theory and concept of capital using data from EU official documents, website materials, and semi-structured interviews with representatives of think tanks from Brussels, France, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom, as well as their networks and the EU institutions. The article argues that EU institutions provide financial support for think tanks to obtain political capital in the form of internal and external legitimacy. The European Commission mobilises think tank academic capital by funding their educational activities, which helps to deal with the “democratic deficit” and plays the role of intellectual “soft power” by training current and future policymakers in Europe and beyond as potential allies in competition with other regions. Due to the particularity of the EU public sphere, characterised by the lack of outreach mass media, the European Commission tries to improve its capacity to shape public opinion at the European and global levels by using think tank publicity capital in its communication activities via new media platforms, distinguished by direct access to wider audiences. The European Commission benefits from think tank social capital, encouraging them to create transnational networks regarded as contributing to the promotion of integration within the EU, building relations with candidate countries, and strengthening its position in multilateral negotiations. Although the citizen’s dimension is not always at the core of practices of European think tanks, this article demonstrates their effectiveness as a channel of public diplomacy towards transnational publics.</p>

THE BALTIC-BLACK SEA UNION AS AN AXIS OF UKRAINE’S SECURITY: REALITIES AND DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTS

The article analyzes the stages of formation of the Baltic-Black Sea community as a geopolitical, economic and security area, the historical and theoretical basis for the emergence of such a community and the changes that took place in the Baltic-Black Sea region after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine in 2022. In addition, the issue of security cooperation is considered states of the region. The main priorities for the development of cooperation between states in the future have been identified. The main questions regarding the issues of cooperation between the states of the region and the structures of the EU and NATO in conditions of tension and open aggression of the Russian Federation after 2022 have been developed. Today, it is obvious that when specialists and politicians of the region discuss the project of the Baltic-Black Sea Alliance, it is primarily about security aspects and motives. In our opinion, only one security aspect is not enough for a project to be complete and viable. The economic component of project implementation is also extremely important. The West’s delay in accepting Ukraine into the EU and NATO requires Ukraine to find allies to protect its independence and sovereignty from Russian aggression. Such potential allies are primarily Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Moldova, and Georgia, which, like Ukraine, have more than once been victims of the imperial policy of tsarist, Soviet, and Putin’s Russia. Nowdays we can see that Western Europe is no longer ready to offer new guidelines, then the Baltic-Black Sea Corridor should become not only a territory for the generation of joint economic benefits, but also a territory for the generation of new meanings. The Baltic-Black Sea Union creates new challenges and provides an opportunity to respond to them. This is the true idea of Europeanness. Europe is a search for something new. Ukraine must take on the mission of giving new answers to what Europe can be today.

When Potential Allies and Targets Do (and Do Not) Confront Anti-Asian Prejudice: Reactions to Blatant and Subtle Prejudice During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Anti-Asian xenophobia has exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, after U.S. political leaders promoted anti-Asian rhetoric from its start. Confronting prejudice interrupts future perpetration of such prejudice, but confronting prejudice can only occur to the extent actions are first attributed to prejudice. Bystanders may attribute less prejudice to speech about the "Chinese Virus" than to more blatant stereotype expression, for example, and therefore be less vehement in their confrontations. Across two studies, we examined the impact of anti-Asian prejudice type (blatant, subtle, or no prejudice) and bystander race/ethnicity (White or Asian American/Pacific Islander [AAPI]), on prejudice attribution, willingness to confront, actual confrontation, and confrontation vehemence. In the context of a hiring manager justifying rejection of a Chinese applicant, we predicted that blatant prejudice would be detected and confronted most willingly, and subtle prejudice more willingly than no prejudice, and that prejudice detection would mediate the relationship between prejudice type and willingness to confront. Further, we expected AAPI bystanders to detect anti-Asian prejudice more readily than White bystanders, but to confront at lower rates, with actual confrontations being more vehement following blatant (relative to subtle or no) prejudice. Analyses were conducted using SPSS 27 and the PROCESS v4.1 macro, controlling for potential confounds such as political orientation and individual-level prejudice (expressed or perceived). Results of both studies (n = 142 [Study 1], n = 274 [Study 2]) supported hypotheses, except in Study 1 bystanders exposed to subtle prejudice were no more willing to confront than no-prejudice controls. Results of exploratory analyses indicated that attribution to prejudice was the primary obstacle to confrontation following subtle prejudice, whereas action taking was the primary obstacle following blatant prejudice. This research underscores the need for interventions to increase detection of all forms of anti-Asian prejudice and to provide would-be confronters with effective confrontation tools.