Social Defense Research Articles

Friend or foe? Evidence that anxious people are better at distinguishing targets from non‐targets

AbstractArmed conflict necessitates the ability to quickly distinguish friend from foe. Failure to make accurate shooting decisions may result in harm either to oneself or to innocent others. The factors that predict such rapid decision making, however, remain unclear. Based on social defense theory, we contend that people high on attachment anxiety possess characteristics that are particularly advantageous in this domain such that anxiously attached individuals will show greater vigilance and accuracy in a realistic shooting paradigm in which they must quickly distinguish between militants (people holding a gun) and innocents (people holding an item with the same color and shape as a gun—Coca‐Cola bottle, black wallet, and black mobile phone). Using signal detection theory algorithms, we calculated sensitivity in performing the behavioral shooting task [D(prime)]. Results indicate that as expected, anxious people demonstrated significantly better shooting accuracy. Implication for contemporary violent conflict is discussed.

How Technologically Mediated Interaction Risks Collapsing a ReflectiveSpace in the Workplace: An Organizational Leadership Case Study

The growth of technologically based forms of interaction in organizational life call for us to take a more self-aware posture toward our devices. The case of a leadership group is offered to demonstrate how important information can fail to fully transfer across a technological interface. The experience of the other is flattened by a technological partition that can be unconsciously enlisted to distance participants from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings evoked by work. The case study demonstrates the importance of maintaining a reflective space (Winnicott) for collaboration and describes how shared physical presence within this space contributes to resolving the frustrations inherent in tasks like those that challenge group leadership. Alternatively, a reliance on a technological interface is susceptible to being unconsciously enlisted in the creation of a social defense (Menzies) as, in this case, a consultant and the team members collude in a flight from their respective tasks (Bion).

Соціальне партнерство в наданні соціальних послуг населенню: світовий досвід і перспективи для України

Соціальне партнерство розглядається як безперервний процес взаємовигідної співпраці, що постійно розвивається між державою, бізнесом і некомерційними організаціями; набуває особливого значення в соціальній сфері, в системі соціального захисту і соціального обслуговування населення. Досліджена сучасна система закладів соціального обслуговування в Україні передбачає функціонування як державних, так і недержавних комерційних і некомерційних соціальних служб і організацій соціального обслуговування, що свідчить про багатосуб’єктність в управлінні системою таких закладів. Проаналізовано надання соціальних послуг у розвинутих соціальних державах з різними моделями соціальної політики, що свідчить про розвиток соціального партнерства як формування конструктивної взаємодії трьох секторів суспільства на рівні окремих територій, громад. Доведено, що в світовій практиці існують два основні способи підтримки державою сфери виробництва соціально значущих послуг: фінансування (субсидування) і непряма підтримка. Визначено, що в умовах децентралізації влади і створення об’єднаних територіальних громад в Україні, соціальне партнерство в наданні соціальних послуг набуває особливого значення, що передбачає формування нової стратегії соціальної політики (в сторону її поступової лібералізації) і зменшення ролі держави в соціальному забезпеченні.

Effective Disengagement: Insecure People Are More Likely to Disengage From an Ongoing Task and Take Effective Action When Facing Danger.

People believe that they can respond effectively to threats, but actually they experience difficulties in disengaging from ongoing tasks and shifting their attention to life-threatening events. We contend that this tendency is especially true for secure people with respect to their worldview and perception of others and not for insecure individuals. In Study 1 (N = 290), we examined individuals' reactions to various threat scenarios. In Study 2 (N = 65), we examined these reactions using a behavioral design high in ecological validity. In Study 3 (N = 78), we examined group-level benefits for the actions of insecure individuals by manipulating asocial behavior in response to an emergency. Study 1 indicated that anxiously attached individuals stayed away from threats and sought help; avoidant people tended to take action by either assessing the risk of the event and/or enacting an asocial action such as fight or flight. Study 2 added ecological validity to these findings, and Study 3 showed that priming asocial behavior responses promoted actions that increased group members' chances of survival. Results validate the central tenets of social defense theory and indicate that actions that are deemed asocial may paradoxically promote the survival of individuals and groups.

It takes an insecure liar to catch a liar: The link between attachment insecurity, deception, and detection of deception

Lies and deceptions are prevalent in our daily lives, yet most people merely guess when attempting to distinguish between lies and truths. In the current research, we examined the validity of the saying that “it takes a thief to know a thief” by showing that it takes a good liar – one high in attachment insecurity – to detect another liar. In Study 1, 68 card players participated in a Bullshit tournament – a card game in which players try to deceive other players while also striving to detect their deceptions. In Study 2 (N=99), people who cheated on their romantic partner (versus those who did not) were asked to detect cues of infidelity. Results confirmed our expectations and showed that good liars and cheaters, who are usually insecure individuals, are better at detecting lies and dishonesty. These results are discussed from the perspective of social defense theory, highlighting the utility of personality traits that are often deemed maladaptive.

Les internés en Défense Sociale sous Article 21 : des niveaux plus élevés de risque de violence

In Belgium, the Article 21 of the Social Defense Law allows to transfer a sentenced to confinement when he presents a severe mental disturbance during his incarceration. We compared the scores of risk of violence of 44 internees under Article 21 to 351 others internees. The main findings revealed higher levels of violence risk on several dimensions among internees under Article 21 compared to other internees. The internees under Article 21 are younger at the time of the offense, present longer criminal career, with past and current offence being more violent, which contribute to higher static instrument scores. Concerning structured clinical risk instruments, the Article 21 presents more management problems in particular at the supervision and the treatment levels.

Stray Dogs and the Making of Modern Paris*

Abstract This article traces the policing of stray dogs in Paris from the French Revolution to the outbreak of the First World War. It argues that long-standing rabies anxieties dovetailed with the emergence of the public hygiene movement, fears of rapid urbanization, vagrancy and crime, modernization projects, and the veneration of the pedigree pet dog to cast the stray dog as an unwelcome presence on the city’s streets. Parisian public hygienists and authorities turned strays into a problem that they would solve to make the city safe, clean and modern. Combating strays became a matter of social defence and medical police.

Beyond Bart (Boundaries, Authority, Role and Task): Creative Work and the Developmental Project

A post-industrial society and economy depends deeply on the effectiveness of creative work, particularly in research and development, and the quality of organizations that sustain it. One question we face as students of the Tavistock method is whether or not our inherited framework, often specified by the acronym BART, (Boundaries, Authority Role and Task), is adequate for our understanding this kind of knowledge work. This paper argues that it is not, and suggests that instead we need a new conception of what I am calling “developmental projects” (DPs). These projects create a novel and distinctive rhythm of work and pose a new kind of risk, which I call existential risk. In turn, this risk shapes a different constellation of anxieties and social defenses. We need to develop a working theory of the psychodynamics of knowledge work.

Social Engineering: I-E based Model of Human Weakness for Attack and Defense Investigations

Social engineering is the attack aimed to manipulate dupe to divulge sensitive information or take actions to help the adversary bypass the secure perimeter in front of the information-related resources so that the attacking goals can be completed. Though there are a number of security tools, such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems which are used to protect machines from being attacked, widely accepted mechanism to prevent dupe from fraud is lacking. However, the human element is often the weakest link of an information security chain, especially, in a human-centered environment. In this paper, we reveal that the human psychological weaknesses result in the main vulnerabilities that can be exploited by social engineering attacks. Also, we capture two essential levels, internal characteristics of human nature and external circumstance influences, to explore the root cause of the human weaknesses. We unveil that the internal characteristics of human nature can be converted into weaknesses by external circumstance influences. So, we propose the I-E based model of human weakness for social engineering investigation. Based on this model, we analyzed the vulnerabilities exploited by different techniques of social engineering, and also, we conclude several defense approaches to fix the human weaknesses. This work can help the security researchers to gain insights into social engineering from a different perspective, and in particular, enhance the current and future research on social engineering defense mechanisms.

An in-depth observational study of an acute psychiatric ward: combining the psychodynamic observational method with thematic analysis to develop understanding of ward culture

The question of how to create benign organisational cultures in health care is a topic of particular concern in the UK at the present time. The current study aimed to further understanding of complex health care cultures in the National Health Service (NHS), with a focus on an acute adult in-patient psychiatric ward. The psychoanalytic observational method was used for this purpose. The first author conducted six-hour long observation sessions on the ward at weekly intervals, writing detailed process recordings after each observation to take to a supervision group for discussion. The six presentations of observational material and the responses of the supervision group were audiotaped and transcribed. These data were then analysed thematically. The picture that emerged was of a fragile ward environment in which staff appeared fearful of engagement with patients, there was a sense of confusion regarding roles and decision-making processes, and the nursing team felt burdened by responsibility, isolated and anxious about criticism from outside. Contemporary developments within the social defence paradigm are applied to these findings in the context of the intense pressures currently facing staff in the NHS.

The Presumption of Innocence in Europe: Developments in Substantive Criminal Law

The essay is focused on the idea that the content considered to be intrinsic to the principle of presumption of guilt is the product of specific ideological choices, ranging between a higher sensitivity to social defence and individual guarantees. This is confirmed by the historical social debate in Italy, by the classical school up to the Republican Constitution, by the ideas of the positivist school and those of the technical-juridical school. Then the work opens to a comparative perspective, by analyzing certain aspects of the presumption of guilt in some European state systems, both from a constitutional point of view and from the point of view of the disciplines specifically pertaining to the different juridical cultures; they leave us doubts about the legitimacy of normative and interpretation models, which seem to consider some elements of the cases in point as being implicit in the tangible fact or to be assessed by presumptions, with a possible inversion of the burden of proof. After an excursus about the homogeneizing role of the presumption of guilt within a supranational perspective, the research focuses on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and of the European Court of Justice, highlighting some of its ambiguities and contradictions as regards the admission of “reasonable” waivers of the presumption of guilt as rule of evidence. The same critical observations are made as regards the proposal of EU directive about the consolidation of the idea of the presumption of guilt, which, instead, paradoxically seems to weaken its content of defence of civil rights. The research deals with some hypotheses undermining the principle by the help of the substantive penal law, such as the ideas of presumed danger or intention and guilt, underlining, on the contrary, the necessity of an integrated vision of the penal system, imposing a model of trial being consistent with that of the substantive law defending civil rights. Conclusions are devoted to the risk, due to misunderstood punishment efficiency, of a substantially new interpretation, from a probative point of view, of substantive penal guarantees showing how the case law and European norms in course of development can influence this. Finally they also deal with the critical points and ambiguities in the evaluation of the reasonableness of waivers of the principle and in the balance between social defence and individual guarantees made according to equivocal and incontrollable parametres leaving space to illegitimate solutions.

PIDANA KERJA SOSIAL DAN RESTITUSI SEBAGAI ALTERNATIF PIDANA PENJARA DALAM PEMBAHARUAN HUKUM PIDANA INDONESIA

Imprisonment is the criminal delict who always threatened on every offences crime althought criticized various circles due to ineffectiveness realize the purpose of punisment, namely the social defence and fostering offender. This led to the emergence of anternatives on imprisonment in the hope purpose of punishment can be realized. The Tokyo Rules is set to 14 Desember 1990 recommending the counties in the world in order to enter the alternatives of imprisonment in a code penal include a community service order and restitution. A community service order is intended to make offenders be chastened and shammed so as not to repeat the crime (offender oriented), while restitution in the form of payments for losses incurred due to the act the offender to the victim, as an expression of remorse is expected to eliminate the conflict between the offender and the victim (victim oriented). Thus, the purposee of punishment is expected to be realized.

TIME MANAGEMENT, SOCIAL SUPPORT, PERSONALITY AND BURNOUT AMONG POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS

Time management performs an important role in performing tasks in time without getting any burnout. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of time management, social support, personality and burnout among postgraduate students. In the section of literature review reveals that personality and social support defense the negative effects of time management of burnout. There were 214 respondents who have participated in the online survey consisting of six sections which have work experience, time management, personality, social support, and burnout as their demographic. A descriptive statistics, Pearson Correlation, T-test for Independent Sample Means, and Multiple Regression were used to analyze the data. . There are inconsistencies in the findings obtained by previous researchers on the relationship between time management and burnout among students indicate that research into the effects of time management, personality and social support on students’ burnout is not conclusive. This study attempts to fill the gap by investigating the relationship of time management, social support, personality and to reduce burnout among postgraduate students with proper usage of the skills of time management. Time management has a significant relationship with burnout; however, burnout has no significant relationship with personality were the results of Co-relation statistics. Keywords: Time management, Burnout, Personality, Social Support.

Social Authentication Applications, Attacks, Defense Strategies and Future Research Directions: A Systematic Review

The ever-increasing volumes of social knowledge shared in online social networks, the establishment of trustworthy social relationships over these platforms, and the emergence of technologies that allow friendship networks to be inferred from data exchanged in communication networks have motivated researchers to build socially aware authentication schemes. We conduct the first study that surveys the literature related to social authentication. In this paper, we not only created a taxonomy for classifying all social authentication schemes deployed in online or physical social contexts and extensively analyzed their authentication features, but also built a novel framework for evaluating the effectiveness of all social authentication schemes, identified all the practical and theoretical attacks that may be mounted against such schemes, addressed possible defense strategies, and identified challenges, open questions, and future research opportunities. To measure their accuracy, strengths, weaknesses, and limitations, as well as to identify the potential of knowledge-based and trust-based social authentication schemes, a comprehensive comparative assessment of the security, usability, and deployability was conducted. We hope, by providing a solid foundation for gaining sufficient understanding of the manners in which users' social interactions have been utilized in user authentication schemes and their corresponding security implications, we will guide future research in this domain.

Normativa antimafia e diritto europeo dei diritti umani: lo strano caso del dottor Bruno Contrada

After having recalled the ECtHR’s (over-)sensitivity to security and material justice, and after having described its method of interpretation, the paper focuses on the scrutiny of the ECtHR over the national rules regulating the detention, and emphasizes the Court’s different approach to ordinary detainees (predominance of the human dignity and full enforcement of the prohibition ex Art. 3 ECHR) and “dangerous prisoners” (predominance of the social defence policy and fuzzy enforcement of the prohibition ex Art. 3 ECHR); moreover, the text describes the tendency of the European Court to adopt a different concept of “foreseeable conviction” in case of lack/presence of victims. The strange case of B. Contrada is fully inconsistent with this “double-standards” scenario. Indeed, he had been convicted of “mafia”, and therefore, he was a “dangerous prisoner” who contributed to a massive victimization; however, he has won at Strasbourg twice, because its rights ex artt. 3, 7 ECHR have been fully recognized and protected by the ECtHR. All of this demonstrates that the European Court of Human Rights case-law is too unpredictable and unequal to be (always) taken seriously.

Status of Social Audit Process for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 in Chhattisgarh

Social audit is a requisite tool under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to monitor and evaluate the works that are being carried out under MGNREGA, in line with annual village plans. MGNREGA play a helpful role to reformation local governance and transforming social defense into social justice. By analyzing the Social Audit mechanism under Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act, this paper explores how Social Audit process is effectively in Rural Employment. The basic objective of a social audit is to ensure public accountability in the implementation of projects, laws and policies. Primarily envisaged as only post implementation exercises, they have actually now emerged as a way to empower poor and transform social-political structures in the villages. Section 17 of the MGNREGA Act provides for conduct of regular ‘Social Audits’ at different stages of implementation of the scheme to ensure the reach of benefits to the poor. To strengthen the process of social audit, the Ministry Rural Development has notified the Social Audit Rules in June 2011 and made it mandatory to establish an independent Social Audit Unit to facilitate the Social Audits in Gram Panchayats and to ensure the proper implementation of various Rural Development Programs. We examine the accuracy and performance of Social audits process in Gram Panchayats of Different District in Chhattisgarh.

Регуляция эмоций и эмоциональная безопасность ребенка в семье

The article presents brief review of researches about concepts of emotion regulation and emotional security in child development. Mechanisms of family influence on the child’s emotion regulation development such as the interiorization of parent’s assumptions about emotions and ways of their expression, playing by the parents the role of emotional couch for children, and emotion charging through emotional climate in the family are considered. The role of experiencing parental conflict in the development of the child’s sense of emotional security is analyzed. Concepts ‘attachment system’ and ‘social defense system’ are differentiated. Theory of emotional security by Cummings and Davies is considered. This theory presents ways of the influence of parental conflict on child’s psychopathology. Emotional security is considered to be the result of interrelated factors: parental style, parent’s psychopathology, processes in family system and child’s personality traits. Four patterns of child’s cognitive and behavioral strategies of defense in parental conflict are described. Emotion regulation strategies and psychological consequences of these patterns are proposed.

Sociedade Estamental: O Crime e os Donos do Poder

Mediante revisão bibliográfica e análise qualitativa, aborda-se a categoria “sociedade de estamento”, conforme Faoro, relacionando-a à Ideologia da Defesa Social, tratada no contexto marxista apresentado por Baratta como discurso dominante sobre o crime no capitalismo e tem entre seus postulados a afirmação de que as condutas consideradas criminosas o são porque é de interesse social que o sejam, sendo a lei a expressão da vontade geral. Procura-se demonstrar que a lei na verdade não representa os interesses da sociedade e sim de grupos influentes no processo legislativo, que aqui passam a ser chamados de estamento.

Entre la defensa y la intervención social: Estado, ciudadanía y pobreza en la ciudad de Concepción (Chile, 1890-1930)

Esta investigación busca entender al Estado chileno desde una triple dimensión: regional, relacional y constructiva; lo cual permite visualizar en un caso específico (la ciudad de Concepción) y en un tiempo determinado (el período 1890-1930), las particularidades de un modelo estatal no bien estudiado: el de Defensa Social, que presenta variaciones respecto de su antecedente decimonónico, el Estado Guardián, y de su sucesor natural: el Estado Benefactor. Las características y manifestaciones normativas e institucionales de dicho modelo, a nuestro entender, son evidenciables tanto en el área de salubridad mental y en el manicomio, como también en la función de vigilancia y protección que comienzan a desarrollar de manera complementaria la Intendencia, la Policía de Seguridad y la Oficina del Trabajo.

Working Draft of May Condorcet Arrow - Elaboration of Why SWFs with Polychotomous Balloting Procedures Fail to Overcome Condorcetian Objections

This paper elaborates why Arrovian social welfare functions that use polychotomous balloting procedures fail to overcome Condorcetian objections to the ability of SWFs to guarantee meaningful aggregation of individual votes. This paper clarifies a point made by Prasad in Working Draft of May, Condorcet, Arrow: A Social Choice Defense of the Meaningful Aggregation of Votes.