Imagining a stranger harassment situation: the impact of stranger harassment coping strategies on women’s emotions, self-objectification and felt power

Stranger harassment belongs to the daily reality of many women in public places all over the world. Nonetheless, only few scholars have set out to examine this issue. Those who have, identified its detrimental consequences for the target. The present study entailed a multi- methodological design to explore whether some ways of reacting to stranger harassment are more beneficial for women’s well-being than others. Moreover, it investigated whether benevolent sexist attitudes influence the choice of specific coping strategies. 134 female individuals took a women’s perspective in an imaginative stranger harassment situation or neutral situation, upon which they answered a set of questions to assess their reactions, emotions, and self-perception emerging from the situation. The results did not confirm benevolent sexism as a moderator influencing the choice of coping strategies. However, active, passive and benign coping strategies were found to be mediating the effect of the stranger harassment on high negative emotions, while only passive and benign coping strategies mediated the effect of stranger harassment on the reduction of felt power. Moreover, negative emotions and felt power were significantly different between imagining a stranger harassment vs. a neutral interaction. The present study underlined that all coping strategies go along with various up- and downsides, all of which do not to conceal that stranger harassment is the manifestation of gender inequality. It revealed the complexity of (coping with) such situations and emphasized the necessity of future research as well as practical implications to further understand and combat stranger harassment.O assédio sexual de rua é uma realidade diária de muitas mulheres em todo o mundo. No entanto, somente alguns investigadores se dedicaram ao estudo deste problema. O presente estudo utilizou um desenho multi-metodológico para explorar se algumas estratégias de coping ao assédio sexual de rua são mais benéficas para o bem-estar das mulheres do que outras. Além disso, investigou se as atitudes sexistas benevolentes influenciam a escolha destas. 134 participantes femininos adotaram uma perspetiva feminina perante uma situação imaginária de assédio sexual de rua ou de uma situação neutra, sobre a qual responderam a um conjunto de perguntas de forma a avaliar as suas reações, emoções e autopercepções. Os resultados não confirmaram o sexismo benevolente como moderador da escolha de estratégias de coping. No entanto, verificou-se que as estratégias de coping ativas, passivas e benignas são mediadoras do efeito do assédio sexual de rua nas emoções negativas elevadas, enquanto que apenas as estratégias de coping passivas e benignas mediaram o efeito do assédio sexual de rua na redução do poder sentido. Além disso, as emoções negativas e o poder sentido foram significativamente diferentes entre o assédio sexual de rua e a interação neutra. O presente estudo evidenciou que todas as estratégias de coping se relacionam com aspetos negativos e positivos, contudo nenhuma diminuiu a negatividade da situação. O estudo revelou a complexidade de (lidar com) estas situações e enfatizou a necessidade de investigação futura, bem como implicações práticas para compreender melhor e combater esta problemática

Life in the AI era - First result of the Erasmus+ HEDY project

HEDY - Life in the AI era is a 2-year Erasmus+ project started in November 2021 targeting higher education audience. Its goal is to offer a comprehensive and shared view of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is affecting our lives and reshaping our socioeconomic, cultural, and human environments and to define which topics related to AI are of interest to different university studies and how they should be addressed. Four specific free and accessible sources of information will be produced to reach these goals, the first of which is the Booklet, the subject of this paper. The Booklet is an essay defining the HEDY position on life in the AI era and its aim is to identify the challenges, opportunities and expected impact of AI on four different areas: business, governance, skills & competencies, and people & lifestyle. In this paper, we summarise the content of the Booklet. In particular, we describe our methodology to build our rationales based on collecting information from two sources: i) Literature survey, and ii) Focus groups. These two sources provide a unique contribution on AI panorama by combining state of the art research with first-hand opinions and debated questions, concerns, and ideas of interacting individuals. The main finding is that there is the necessity to train citizens in AI by providing teachings, courses and trainings in schools and higher education institutes to facilitate the use and adoption of AI for young people and future generations

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements