Moral Outrage Moderates the Relationships Between System Perception, System Justification, and Intergroup Helping Behavior: A Multigroup Approach

Helping behavior is proposed to be a universal experience where a wide range of behaviors are used to benefit another person or group (Aknin et al., 2013; Nadler, 2002). Often these behaviors are motivated by positive values or emotions (Dovidio et al., 2012). However, when social status is salient, the members of a group may shift their motivation to help others from recipient benefit to retaining power and status for themselves instead (Nadler & Chernyak-Hai, 2014). The intergroup helping as status relations (IHSR) model proposes that higher status group members are motivated to retain their groups’ higher status through specific helping behaviors directed toward those of lower status when the hierarchy is threatened (Nadler, 2002; Nadler & Halabi, 2006). According to the model, higher status group members are likely to give dependency-oriented help which solves the problem without transferring skill, rendering the lower status group members dependent in the future. Conversely, autonomy-oriented helping behavior that helps the recipient learn how to solve the problem and decreases dependency is often avoided being given by higher status group members so they can retain their position of power. Previous research has demonstrated that the motivation for maintaining status occurs as a function of system justification beliefs, such that the status quo should be defended, and social change avoided (Jost, 2018). Prosocial emotions were proposed as a way to disrupt this justification process (Thomas et al., 2009; Wakslak et al., 2007). Specifically, moral outrage, comprised of anger directed at systems, may attenuate the effects of system perceptions on system justification beliefs. As such experiencing moral outrage about socioeconomic inequality in the US should result in both decreases in dependency-oriented helping behavior and increases in autonomy-oriented helping behavior. The present two-study dissertation put forth a model investigating the moderating effect of moral outrage on intergroup helping intentions and behavior directed toward lower status groups. In Study 1 ( N = 376), participants from an online research platform who identified as “above average” in subjective social status either experienced a moral outrage manipulation or neutral control condition and rated their perceptions of system legitimacy and stability, system justification beliefs, and helping intentions and behaviors towards people of lower socioeconomic status. In the moral outrage condition, participants read a short vignette on the negative effects of the current socioeconomic conditions in the US, while the control condition was a general report on the fishing industry. Results from Study 1 indicated that the moral outrage manipulation did not affect perceptions of system legitimacy, system justification beliefs, or helping intentions and behaviors on a statistically significant level. Although these results did not achieve statistical significance, people in the moral outrage condition did report trends in the direction hypothesized for four of five outcomes. Additionally, a two-factor model of system legitimacy and stability was confirmed using factor analysis. Next, Study 2 ( N = 634) used a bolstered moral outrage manipulation under the same procedure and assessed a multigroup structural model of the relationships between the same variables. The main hypothesized model assessed if moral outrage moderated the relationships between perceptions of system legitimacy and system justification beliefs as well as the relationships between system justification beliefs and helping intentions and behaviors. Analyses of data did not support this model. However, the analysis of an exploratory model which included perceptions of system stability as an additional main predictor of system justification beliefs found differences between the moral outrage and control condition. In essence, compared to those in the control condition, those in the moral outrage condition had a stronger negative relationship between stability and system justification beliefs, and in turn beliefs had a negative relationship with helping intentions. Moral outrage influenced higher status group members’ perceptions of the stability of economic conditions in the US and justification beliefs, but not as intended. Moral outrage enhanced some aspects of the justification process through defending the system, rather than attenuating it. Moral outrage is an emotion which may have unintended effects when not carefully channeled and in the current research resulted in bolstering justification beliefs and lower helping intentions towards those of lower status (Rushton & Thompson, 2020). As it related to system justification theory and IHSR, moral outrage appears to reinforce some aspects of the motivational efforts of higher status group members to use helping situations to retain their higher status positions (Jost, 2018; Nadler, 2002). Although research has demonstrated moral outrage as one of many prosocial emotions, a more channeled approach at using outwardly-facing prosocial emotions is warranted in future research to understand how emotion may be beneficial as well as detrimental to social change interventions in higher status groups

Economic Issues of Invasive Pests and Diseases and Food Safety

The problem of invasive pests and diseases has become more urgent and far more complex today than in the recent past. Increased trade and movement of people, and the opening up of new trade routes have increased opportunities for the spread of invasive species. In addition, mono-cropping systems of cultivation; globalization; increased resistance of pests to pesticides and food safety and environmental concerns have all contributed to the growing complexity of the problem on hand. The economic dimensions of the problem can be viewed from at least two perspectives. First, with regard to the spread and impact of invasive species, particularly how best to provide more comprehensive assessments of impacts of invasions, so as to improve the cost effectiveness and efficiency of publicly funded programs aimed at eradication, control or mitigation of invasive pests and diseases. Second, from the perspective of incorporating more economic analysis and use of economic instruments in designing sanitary and phytosanitary measures. The paper explores some of these issues from an economic perspective. It concludes that incorporating more economic analysis in matters related to biological invasions is desirable, but presents a challenge to economists. Measurement requires data, and success in measurement will require that economists and biological scientists work closer together than they have in the past.sanitary and phytosanitary measures, SPS, invasive species, WTO, economic impact of invasive species, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, International Relations/Trade,

Privacy-Preserving Gaussian Process Regression -- A Modular Approach to the Application of Homomorphic Encryption

Much of machine learning relies on the use of large amounts of data to train models to make predictions. When this data comes from multiple sources, for example when evaluation of data against a machine learning model is offered as a service, there can be privacy issues and legal concerns over the sharing of data. Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) allows data to be computed on whilst encrypted, which can provide a solution to the problem of data privacy. However, FHE is both slow and restrictive, so existing algorithms must be manipulated to make them work efficiently under the FHE paradigm. Some commonly used machine learning algorithms, such as Gaussian process regression, are poorly suited to FHE and cannot be manipulated to work both efficiently and accurately. In this paper, we show that a modular approach, which applies FHE to only the sensitive steps of a workflow that need protection, allows one party to make predictions on their data using a Gaussian process regression model built from another party's data, without either party gaining access to the other's data, in a way which is both accurate and efficient. This construction is, to our knowledge, the first example of an effectively encrypted Gaussian process

On the Efficiency and Security of Cryptographic Pairings

Pairing-based cryptography has been employed to obtain several advantageous cryptographic protocols. In particular, there exist several identity-based variants of common cryptographic schemes. The computation of a single pairing is a comparatively expensive operation, since it often requires many operations in the underlying elliptic curve. In this thesis, we explore the efficient computation of pairings. Computation of the Tate pairing is done in two steps. First, a Miller function is computed, followed by the final exponentiation. We discuss the state-of-the-art optimizations for Miller function computation under various conditions. We are able to shave off a fixed number of operations in the final exponentiation. We consider methods to effectively parallelize the computation of pairings in a multi-core setting and discover that the Weil pairing may provide some advantage under certain conditions. This work is extended to the 192-bit security level and some unlikely candidate curves for such a setting are discovered. Electronic Toll Pricing (ETP) aims to improve road tolling by collecting toll fares electronically and without the need to slow down vehicles. In most ETP schemes, drivers are charged periodically based on the locations, times, distances or durations travelled. Many ETP schemes are currently deployed and although these systems are efficient, they require a great deal of knowledge regarding driving habits in order to operate correctly. We present an ETP scheme where pairing-based BLS signatures play an important role. Finally, we discuss the security of pairings in the presence of an efficient algorithm to invert the pairing. We generalize previous results to the setting of asymmetric pairings as well as give a simplified proof in the symmetric setting

On Pairing-Based Signature and Aggregate Signature Schemes

In 2001, Boneh, Lynn, and Shacham presented a pairing-based signature scheme known as the BLS signature scheme. In 2003, Boneh, Gentry, Lynn, and Shacham presented the first aggregate signature scheme called the BGLS aggregate signature scheme. The BGLS scheme allows for N users with N signatures to combine their signatures into a single signature. The size of the resulting signature is independent of N. The BGLS signature scheme enjoys roughly the same level of security as the BLS scheme. In 2005, Waters presented a pairing-based signature scheme which does not assume the existence of random oracles. In 2007, Lu, Ostrovsky, Sahai, Shacham, and Waters presented the LOSSW aggregate signature scheme which does not assume the existence of random oracles. The BLS, BGLS, Waters, and LOSSW authors each chose to work with a restricted class of pairings. In each scheme, it is clear that the scheme extend to arbitrary pairings. We present the schemes in their full generality, explore variations of the schemes, and discuss optimizations that can be made when using specific pairings. Each of the schemes we discuss is secure assuming that the computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) assumption holds. We improve on the security reduction for a variation of the BGLS signature scheme which allows for some restrictions of the BGLS signature scheme can be dropped and provides a stronger guarantee of security. We show that the BGLS scheme can be modified to reduce public-key size in presence of a certifying authority, when a certain type of pairing is used. We show that patient-free bit-compression can be applied to each of the scheme with a few modifications