Why People Share When They Shouldn\u27t: Antecedents and Consequences of Impulsive Secret-Sharing

This dissertation, comprised of three studies, explores goals and antecedents of sharing and keeping personal secrets, examines how secret-sharing and secret-keeping experiences differ and are perceived to differ, and investigates the emotional outcomes of sharing and keeping secrets. It also suggests two potential “triggers” which may lead to increased impulsive secret-sharing. Study 1 explored, retrospectively, how secret-sharing and secret-keeping experiences align and differ. It found key differences between these experiences, particularly regarding motivations, level of planning, contextual factors, confidant perceptions, and the emotional consequences related to the decision. Study 2 examined perceptions of secret-keeping and secret-sharing decisions and predicted emotional consequences through the use of vignettes. This study uncovered differences across perceptions of secret-sharing and secret-keeping situations, including differences in perceived risk associated with the secret, level of planning, confidant perceptions, and the emotional consequences pertaining to the decision. Comparisons between Studies 1 and 2 pinpointed several mismatches between participant predictions and perceptions (Study 2) and actual experiences (Study 1), which might play a role in why people’s secret-sharing and secret-keeping experiences do not always lead to their intended outcomes. Finally, Study 3 used an experimental manipulation to investigate the influence of one of the potential secret-sharing triggers – reciprocity pressure – on secret-sharing behavior in real time using a novel paradigm. While not finding the expected effect of the threat manipulation, the results of Study 3 point to the influence of a different potential secret-sharing trigger – psychological distress – on secret-sharing perceptions and behavior. The culmination of findings from this dissertation refined the working model of impulsive secret-sharing and its predictions to advance research and inform ways to remedy maladaptive tendencies in secret-sharing

Children’s Selective Trust Based on Previous Lying Behaviors

This study examined children’s nuanced understanding of prosocial liars and self-serving liars across the following three areas: children’s willingness to learn information from liars, their judgments of liars through their friend preferences, and their visual attention to liars. As children develop theory of mind skills, they learn they can manipulate other’s knowledge states by telling lies. They also evaluate lying based on whether the liar has self-serving or prosocial intentions, with the former judged more negatively and the latter judged more positively. Based on research findings indicating that children demonstrate selective trust in informants based on their previous accuracy or reliability, the current study aimed to discern whether children (ages 4-11 years old) base their willingness to learn novel information on their evaluations of deceptive informants with sensitivity to the informants’ intentions. Results suggest that as children age and increase in moral theory of mind, they increasingly trust information from a prosocial lying informant compared to a neutral informant, and appear to trust information from a self-serving lying informant marginally less than a neutral informant. Further, regardless of intentions of the lying informant, children tend to avoid choosing the lying informant as a friend. Some differences in visual attention are also discussed. Overall, this research indicates that children may have a more nuanced understanding of the intentions of deceptive informants that becomes more pronounced with age, yet children still prefer to have friends who do not lie

La tutela del diritto d'autore dopo la rivoluzione digitale

La rivoluzione digitale ha cambiato radicalmente le modalità di violazione del diritto d’autore, richiedendo una tutela adeguata alle nuove tecnologie ed una disciplina transnazionale in grado di fronteggiare fenomeni che, nell'era di Internet, si ripercuotono oltre le singole frontiere. Per comprendere la realtà giuridica odierna in rapporto all'espansione del mezzo tecnologico, si sono volute brevemente ripercorrere le varie tappe che gli ordinamenti di civil law e di common law hanno storicamente raggiunto, per poi analizzare l’evoluzione normativa che diritto d’autore e copyright hanno subito nell'era digitale, concentrando l’attenzione sulla disciplina italiana e statunitense. Nel presente lavoro è stata data particolare importanza alle violazioni in Internet ed ai nuovi rimedi previsti in tali ordinamenti, esaminando pertanto le principali problematiche ed i più recenti casi giurisprudenziali in materia

The physics of Galaxy Evolution with SPICA observations

The evolution of galaxies at Cosmic Noon (redshift 1<z<3) passed through a dust-obscured phase, during which most stars formed and black holes in galactic nuclei started to shine, which cannot be seen in the optical and UV, but it needs rest frame mid-to-far IR spectroscopy to be unveiled. At these frequencies, dust extinction is minimal and a variety of atomic and molecular transitions, tracing most astrophysical domains, occur. The future IR space telescope mission, SPICA, currently under evaluation for the 5th Medium Size ESA Cosmic Vision Mission, fully redesigned with its 2.5 m mirror cooled down to T < 8K will perform such observations. SPICA will provide for the first time a 3-dimensional spectroscopic view of the hidden side of star formation and black hole accretion in all environments, from voids to cluster cores over 90% of cosmic time. Here we outline what SPICA will do in galaxy evolution studies.Comment: Contributed talk at the IAU Symp 359 Galaxy Evolution and Feedback Across Different Environments, 2020 March 2-6, Bento Concalves, Brazil. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1911.1218

Global Governance of the Technological Revolution

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Towards an experimental determination of the equation of state for an interacting Bose-Einstein condensate

Motivations The equation of state of a quantum gas completely characterizes the thermodynamics of the system, and it is mostly influenced by the fundamental properties of its constituents like particle statistics or their interactions. In bosonic systems, the interplay between all these elements gives rise to the phenomenon of Bose – Einstein condensation, which since its discovery in the early 1900s has been the subject of intensive research, both theoretically and experimentally. In the last thirty years, the introduction of ultracold atomic gases made a significant upgrade in the experimental investigation of such fundamental physics. Their high versatility and the extreme control that can be achieved on the system’s parameters mark them as a privileged tool for studying the thermodynamic properties of many-body quantum systems, like the equation of state itself. In the present literature there are many examples of equation of state measurement in ultracold gases, for both bosonic and fermionic systems and in different geometries. In the case of a 3D gas of interacting particles, the underlying thermodynamics is well understood, but there still lacks a characterization of the role of interactions in the regime of intermediate temperatures between zero and the critical threshold. The purpose of my master thesis is to obtain a complete measure of the equation of state of a 3D homogeneous interacting Bose gas across the condensation threshold, highlighting the contribution of particle interactions below Tc ; in particular, we aim to observe the non-monotonic shift in the chemical potential predicted by the mean-field theory, of which there is no direct experimental observation up to now. The work is based on the assumption that the inhomogeneous profile of a trapped sample can be described through the bulk quantities of the same homogeneous system within the Local Density Approximation, and on a method for measuring the pressure and density profiles along the trap axis proposed by T.-L. Ho and Q. Zhou [Nature Physics 6, (2010)]. Methods In order to obtain information on a large density range, from the rarefied thermal wings to the high density condensed region, one has to acquire the full spatial profile of the sample. In presence of a condensed fraction, the cloud density varies in a range spanning several orders of magnitude: when trying to measure such a highly dense sample with standard acquisition techniques, what one actually obtains is a saturated image with a severe loss of signal in the central area. During my thesis I worked on an innovative data acquisition technique, based on a series of partial extractions of atoms from the sample through an output coupling mechanism, their sequential imaging, and the successive reconstruction of the original spatial profile. This technique aims to overcome the limitations of current imaging methods, allowing to measure the full spatial distribution of highly dense atomic samples. Results I worked in the Ultracold Gases Laboratory at the BEC Center, University of Trento. I first planned the experimental procedure and performed the necessary calibrations to include the new imaging scheme; then I did the actual measurements on Bose–Einstein condensates of sodium atoms produced in the laboratory. I developed the image reconstruction algorithm, and wrote a user-interface Python software to process the acquired experimental data. For testing the algorithm and checking its robustness against noise, I processed a number of synthetic realistic data series and checked that the original profiles were faithfully reconstructed. When applied to real data, it provided density profiles whose spatial distribution spanned the expected range of values: their validity was cross-checked by comparing some relevant parameters (like temperature or number of atoms) with those measured with a different technique on samples produced under the same conditions. I also worked on the data elaboration and processing, and developed specific algorithms for calculating the thermodynamical quantities of interest from the in situ profiles acquired with the above discussed methods. The performed analysis led us to identify the limitations of the implementation we chose for the new technique. We found the optimal settings for having a reliable acquisition, and within these constraints we obtained some preliminary results towards a complete characterization of the equation of state: all the measured pressure profiles clearly show the onset of condensation, with the characteristic bimodal shape; we measured a positive chemical potential in the trap center, in qualitative agreement with the mean-field prediction. In conclusion, all the necessary tools are availlable and ready for a quantitative determination of the equation of state