Fight and flight: Evidence of aggressive capitulation in the face of fear messages from terrorists

In an era of digital technology and the Internet, terrorists can communicate their threats directly to citizens of Western countries. Yet no research has examined whether these messages change individuals’ attitudes and behaviour, or the psychological processes underlying these effects. Two studies (conducted in 2008 and 2010) examined how American, Australian, and British participants responded to messages from Osama bin Laden that threatened violence if troops were not withdrawn from Afghanistan. Heightened fear in response to the message resulted in what we call “aggressive capitulation,” characterized by two different group-protection responses: (1) submission to terrorist demands in the face of threats made against one’s country, and (2) support for increased efforts to combat the source of the threat, but expressed in abstract terms that do not leave one’s country vulnerable. Fear predicted influence over and above other variables relevant to persuasion. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Understanding the power of the picture: The effect of image content on emotional and political responses to terrorism

Viewing images of terrorism can have a powerful impact on individuals’ emotional and political responses, yet little is known about the psychological processes underlying these effects. We hypothesized that the content of terrorism images will shape viewers’ appraisals of the event, which will elicit specific emotions and political attitudes. British citizens viewed photographs of the 2005 London bombings, either focusing on victims or terrorists. Exposure to images of victims increased appraisals of victim suffering, which predicted feelings of sympathy. Exposure to images of terrorists increased appraisals of terrorists as dangerous, which predicted fear; and of the attack as unjust, which predicted anger. Each emotion predicted support for a distinct counter-terrorism policy. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Triadic intergroup relations:Studying situations with an observer, an actor, and a recipient of behavior

The question of how onlookers/observers make sense of acts they witness between an actor and a recipient/target of the action, and how the group memberships of the three entities inform outcomes, is of clear relevance to intergroup research on contact, collective action, and beyond. However, most intergroup research to date has focused on dyadic relationships rather than triadic relationships with an observer, an actor, and a recipient of behaviour. Maybe because of the dominance of the dyadic approach, the design implications of focusing on triadic (rather than dyadic) relationships have not always been fully appreciated, leading to the introduction of confounds. This contribution will refer to some previously published studies to illustrate this, and outline recommendations for the study of triadic intergroup relationships in the future

Streamlined News Recommendation System Using a Variable Markov Model

Providing news to users in a news article recommendation system is a balancing act between delivering news that is recent and news that is relevant to their interests. Users should be able to receive a stream of similar articles that interest them and control their traversal through the topics of news articles in a stream-wise fashion as well. A Variable Markov Model (VMM), built on trends in recently published news articles, is proposed as a single solution to categorically cater news to all users with minimal overhead and maintenance. This single model provided to all users throughout experimentation has shown that, though it is not built based on user interests, it is applicable as a basis for applying user interest and trend factors upon to achieve catered and novel news recommendation experiences.</jats:p

Streamlined News Recommendation System Using a Variable Markov Model

Providing news to users in a news article recommendation system is a balancing act between delivering news that is recent and news that is relevant to their interests. Users should be able to receive a stream of similar articles that interest them and control their traversal through the topics of news articles in a stream-wise fashion as well. A Variable Markov Model (VMM), built on trends in recently published news articles, is proposed as a single solution to categorically cater news to all users with minimal overhead and maintenance. This single model provided to all users throughout experimentation has shown that, though it is not built based on user interests, it is applicable as a basis for applying user interest and trend factors upon to achieve catered and novel news recommendation experiences.</jats:p

Effects of M&A on shareholder wealth : evidence from the european banking industry

Mestrado Bolonha em FinançasThis thesis investigates the impact of M&A activity on the wealth of shareholders. The study is focused on the European banking industry, during the 12-year period: 2008-2020. Using a sample of 25 M&A deals, involving 47 publicly traded European banks, the event study method is applied to analyse the abnormal returns to stocks of the involved banks around the deal announcement dates. The results show positive and statistically significant abnormal returns for the shareholders of target banks in the sample, while the results for the bidding banks shareholders were also positive, however not showing statistical significance. Finally, the overall wealth creation was assessed by analysing weighted abnormal returns for bidding and target bank as an imaginary combined entity. The results were positive and statistically significant, indicating that M&A activity in the European banking industry, during the analysed period, increased shareholders wealth.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Effects of M&A on shareholder wealth : evidence from the european banking industry

Mestrado Bolonha em FinançasThis thesis investigates the impact of M&A activity on the wealth of shareholders. The study is focused on the European banking industry, during the 12-year period: 2008-2020. Using a sample of 25 M&A deals, involving 47 publicly traded European banks, the event study method is applied to analyse the abnormal returns to stocks of the involved banks around the deal announcement dates. The results show positive and statistically significant abnormal returns for the shareholders of target banks in the sample, while the results for the bidding banks shareholders were also positive, however not showing statistical significance. Finally, the overall wealth creation was assessed by analysing weighted abnormal returns for bidding and target bank as an imaginary combined entity. The results were positive and statistically significant, indicating that M&A activity in the European banking industry, during the analysed period, increased shareholders wealth.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An evaluation of preprocessing of noisy fingerprint images by Cellular Frequency Amplification

Det visas, för ett antal relevanta databaser, att Cellular Frequency Amplification (CFA) förbehandlingsmetod, introducerad av Willis and Myers (2001), förbättrar FAR/FRR prestanda för Precise Biometrics verifikationsalgoritm. Detta både bekräftar och förstärker Willis och Myers slutsatser ur ett verifikationsperspektiv: Förbättrad FAR/FRR prestanda visar att CFA förmår att extrahera underliggande mönster i databaser med brusiga fingeravtryck i större omfattning än de fyra alternativa förbehandlingsmetoder som utvärderas. Dessa metoder är trösklingsbaserad binarisation, Stock-Swonger binarisation och två företagsägda algoritmer. CFA presterar minst lika bra som de två valda företagsägda förbehandlingsalgoritmerna, har bättre prestanda än Stock-Swonger algoritm och presterar mycket bättre än trösklingsbaserad binarisation. För FAR av storleksordningen 1/1000 till 1/10000 ger CFA metod i FRR värden som är upp till en femtedel lägre än den nästbästa förbehandlingsmetoden. Den karakteristiska skalan för ett fingeravtryck, där inga större förändringar i den spatiala frekvensen eller riktningen inträffar, är 2 mm. Exponent k=0.8 har visats vara optimal för bildförbättring. Högre exponenter presterar sämre eftersom även karakteristika av högre ordning tillsammans med strukturellt brus undertrycks ännu mer med ökande k.It is shown, for a number of relevant databases, that the Cellular Frequency Amplification (CFA) preprocessing method, introduced by Willis and Myers (2001), improves the FAR/FRR performance for a Precise Biometrics authentication algorithm. This not only corroborates the findings by Willis and Myers, but strengthens them from an authentication perspective: The improved FAR/FRR performance shows that CFA manages to extract the underlying pattern in the noisy fingerprint databases to a larger extent than the four alternative preprocessing methods that were evaluated. These methods were binarization by thresholding, Stock-Swonger binarization, and two proprietary algorithms. CFA performs at least as well as the two selected proprietary preprocessing algorithms, outperforms the public-domain Stock-Swonger algorithm, and far outperforms binarization by thresholding. In the FAR regime 1/1000 to 1/10000 CFA yields FRR values up to one-fifth lower than for the next-best preprocessing method. We find a characteristic scale of 2 mm in the fingerprint, over which no large changes in spatial frequency or direction occur. An image enhancement exponent of k=0.8 is found to be optimal. Larger exponents perform less well due to the fact that higher-order characteristics in the fingerprint pattern are increasingly suppressed together with the structural noise