New stress test model quantifies climate risks for banks

by Technical University Munich

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

European banks will soon be required to incorporate climate change risks into the stress testing of their equity. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now developed a new approach in cooperation with the Frankfurt Institute for Risk Management and Regulation (FIRM). In a case study they applied their stress testing method in several CO2 pricing scenarios. Due to sharp rises in probabilities of credit default in several industries, the results show that the bank in question would face significant decreases in capital ratios. The model can help banks to prepare for future risks.

Climate change can cause substantial losses to companies, not only as a direct result of extreme weather events, but also through transitory risks, above all in the form of rising CO2 prices and long-term decreases in economic value creation. This, in turn, means greater risks for banks if companies are unable to service loans. Consequently, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Banking Authority (EBA) have ordered financial institutions to incorporate climate risks into their risk management and stress testing processes, which serve primarily to evaluate their capital buffers. The new requirement will take effect in 2022.

It is still unclear, however, how this requirement can be implemented. Nor is it certain what dimensions the transitory climate risks might reach in stress tests. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have therefore worked with the Frankfurt Institute for Risk Management and Regulation (FIRM) to develop a method that can be adapted to a variety of stress tests and have applied it in two case studies involving a bank and two investment funds.

Case study with 400 Euro STOXX companies

The model is based on a definition of transitory climate risks derived from recognized forecasts such as the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP), the resulting macroeconomic analysis for states and industries, and companies' CO2 footprints. On that basis, the research team investigated around 400 companies listed in the Euro STOXX 600 index. They looked at four scenarios distinguished by different CO2 pricing levels (50 or 100 euros per ton), the potential of companies to reduce CO2 emissions and the share of costs passed through to consumers. All of the scenarios assume an abrupt introduction of a CO2 tax.

Sectors with probabilities of default of 5–34 percent

The analysis shows that in every scenario around 10 percent of the investigated companies would face asset devaluations of more than 15 percent. In the most adverse scenario, 6 percent of the companies would see their assets devalued by over 30 percent. On a industry-by-industry basis, the assets of the six hardest-hit sectors would devaluate by 15–36 percent.

With these results, the researchers carried out a stress test on a major European bank. They began by calculating the rise in companies' probabilities of credit default caused by the loss in asset values. In the most adverse scenario, 16 percent of the companies would have a probability of default of over 3 percent, which is considered high risk. The six most adversely affected sectors would have probabilities of default ranging from about 5 percent to 34 percent. Based on the bank's so-called risk-weighted assets in relation to these corporate loans, the researchers calculated the effects on the bank's equity.

Total capital ratio reduced by up to 1.56 percentage points

The stress test shows that across all scenarios, the bank's common equity Tier 1 (CET1) capital would decrease by between 0.1 and 1.2 percentage points. The core capital ratio (Tier 1) would be down by 0.1–1.3 percentage points and the total capital ratio by 0.2–1.6 percentage points. By comparison: the average core capital ratio of European banks was 15 percent at the end of 2020, so that the scenarios analyzed by the researchers would mean decreases of between 1 percent and nearly 10 percent.

"The stress test underscores the fact that transitory climate risks could pose a major challenge to the stability of the financial sector if no measures are taken," says study author Gunther Friedl, professor of management accounting at TUM. "Our models and assumptions are undoubtedly quite strict—but that is the point of a stress test. Climate change may cause such severe asset losses and high-risk credit default probabilities for some industries that banks should be adjusting their risk management procedures today. If they do so, the decreases in capital ratios identified in our study will be avoided. Therefore, we have proposed an instrument for calculating risks in order to take appropriate action at an early stage."

Risks to funds differ

In a second stress test, the team assessed the effects of companies' asset devaluations on two funds: an equity fund consisting mainly of EuroSTOXX 600 stocks and a mixed fund. Depending on the scenario, the equity fund would face a devaluation of 2.3–9.1 percent and the mixed fund in the 1.2–3.5 percent range.

"Although the effects on the funds vary considerably, especially with the equity fund the stress test shows that asset managers will have to manage the inherent climate risks in their portfolios very carefully" says co-author Sebastian Müller, professor of finance at TUM.

Integrating climate risk into established risk categories

"With this study we want to take the lead and provide a useful stimulus for practitioners and researchers alike as they develop approaches for the management of climate risks," says Gerold Grasshoff, the CEO of FIRM.

Taking the study as a starting point, financial practitioners of FIRM worked with the researchers to prepare recommendations for climate risk management. They advise financial institutions to implement intensive monitoring of climate risks and their economic interdependencies. To do this, the banks will need significantly more data on their debtors, for example with regard to their emission reduction targets. Because climate change will impact the entire economy, the task of making such data available should not be left to the banks alone. Instead, global standards should be established for uniform reporting on climate-related company data.

The group also advocates the inclusion of transitory climate risks in the existing risk categories for credit risk management. Due to possible overlapping, the researchers do not support the idea of a dedicated risk management concept for climate risks, as is currently under discussion.

European regulator urges banks to evaluate climate risks

More information: Gunther Friedl, Sebastian Müller, Alexander Schult, Approaches to climate risk methodology as an example of ESG risk management in finance (2021). go.tum.de/010988

Provided by Technical University Munich 

Researchers caution global economic growth could slide into stagnation

by Sonia Fernandez, University of California - Santa Barbara

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

We've been living in a time of unprecedented global economic growth. Depressions, recessions and other dips in the economy notwithstanding, the last century has been unlike any other before in terms of overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita growth. It's the result of a potent combination of technology, via the Industrial Revolutions, and economic and political freedom and stability, thanks to the spread of democracy.

But the heady days of rapidly rising prosperity may be coming to an end, according to an interdisciplinary group of scientists at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Colorado Boulder. Developed democracies in particular look to be first in line for a long-run economic slowdown through the 21st century, and that, according to the researchers, should prompt some preparation for the additional fiscal and social stress that it will bring.

"Long-run slowdowns in growth in rich countries are inevitable for a bunch of reasons that we really don't have control over," said Matthew Burgess, the lead author of a paper that appears in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. "Nobody can say for sure exactly what's going to happen, but there's this long-term pattern of declining growth that has been visible since the middle of the last century."

Among the factors that may be implicated in this potential slowdown are aging populations, shifts from goods to services, slowing innovation, and debt. The extended effects of COVID-19 and climate change, the researchers say, could further slow growth.

"Given that future economic costs of human-driven environmental challenges like climate change can be enormous, aggressive action today on effective solutions is crucial to limiting future economic declines," said Steven Gaines, a co-author of the paper.

The news doesn't bode well for rich, democratic countries like the United States, which rely on long-term economic growth for many of their social safety net programs, job-creation investments, and to repay debt. The effects would ripple out to individuals as well, as slowing economic growth affects investments and savings that are crucial for education and retirement.

"I don't think there's quite enough of a deep appreciation of how much of our society we have built on growth," Burgess said, adding that the slowdown might persist for decades. While rapid growth has been implicated in many of our ecological woes, often leading to calls from the ecological community to slow down, thus far the position has been politically unrealistic, he said. Now, the question is: regardless of the politics, what if slow growth is inevitable?

A 'Guided Civic Revival'

"We need to start imagining a slow- to no-growth world," said Burgess, who is careful to point out that in the greater scheme of civilization, the last hundred years of economic growth have been the deviation, rather than the norm.

We take the kinds of growth we've seen in the last hundred years for granted, because so much of our memory and our ways of studying economics arose during this time when we were growing," he said.

The researchers propose a "guided civic revival," an approach that combines grass-roots, bottom-up civic forces with government participation to weather the potential long-term economic winter. Its goals would be to decouple social capital and individual well-being from economic growth; reduce inequality; improve opportunities for youth; increase the return on investment in government spending and taxation; and safeguard core institutional elements of democracy so they can withstand stress. The endgame? To promote unity in a storm of fiscal stresses that pose challenges to not just to our pocketbooks but also to society and democracy.

"I think the most important thing to ask ourselves is how do we build social solidarity in a context where things feel zero-sum," Burgess said. "Secondly, how do we adjust expectations?" For as long as most of us can remember, growth is assumed—it's part of the American Dream that over time, children will be better off economically than their parents. Recent statistics show that dream is fading, with at best 50% of people in their 30s today making more than their parents did, Burgess said. Yet many continue to assume that their ship will come in.

"There's lots of evidence that a gap between expectation and reality can be a catalyst for political unrest, especially among middle- and upper-class youth," he said.

Other solidarity-building exercises center around building a strong, shared identity while also making room for ethnocultural diversity, and lessening economic inequality by lowering the barriers to public education and providing job-relevant training.

Meanwhile, increasing the efficiency of public spending and reducing waste are fiscal strategies for the government to implement. The researchers suggest measures including spending on education, research and development, and infrastructure, while closing costly tax loopholes, reducing corruption and reforming the economically inefficient healthcare system. Savings and debt—our mechanisms for investing in the future as well as dealing with the present—may have to undergo a rethink in a stagnant economy, as exponential growth might no longer be relied on to reward us for buying a house, or contributing to education or retirement.

The measures the researchers propose are meant to be starting points from which to consider a slow-growth future, Burgess said. They could also be coupled with a shift in the assessment of well-being from the amount of income and affluence to the more subjective feelings of security, strong connections with family, personal freedoms, health, meaning, purpose and moral satisfaction.

"What does a successful, developed democracy look like amid long-run stagnation?" Burgess said. "In the modern United States, nobody really knows because it hasn't happened. The main goal of this paper is to start the conversation."Australia COVID measures to have 'profound' long-term impact

More information: Matthew Burgess, Prepare developed democracies for long-run economic slowdowns, Nature Human Behaviour (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01229-y. www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01229-y

Journal information: Nature Human Behaviour 

Provided by University of California - Santa Barbara 

Winged Gods and walking griffons: A plate with a depiction of Scythian Gods has been found in Middle Don

by Institute of Archaeology of Russian Academy of Sciences

Silverplate with a depiction of Scythian Gods and eagle head griffons.

Credit: Institute of Archaeology RAS

Expedition members of IA RAS have found a unique plate depicting winged Scythian gods surrounded by griffons during their excavations of the burial ground Devitsa V in Ostrogozhsky District of Voronezh region. This is the first case of such a finding in the Scythian barrows on Middle Don. No other items depictions of gods from the Scythian pantheon have been found in this area.

"The finding has made an important contribution to our concepts of Scythian beliefs. Firstly, a particular number of gods are depicted at once on one item. Secondly, it has never happened before that an item with depicted gods has been found so far from the north-east of the main Scythian centers," said the head of the Don expedition, Prof. Valeriy Gulyaev.

Burial ground Devitsa V—named after the neighboring village area—was found in 2000 by the Don archaeological expedition of IA RAS. The site is situated on the hill of the right bank of the river Devitsa and is a group of 19 mounds which are situated in two parallel chains stretched from west to east. However, the significant part of ancient barrows has already disappeared: the necropolis area belongs to an agricultural sector and is being actively plowed.

Since 2010 the site has been systematically studied by the specialists from the Don expedition of IA RAS. During the cemetery excavations, some great discoveries have already been made. In 2019 in barrow 9 a burial was found which held the remains of a woman-warrior and an old lady in ceremonial female headwear known as a calathus.

In a field season in 2021, the Don archaeological expedition continued studying the necropolis. Archaeologists started the excavation of mound 7 in the central part of the cemetery Devitsa V in the vicinity of barrow 9.

The main grave referred to the Scythian times and dated back to the 4th century BC was located almost under the center of one mound and was a wooden tomb of 7.5x5 meters. In ancient times it was covered with oak half beams which were held by the seventeen large oak pillars on the gravesides. This is the biggest grave among all found in Devitsa V necropolis.

The barrow had already been plundered in ancient times. The robbers laid a wide test pit and "cleaned" a central part of the burial including the skeleton. However, by the time of the plundering the roof of the tomb had already fallen and that is why in the mixture of soil and tree remnants on the gravesides some grave goods have been preserved. Found items completely match the main elements of the Scythian "triad." Equipment, harness, and "animal style" artifacts were found in a warrior's grave.

There was a skeleton of a man of 40-49 years old in the grave. Next to his head archaeologists found many small gold semi-sphere plates which were decorated the funeral bed. Along with the skeleton an iron knife and a horse rib (likely, the remains of the ceremonial food), a spearhead, and three javelin's heads were found. The scientists have been able to reconstruct the length of the weapon relying on that the counterweights of the lower part of the polearm that have been remained untouched. The spear was about 3.2 meters long, and the javelines' length was about 2.2 meters.

In the southeast corner of the grave were fragments of three horse harness items: horse-bits, girth buckles, iron browbands, as well as iron, bronze, and bone Scythian pendants. The archaeologists have also found six bronze plates in the shape of wolves with grin laws which were decorated with horse cheeks—two on each harness. Next to the horse harness was a cut jaw of a young bear which testifies, according to the scientists, to the bear cult at the Scythes of Middle Don. Apart from it a molded cup and a big, black-glazed vessel have been found in different parts of the tomb.

In the northeast part of the grave separate from other items and a few meters far from the skeleton a silver square plate nailed by many small silver nails to a wooden base was found. The length of the plate was 34.7 cm, with the width in the middle part 7.5 cm.

In the central part of the plate is a winged figure facing a Goddess of animal and human fertility. The Goddess is known as Argimpasa, Cybele. The upper part of her body is stripped, and there is headwear, likely a crown with horns, on her head. The Goddess is surrounded on both sides with the figures of winged eagle-headed griffons. Depictions of this type, where the traditions of Asia Minor and ancient Greek are mixed, are often found in excavations of the Scythian barrows of the Northern Sea region, the Dnieper forest-steppe region, and the Northern Caucasus.

The left side of the plate is formed by two square plates decorated with the depictions of syncretic creatures standing in a so-called heraldic pose (in front of each other, close to each other with their paws). From the right side, two round buckles are attached to the plate on each of which one anthropomorphic character with a crown on his head standing surrounded by two griffons is depicted. Who those characters are and which item was decorated by this plate remains an open issue.Swiss archaeologist discovers the earliest tomb of a Scythian prince

Provided by Institute of Archaeology of Russian Academy of Sciences 

Janitorial culture of abuse documented by Worker Institute

by Stephanie Olszewski, Cornell University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Experiences of workplace sexual assault and harassment are widespread in the janitorial industry, according to a new report by the ILR School's Worker Institute, with women janitors more likely than men to experience unwanted sexual behavior, to be targeted by supervisors and to switch jobs due to harassing behavior.

Released Nov. 9, the report documents experiences of workplace sexual harassment in the California janitorial industry, as well as the conditions that hinder reporting and impose silence.

"So many workers and particularly those in the low-wage economy face sharply unequal power relations at work, which makes conditions ripe for exploitation and abuse," said Zoe West, Worker Institute affiliate researcher, report co-author and Rhiza Collective co-founder.

"Sweeping Change: Building Survivor and Worker Leadership to Confront Sexual Harassment in the Janitorial Industry" also highlights an innovative response developed by SEIU-USWW, the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund and other organizations, examining a worker-and-survivor-led peer education model that has been institutionalized through statewide legislation. 

Participatory research for the report was conducted by the Worker Institute at Cornell that included surveys of more than 700 janitorial workers; focus groups with 35 workers; a survey of 36 janitors who are promotoras (peer educators) and compadres (male allies); and in-depth interviews with four worker leaders. 

Silence around the issue is often enforced by the behavior of supervisors, coworkers and other actors, the report found. These behaviors conspire to create an environment in which those targeted report working in fear and grappling with trauma alone.

The research points to the value of a peer-education model in confronting the problem of sexual violence within this context, by finding that building worker leadership and cultivating relationships of trust in confronting sexual harassment can help break silence around the issue and shift workplace practices and culture. The report also draws broader lessons for taking on the problem of workplace sexual harassment and violence in other contexts.

On Nov. 9, the Worker Institute hosted a virtual report launch event featuring a conversation with janitor peer educators leading change in their workplaces. Simultaneously translated in English and Spanish, the event included a discussion of the findings, potential policy and organizational solutions, and testimony from survivors.Co-worker interventions can moderate customer sexual harassment in service industry

More information: Report: ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/74351

Provided by Cornell University 

Study: Women structurally underrepresented in management research

by Radboud University

Women are structurally underrepresented in leading management and organization journals, a new study published today in Research Policy finds. Nora Lohmeyer(verwijst naar een andere website) of Radboud University and Carolin Auschra and Julia Bartosch of Freie Universität Berlin analyzed a dataset of 43,673 articles in fourteen top journals, and found that even in 2017, the most recent year of their study, on average only 30 percent were written by women. Furthermore, almost all topics within the field are dominated by men in publication, leading to a significant gender gap in publishing.

The number of articles authored by women is lagging behind the number of women currently working in the field, the authors claim. In the last decades, most leading journals struggled to pass the threshold of 30 percent of female authors and for some journals the percentage of female authors was even lower, barely hitting 20 percent. The low share of women in top journals cannot be explained by an overall low representation of women working in the field, with women making up a little over 40 percent, based on rough numbers.

Male islands

In the paper, the researchers also describe a dominance of "male islands," research topics on which predominantly men publish. In fact, the researchers could only find one topic on which women publish slightly more than men: gender and diversity. There is also a prevalence of "men's clubs": in 2017 about half the articles were authored by men (either in all male teams or by male single authors), while only 3.4 percent were authored by female single authors and 5.8 percent by all female teams.

Lohmeyer: "Publications are very important for academic careers. Promotions, grants, and benefits are often tied to the number of publications in top journals. If women publish less in these journals, as our study shows, they will have a harder time getting ahead in the field. And it can create vicious circles: researchers need top publications to get grants, but the likelihood for achieving top publications is much higher if you get a grant. Our study suggests that women might get caught in such circles more often than men."

Requirements for future diversity

Furthermore, current publications drive future diversity in the field. "Who publishes in top journals impacts the diversity of topics covered in the field and can limit scholarly plurality. If men and women tend to publish on different topics and women are underrepresented in top journals, these journals might miss out on relevant topics."

"Previous studies have shown that while women tend to publish less, they are not publishing research of lower quality. This suggests that journals need to undertake specific actions to ensure a more diverse range of authors," explains Bartosch. "The first step for these journals is to become aware of the underrepresentation of women. Based on our findings, editors can benchmark the gender-diversity of their journal against their peers and see how they do compared to others. To increase the number of women in their journals, they could plan special issues around specific themes where women publish more often, to encourage more female authors to come forward. In other fields, such as medicine, it has been suggested to check the proportion of included women during the review process for invited and commissioned articles. This might be a way forward for our field as well."

Discussion

Auschra: "This is a complicated, multifaceted process which is not easily solved. Our study suggests that despite an overall and steady increase in the number of women, a large part of the underlying structure of management and organization research is still male. Only by analyzing the roots of that structure and addressing the problem at those roots can the field grow and encompass a wider range of research, more accurately reflecting the field at large. We hope that our article triggers a vivid discussion about the representation of women in top journals that engages the whole community."Medical journal articles written by women are cited less than those written by men

Provided by Radboud University 

Study: COVID tech took a toll on work-from-home moms

by University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

It's no secret that being a work-from-home mom during the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic was a drag. And those tech tools—video meetings and texting—designed to make remote work easier? They just added to the stress and exacerbated the mental health toll on burnt out moms trying to hold everything together.

That's one major takeaway from a study published this week in the journal Communication Reports. Researchers surveyed 540 adults in May 2020 who had worked for up to 10 weeks remotely, and found that stress levels among women with children skyrocketed—likely because blurred work-life balance boundaries meant they took on the brunt of juggling homeschooling and household chores alongside professional duties.

The results also reveal that video chats and texts tended to stress out remote workers, regardless of parental status and other factors including age, race, and education. Why? Researchers hypothesize that the extra visual cues needed to get points across via a video screen and expectations of immediacy when replying to texts contributed to fatigue. For working mothers, these two communication methods were especially burdensome because they hindered the ability to multitask.

The findings raise questions about the future of remote work and ways to preserve employees' mental health, said lead researcher and UNLV communication studies professor Natalie Pennington.

"We did find stress levels progressively increased for women with more children, which really points to the juggling act—you're trying to keep track of multiple kids and the job," she said. "The answer to alleviating stress might be supporting the use of asynchronous communication, like email, compared to synchronous forms, like video chats and texting, to create the flexibility needed to better balance work and home. When real-time communication is needed, phone calls may be better suited to allow for multi-tasking."

The study was conducted in collaboration with Michigan State University associate professor Amanda Holmstrom and University of Kansas professor Jeff Hall.Call me, maybe? Study probes how people connected during the pandemic

More information: Natalie Pennington et al, The Toll of Technology while Working from Home during COVID-19, Communication Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1080/08934215.2021.1993947

Provided by University of Nevada, Las Vegas 

Our attitudes and emotions are affected by how the media describes migration

by Cajsa Malmström, University of Gothenburg

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

News that describes migration in a positive context, makes us become more positive about immigration and vice versa. This is stated by Nora Theorin in a new dissertation on media and migration at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Gothenburg.

Media are often said to play a central role when it comes to shaping the perceptions people have of migration, but our knowledge is limited about HOW and WHEN they influence people, and why.

Nora Theorin has investigated what it looks like in six European countries to see if there are any common patterns and mechanisms; countries that differ greatly in their attitudes toward migration: Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany and Hungary.

Differences between traditional and alternative media

The survey in Sweden showed that traditional news media did not seem to have influenced users' attitudes toward migration to any great extent, despite the fact that it was carried out during 2014–2016, when an exceptionally large number of refugees (160,000) came to Sweden.

On the other hand, it emerged that the use of certain media—those with a pronounced political orientation—had a greater influence. Those who followed the alternative right-wing site Avpixlat (now Samhällsnytt) became more negative about immigration from countries outside the EU, while those who read the left-wing ETC became more positive.

"You need to be aware of this difference when talking about public opinion—and the influence of the media—in migration issues, especially since media with a clear political, especially immigration-critical, profile have increasingly established themselves as sources of information in many Western democracies," says Nora Theorin.

Emotions matter

To find out if it matters how the media portrays immigrants and immigration, she conducted an experiment in which 5,510 participants in the different countries got to take part of both positive and negative articles about immigrants—something that aroused different kinds of feelings.

The different angles (or frames) led to different reactions—those where immigrants appeared in a positive context reduced the readers' negative emotions, which in turn also led to more positive attitudes. At the same time, the positive emotions of those who read negative articles decreased, and they also had more negative attitudes toward immigration.

"Emotions seem to be an important mechanism and can function as so-called mediating variables or factors that explain why people are influenced by the media's representations of immigration," says Nora Theorin.

Media use and threats

Internationally, it also turned out that the media in different ways seem to trigger people's perceptions of immigration as a threat to the economy, security and culture, depending on where in the world the migrants come from.

Immigration from outside Europe was mainly associated with cultural threats, while the only perceived negative effect of European migration was on the economy.

"But the results differ so much between the countries that it is not possible to talk about any universal influence or common patterns," says Nora Theorin.

In general, the effect of the media was more limited than she expected, both in Sweden and internationally. Something Theorin believes may be due to the fact that many people, long before the study, had already established such strong views on migration that they are difficult to change.

Taking in refugees does not strongly influence xenophobia in East German communities

More information: Us Versus Them and the Role of the Media: hdl.handle.net/2077/69572

Provided by University of Gothenburg 

Refugees in the media: How the most commonly used images make viewers dehumanise them

by Manos Tsakiris, The Conversation

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

When the Syrian refugee crisis began in 2011, the journeys of thousands of people fleeing their home country to cross the Mediterranean were widely documented in the media. But the public response was tepid until 2015, when a photograph of drowned Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi on a Turkish beach was printed in media around the world. The photo prompted international responses, a change of EU policy on refugees, and a surge in donations to charities working with refugees.

Images shape our perceptions of the world and have the capacity to become political forces themselves. While more refugees risk their lives to cross the English Channel and the Mediterranean, not to mention the Belarus-Poland border, our research has found that the photos of these populations in the media affect how people view and respond to migration issues.

This phenomenon is described in social psychology as the "identifiable victim effect." People engage differently with words and images concerning the suffering of a single individual rather than that of large groups. We are willing to offer greater aid to a single victim under hardship than to a group of people with the same need. Increased charity donations are an example of this.

Yet in the mainstream media, images of identifiable victims are the exception rather than the norm. In the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, the majority of news images in western media depict refugees as anonymous, faceless masses. These may either render audiences numb to the subjects' hardship or simply fail to shift their attitudes or behaviors, as past research suggests.

Dehumanization

In set of recent studies, we showed media images of refugees to nearly 4,000 European citizens. We exposed them to images of either large groups, in which individuals are not identifiable, or small groups of identifiable refugees. We found that viewers dehumanized refugees more strongly when they were exposed to images of them in large groups.

We reached this conclusion by asking participants to tell us the extent to which they think that refugees are capable of experiencing certain emotions. We did this because an important dimension of dehumanization is considering others as being less capable of experiencing secondary emotions that typically distinguish humans from animals, such as tenderness, guilt and compassion (as opposed to primary emotions that are shared with animals such as fear, anger and joy).

We found that the participants who saw images of refugees in large groups attributed fewer secondary emotions to them. Interestingly, we did not observe this difference when participants saw images of large groups of survivors of natural disasters.

We also looked at another distinguishing feature of these images: whether the subjects were depicted crossing a body of water or traveling by land. One of the most striking aspects of the imagery of refugee journeys has been their crossing of the Mediterranean Sea—being rescued or having drowned.

Social scientists have speculated that the visual and linguistic portrayal of refugees using metaphors of water (waves, tides and floods) reinforces the stereotype of refugees as potentially threatening, uncontrollable agents.

In our study, the visual narrative of depicting large groups of refugees in the sea resulted in even greater dehumanization. This suggests that current visual representations of refugees emphasize a security issue rather than a humanitarian debate—refugees are depicted as "being a crisis" for host nations, rather than finding themselves "in a crisis."

Turning emotion to action

We found that not only do these differences in images affect our attitudes toward refugees, they also influence our behavior and action. We found that participants who had been exposed to images of large groups of refugees were also more likely to endorse anti-refugee petitions and less likely to endorse pro-refugee petitions.

We also tested whether exposure to these images affected people's support for political leaders. We found that viewing images of large groups was associated with increased support for more dominant and less trustworthy-looking political leaders.

Interestingly, in our research, it was not the emotions that viewers attributed to the people in the photographs that drove political effects. Instead, the driving factor seemed to be the specific emotions that the viewers themselves experienced (such as reduced pity) when looking at the images of large groups.

There are no neutral ways to visually depict human beings. Neither the medium of photography itself can afford such neutrality, nor the photographers, the publishers or the viewers themselves.

The decision of what photos to publish is often made by editors who are exposed daily to many images of human suffering. Our research shows that these decisions should consider both the likely emotions audiences will "see" in the images, but also the emotions they will "feel."Images are not always worth a thousand words

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Study shows we can reduce people's bias against non-native speakers

by Royal Holloway, University of London

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, have published a new study in Cognitive Science that shows people are more likely to believe information given to them by a native speaker rather than those with a foreign accent, but that this bias can be reduced.

Whenever people process information, they evaluate it by relying not only on its content but also how easy it is to process. The new study carried out by academics from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway shows that it is harder to process foreign-accented speech. As a result, people believe information less when it's spoken in a foreign accent, but the study found that more exposure to foreign accents can reduce this bias by improving how individuals process the accent.

The results demonstrate how cognitive aspects of processing language can influence attitudes. In the study, participants listened to trivia statements by native and non-native speakers and rated how likely the statements were to be true.

Participants believed the statements less when they were provided by non-native speakers, but if they had been previously exposed to the foreign accent, they showed a smaller bias against the non-native speakers.

Dr. Shiri Lev-Ari from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, said: "Despite interactions between native and non-native speakers being very common in today's society, prior research has indicated that individuals have biases that can lead them to treat the speech of non-native speakers less favorably.

"The results from our study are interesting because they highlight that people can reduce the bias they have against non-native speakers by having more exposure to foreign accents. This suggests that diversity can reduce discrimination against non-native speakers."

"Exposing individuals to foreign accent increases their trust in what non-native speakers say," was carried out by Dr. Shiri Lev Ari from the Department of Psychology and Katarzyna Boduch-Grabka, formerly from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway.Recognizing foreign accents helps brains process accented speech

More information: Katarzyna Boduch‐Grabka et al, Exposing Individuals to Foreign Accent Increases their Trust in What Nonnative Speakers Say, Cognitive Science (2021). DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13064

Journal information: Cognitive Science 

Provided by Royal Holloway, University of London 

Justinianic Plague was nothing like flu and may have struck England before it reached Constantinople, new study suggests

by University of Cambridge

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

'Plague sceptics' are wrong to underestimate the devastating impact that bubonic plague had in the 6th– 8th centuries CE, argues a new study based on ancient texts and recent genetic discoveries.

The same study suggests that bubonic plague may have reached England before its first recorded case in the Mediterranean via a currently unknown route, possibly involving the Baltic and Scandinavia.

The Justinianic Plague is the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in west Eurasian history and struck the Mediterranean world at a pivotal moment in its historical development, when the Emperor Justinian was trying to restore Roman imperial power.

For decades, historians have argued about the lethality of the disease; its social and economic impact; and the routes by which it spread. In 2019-20, several studies, widely publicised in the media, argued that historians had massively exaggerated the impact of the Justinianic Plague and described it as an 'inconsequential pandemic'. In a subsequent piece of journalism, written just before COVID-19 took hold in the West, two researchers suggested that the Justinianic Plague was 'not unlike our flu outbreaks'.

In a new study, published in Past & Present, Cambridge historian Professor Peter Sarris argues that these studies ignored or downplayed new genetic findings, offered misleading statistical analysis and misrepresented the evidence provided by ancient texts.

Sarris says: "Some historians remain deeply hostile to regarding external factors such as disease as having a major impact on the development of human society, and 'plague scepticism' has had a lot of attention in recent years."

Sarris, a Fellow of Trinity College, is critical of the way that some studies have used search engines to calculate that only a small percentage of ancient literature discusses the plague and then crudely argue that this proves the disease was considered insignificant at the time.

Sarris says: "Witnessing the plague first-hand obliged the contemporary historian Procopius to break away from his vast military narrative to write a harrowing account of the arrival of the plague in Constantinople that would leave a deep impression on subsequent generations of Byzantine readers. That is far more telling than the number of plague-related words he wrote. Different authors, writing different types of text, concentrated on different themes, and their works must be read accordingly."

Sarris also refutes the suggestion that laws, coins and papyri provide little evidence that the plague had a significant impact on the early Byzantine state or society. He points to a major reduction in imperial law-making between the year 546, by which point the plague had taken hold, and the end of Justinian's reign in 565. But he also argues that the flurry of significant legislation that was made between 542 and 545 reveals a series of crisis-driven measures issued in the face of plague-induced depopulation, and to limit the damage inflicted by the plague on landowning institutions.

In March 542, in a law that Justinian described as having been written amid the 'encircling presence of death', which had 'spread to every region', the emperor attempted to prop up the banking sector of the imperial economy.

In another law of 544, the emperor attempted to impose price and wage controls, as workers tried to take advantage of labour shortages. Alluding to the plague, Justinian declared that the 'chastening which has been sent by God's goodness' should have made workers 'better people' but instead 'they have turned to avarice'.

That bubonic plague exacerbated the East Roman Empire's existing fiscal and administrative difficulties is also reflected in changes to coinage in this period, Sarris argues. A series of light-weight gold coins were issued, the first such reduction in the gold currency since its introduction in the 4th century and the weight of the heavy copper coinage of Constantinople was also reduced significantly around the same time as the emperor's emergency banking legislation.

Sarris says: "The significance of a historical pandemic should never be judged primarily on the basis of whether it leads to the 'collapse' of the societies concerned. Equally, the resilience of the East Roman state in the face of the plague does not signify that the challenge posed by the plague was not real."

"What is most striking about the governmental response to the Justinianic Plague in the Byzantine or Roman world is how rational and carefully targeted it was, despite the bewilderingly unfamiliar circumstances in which the authorities found themselves.

"We have a lot to learn from how our forebears responded to epidemic disease, and how pandemics impacted on social structures, the distribution of wealth, and modes of thought."

Bubonic plague in England

Until the early 2000s, the identification of the Justinianic Plague as 'bubonic' rested entirely upon ancient texts which described the appearance of buboes or swellings in the groins or armpits of victims. But then rapid advances in genomics enabled archaeologists and genetic scientists to discover traces of the ancient DNA of Yersinia pestis in Early Medieval skeletal remains. Such finds have been made in Germany, Spain, France and England.

In 2018, a study of DNA preserved in remains found in an early Anglo-Saxon burial site known as Edix Hill in Cambridgeshire revealed that many of the interred had died carrying the disease. Further analysis revealed that the strain of Y. pestis found was the earliest identified lineage of the bacterium involved in the 6th-century pandemic.

Sarris says: "We have tended to start with the literary sources, which describe the plague arriving at Pelusium in Egypt before spreading out from there, and then fitted the archaeological and genetic evidence into a framework and narrative based on those sources. That approach will no longer do. The arrival of bubonic plague in the Mediterranean around 541 and its initial arrival in England possibly somewhat earlier may have been the result of two separate but related routes, occurring some time apart."

The study suggests that the plague may have reached the Mediterranean via the Red Sea, and reached England perhaps via the Baltic and Scandanavia, and from there onto parts of the continent.

The study emphasises that despite being called the 'Justinianic Plague', it was "never a purely or even primarily Roman phenomenon" and as recent genetic discoveries have proven, it reached remote and rural sites such as Edix Hill, as well as heavily populated cities.

It is widely accepted that the lethal and virulent strain of bubonic plague from which the Justinianic Plague and later the Black Death would descend had emerged in Central Asia by the Bronze Age before evolving further there in antiquity.

Sarris suggests that it may be significant that the advent of both the Justinianic Plague and the Black Death were preceded by the expansion of nomadic empires across Eurasia: the Huns in the 4th and 5th centuries, and the Mongols in the 13th.

Sarris says: "Increasing genetic evidence will lead in directions we can scarcely yet anticipate, and historians need to be able to respond positively and imaginatively, rather than with a defensive shrug."

New call to examine old narratives: Infectious disease modeling study casts doubt on the Justinianic Plague's impact

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More information: Peter Sarris, New Approaches to the 'Plague of Justinian', Past & Present (2021). DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtab024

Provided by University of Cambridge