Introduction to political ideologies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Introduction to political ideologies - Essay Example s "a cluster of doctrines and attitudes centered on the belief that government is both harmful and unnecessary†, by the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (Carl Slevin) Anarchism can be of many types (Fowler,738 -752 ). But, all of them are not mutually exclusive (Sylvan, 231). According to the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, "there is no single defining position that all anarchists hold," beyond their rejection of compulsory government, "and those considered anarchists at best share a certain family resemblance." (Anarchism. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 31). Anarchists hold different opinions like, as to the economic organization of society; some favor libertarian communism, collectivist anarchism or participatory economics while others believes that supporting free market systems like mutualism, agorism, or anarcho-capitalism is beneficial for the society (Brooks, xi). Most of the anarchists firmly oppose voting or participating in the State institution. Still there there are a few that disagree. The prominent anarchist, Proudhon stood for election to the French Constituent Assembly twice in 1848. Paul Brousse developed a concept Libertarian municipalism in Switzerland in the 1890s which involved participating in local elections (George H. Smith). There are three reasons behind the opposition of election by anarchist. the anarchist collective CrimethInc. launched "Dont Just Vote, Get Active," during the 2004 US Presidential election. This was a campaign to promote the importance of direct action instead of just an electoral change. Anarchists in other countries quite often engage in similar anti-voting campaigns. Some anarchists propose a more pragmatic approach which includes voting in referenda

Configuring Files, NTFS, and Backups Assignment

Configuring Files, NTFS, and Backups - Assignment Example Security breaches possibly caused by human actions, which could be malicious, accidental, or through improper installation, operation or configuration. This paper presents guidelines that should be adopted to ensure efficient management and security of any information and communication technology network. These guidelines are written with keeping in mind of a less experienced IT network managers, to assist them in understanding and dealing with the risks they face. Upon implementation, these guidelines will go a long way in easing with problems of network insecurity. Network security policy guidelines are the practices and rules followed by an institution to protect its information resources. These polices must be documented, developed, reviewed, implemented and evaluated to ensure the integrity of the network. Hence, the need for these policies by an institution is never overemphasized (Avolio & Fallin, 2007). Program policies. It tackles overall Network security goals and it should be applied to all IT resources inside an institution. The institution’s management must instruct policy development to guarantee that the policies address the Network security requirements of all systems operating within the institution. System-specific policies. It addresses the Network security matters and requirements of a particular system. Corporate facilities may have several sets of system-specific policies that address security from the very common (access control) to the particular (system authorizations that reflect the isolation of duties among a team of employees). Create an approval procedure to include legal and human resources specialists, regulatory specialists and procedure and policy experts. Allow maximum time for the review and respond to every comment whether you accept it or not. Institution once developed its network security policy; next step is to document these policies. Each department is responsible to protect its networks,

Managing change, small hotel development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Managing change, small hotel development - Essay Example year 2020 is 5 years away; hence, considering the analyses that has been conducted on the Sea Front Hotel, the chances of development over the next five years can be assessed. One of the greatest strengths of the hotel is that it is not mired in any form of debt. As a result, in spite of the global financial fluctuations that occur, it can be said that the financial risks of any global economic downturn in the next five years will have little effect. However, the hotel lacks an online presence and it still uses conentional methods of communication. It has to be noted that nearly all successful businesses, especially those in the hospitality industry like Sea Front Hotel, make use of the internet as an essential marketing tool (Dudovskiy, 2015). The hotel cannot only rely on increased consumer spending because they are not assured that they will spend their money on an â€Å"unknown† hotel, due to its poor marketing strategy. In the face of competition over the next five years, the hotel is likely to achieve minimal development, because of its poor marketing plan. In addition, it has a limited customer base and needs to diversify. Due to the growth of the economy, its development chances can be sustained at the moment but not increased as it cannot rely on the national economy to develop. The chances of development for the Sea Front Hotel over the next 5 years are deem. Due to its favourable location setting, the hotel should be flocking with customers at the moment, but that is not the case. At the moment, it should be having a medium profit margin because it has a cheap source of supplies from the local area due to heightened competition among the suppliers. The cheap sources function as a financial cover, coupled with its lack of debts. However, its profit margins are low at the moment, something that the management should be planning to improve. The changes that can be implemented to improve this is the use of a cheap source of power, wind power, due to its

Global Environmental Change Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Global Environmental Change - Assignment Example (Tollefson, 2009, p. 29) The arctic holds an important place in the debatable issue of maintaining life on earth in a sustainable way. However, this discussion centres on the Arctic region itself and more precisely on depleting population of the arctic Polar Bears rather than the chain effect of the susceptible artic on the rest of the world. The last hundred years have witnessed an increase in global temperature by 0.6 degree centigrade. (Jenssen, 2006, p. 78) Moreover from 1976 the rate is even higher and unmatchable by any time encompassing past thousand years. The effect of such rise in temperature is most visible through the extent of ice melting in the high and mid altitude area. In less than fifty years the snow has decreased by 10%. (Jenssen, 2006, p. 78) For the survival of a species, the survival of its habitat and food source is of utmost importance. With the rise in global temperature the extent of ice will decline in the Arctic and so will its duration of frozen state, resulting in less area for the seals to stay and breed. Seals are the most important food source of the polar bear; so any effect on their population will directly reduce the food basket of the polar bears. It has also been observed that for large mammals any change in global temperature affects the juvenile survival rate. From this point of v iew both the seal and the bear are equally exposed to risk. Therefore the bear suffers from two sides - reduced present and future food source and reduced juvenile survival rate. Again the polar bear hunts on ground (solid ice). Any reduction of ice extent will leave the bear with smaller ground to catch seals. (Jenssen, 2006, p. 78) In front of global climatic change the arctic ice plate has also undergone changes in terms of thickness and has become fractured in many places. Furthermore the ocean now freezes in later part of the year and all these in a cumulative way are depleting the habitat of polar bear. (O’Neill et al, 2008, p. 1650).

Mason Multi agent model to visualize the bonus culture strategy over Dissertation

Mason Multi agent model to visualize the bonus culture strategy over the traders' incentives - Dissertation Example As the global economy begins to record significant rise over the years, businesses and organizations are doing everything possible to get their fair share of the rise in profits. These people are indeed right to react as such as the world saw worse forms of economic meltdown in the past five years. However, it takes the putting together of a lot of factors to earn a place in the world’s current climate. To producers and manufactures, determining the economic desires of their traders and customers and reacting in a manner that meets these desires is very crucial. It has been said that one of the best ways producers and manufacturers can satisfy their traders and customers is by putting in place very attractive incentives. Incentives come in different forms and it has been argued that the kind of incentive put in place for traders and customers actually determine the kind of behavior that is going to be displayed by traders and customers in their service to manufacturers and pro ducers. To this effect, it has also been argued among most corporate researchers that the bonus culture is a kind of incentive that has massive impact in ensuring that traders dance according to the rhythm of their masters. This is basically to say that bonus culture is an effective way of motivating traders. All said and than, it is important for entrepreneurs and corporate managers to have systems in place that checks the behavior of traders and the impact it makes on their business. The research problem covers three major important components of literature. Firstly, there is the issue of the multi-agent based model. With this, it is worth emphasizing that the multi-agent model shall be the Mason Multi agent model. With the model understudy, the researcher shall have the opportunity to analyze the impact of the technological growth that the world is experiencing now. This is to say that the mason multi-agent model is an innovation in information and communication technology that has come to ease the task of assessing the performance of any business or corporate outfit. The second concept shall be on issue of bonus culture as relates to traders. Under this, the research shall draw a line between bonus culture and trader incentive to see if it is actually possible adopting bonus culture as a workable form of incentive for traders and other business associates. Finally, the issue of trader behavior shall be looked at. Trader behavior is actually going to be the foc al point of the research. This is because the first two concepts are all related to trader behavior in one way or the other. In the light of this, the Mason multi-agent model shall be used to analyze the behavior of given traders of a given organization over a given period of time. Depending on the outcome of the visualization of the model on the trader behavior, the bonus culture shall be employed as an intervention for either bettering the trader behavior or improving it. Main Objective The research has been set out mainly to have an intervention in place to better the behavior traders of a given company. The progress of the intervention shall be analyzed using the Mason Multi-Agent Model. To achieve this all important objective, there are a series of specific objectives that need to achieved in order achieve the overall objective. Specific Objectives The review of related literature, collection of data for the research as well as data analysis shall be done based on the specific objectives set below. More to this, the achievement of the specific objectives shall amount to the achievement of the overall main objective of the research. The specific objectives are: 1. Explore the meaning of the Mason Multi-agent model 2. Find the role of the Mason multi-agent model in business monitoring and evaluation 3. Identify the different behaviors that could

Mental representation Essay Example for Free

Mental representation Essay Memory is defined as the process of storing and retreiving information. There are three major memory processes namely encoding, storing and retreival. During encoding, information is placed or stored in the memory by a mental representation. The information is being input to the mind for further retenetion. After being encoded the information or stimuli is now being stored. It is now placed in a permamnent mental state for later recall. The brain needs to process first as to what type of memory it has gathered before putting it to storage. This is where the idea of memory types emerge. Sensory memory is the initial step in memory which involves a process that hold visual and auditory information in its raw form for a very brief period of time. Examples of these are iconic (visual) and echoic (audio) memory. Thesetypes of memories are being stored for about a quarter of a second or more. Sensory memory prevent s the brain from being overwhelmed from too many incoming stimuli because anything that you do not attend or respond to will vanish in a matter of seconds. Rather than that, it also gives us decision time, stability, playback and recognition. After this process, the brain now determines whether to keep this memory for goof or not. Now it depends on which type of memory, either be long term or short term memory to which these informations can be retreived. This process is also called as the output of information from the memory system. From where this memory is retreived, now thats the big question. There are two types of memory retenetion namely short term memory and long term memory. Short term memory is also called the working memory that can hold only a limited amount of information and will remain up to 30 seconds (Cherry, 2010). It can hold an average of 7 items for a short period of time for approximately 20-30 seconds. However, despite its limited capacity and duartion, it can possibly increase through â€Å"chunking†. Short term memory can help us be attentive on a certain stimuli since it excludes other uncessesary ones. It can also improves ones retention of information since the is rehearsed in the mind over and over. Long term memory, however, is the type of memory that can store almost unlimited amounts of information for a long period of time (Cherry, 2010). There are two types of long term memory, first of which has another subdivision. Declarative memory involves memory of facts or evets. It can either be episodic or semantic. Episodic memory are knowledge of specific events, personal experiences or activities (such as naming or describing a favorite bar, songs, movies) while semantic memory involves knowledge of facts, concepts or words, definitions and language rules. Another type of long term memory is procedural which tackles about skills, habits, and things learned from classical conditioning. There are instances in which some people tend to forget. What may be the reasons for this? Forgetting is defined as the inability to retreive, recall or organize information that was stored or still stored in long term memory (Copeland, 2006). Most forgetting occurs because information in working memory was never transferred to long term memory. It can also occur because we lost our access to information that is in long term memory. One proposed theory to this was the repression theory. According to Sigmund Freud, informatio that is theatening to our self is automatically driven away into our consciousness from which we cannot retreive. It is one of his many proposed defense mechanisms. Another theory is the interference theory. It is defined as the inhibition of recall of certain information by the presence of other information in memory (Copeland, 2006). There are two types of interference: (1) retroactive and, (2) proactive. Retroactive interference is the decrease inability to recall previosuly learned information caused by learing new information while proactive is the exact opposite, defined as the decrease ability to learn new information caused by interference from existing information. In order to avoid these, psychologists suggests a number of ways to improve retention and to aid learning. One can increase their study time in order to store more memory. It will also be useful to distribute practice in order not ot mix up things. Speed reading is also advisable. Though speed reading can lead to poorer comprehension and retention of materials, it can also be useful if the materials are needed only for a short period of time. Arousal is also a factor to be considered. This means the stimulation of thoughts and conditioning of the mind. Sleep is an important factor to consider since sleep deprivation has a great effect in learning. References Cherry, Kendra. (2010). Memory: An Overview of Memory Retreived from http://www. psychology. about. com/ Copeland, David E. , Radvansky, Gabriel A. (2006). Memory retrieval and interference: working memory issues. Retreived from http://www. sciencedirect. com/ Defense mechanisms. (2010). Retreived from http://www. changingminds. org/

Age and Gender Differences on Fear of Crime

Age and Gender Differences on Fear of Crime The current study aimed to investigate age and gender effects on fear of crime and their relationships with attitude towards prisoner and crime, life satisfaction, living arrangement and religion in a Chinese sample. 170 undergraduate and postgraduate students, with a mean age of 21.9 years, participated in this study. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire on fear of crime. In general, women reported significantly greater fear of crime than men. A factor analysis was performed and two factors were extracted: fear of being cheated and fear of physical harm. An age-gender interaction effect was found after controlling the variable of attitude towards prisoner. Results indicated that older females had higher levels of fear of being cheated than males. Yet, gender and age differences in fear of fraud victimizations are a largely unexplored area. Additional research is needed to examine how womens fear of being cheated varies with age. Introduction Fear of crime has received considerable attention in the criminological studies. Over the last few decades, research has been carried out to explore how fear of crime is explained and handled by society. Information about fear of crime not only help us to understand and interpret what fear of crime meant for individuals and societies, but also facilitate government to develop active plans to tackle publics fear. Anxieties about crime may lead to behavioral adaptation, e.g. taking precautions against crime and avoiding certain places. Nonetheless, public anxieties about crime may also have negative consequences for the individual and for society. For example, they may exacerbate the impact of crime by damaging an individuals quality of life or may affect the community by deteriorating a shared sense of trust, cohesion, and social control (Jackson, 2006). The concept of fear of crime and its causation is widely examined in the criminological field, but there is a lack of agreement on the definition of fear of crime. Fear of crime may involve two different concepts: an evaluative component and an emotional component (Skogen, 1984). For instance, Hollway and Jefferson (1997) referred crime fear as irrational response in which the rational, calculating individuals who routinely miscalculate their true risk of crime; whereas Ferraro (1995) suggested that fear of crime is an emotional reaction of dread or anxiety to crime or symbols that a person associates with crime. Past research has identified a number of factors which appear to make a contribution to fear, such as age, gender, race, vulnerability, neighbourhood cohesion, personal knowledge of crime and victimization, confidence in police and criminal justice systems, perception of risk, and assessment of offence seriousness (Box, Hale and Andrews, 1988). However, the current study wil l focus mainly on age and gender effects on fear of crime. Gender and Age Effects It is well-documented that women are more fearful of becoming a victim of crime than men despite the fact that they are less often victimized by serious violent crime (Pain, 2001; Fetchenhauer and Buunk, 2005). Over the past decades, researchers have proposed different approaches to resolve the fear victimization paradox: (1) hidden victimization of women; (2) gender tendencies of women to recall victimization experience, and to generalize fear from one context to another; (3) vulnerability of women; and (4) male discount of fear. Most crime surveys have shown that the levels of violence against women (e.g. domestic violence) are far higher than men; therefore it has been argued that women are not irrationally fearful of crime. It is because women and elderly under-report their actual victimization, and thus they appear to be less victimized (Pain, 2001). However, some have suggested that women tend to generalize the actual experience of victimization across spatial contexts than men (Pain, 1995; Farraro, 1995). Warr (1984) found that fear of sexual assault operated as a master offense among women and their fear of sexual assault influenced fear of nonpersonal crimes, such as burglary. Yet, still others reported that males often discount their fear of crime (Smith and Torstensson, 1997). Previous literature has demonstrated that males are suppressed by the perception that it is not socially acceptable to express ones fear; and when men are being perfectly honest, they may actually be more afraid of crime than women (Sutton and Farrall, 2005). On the other hand, the vulnerability hypothesis suggested that women are physically weaker than men and therefore they are less able to defend themselves against (typically male) perpetrators. A considerable amount of studies have also shown that that gender difference in fear of crime often reflects gender difference in physical vulnerability (e.g. Smith and Torstensson, 1997). Apart from gender, age is another important factor that predicts fear of crime. However, the definition of elderly varies across different studies (Chadee and Ditton, 2003). For example, Sundeen and Mathieu (1976) defined elderly as 52 years or above, whereas Warr (1984) suggested 66 years and over. Yet the most common definition of old is aged 65 or above. Since there has been no agreement on the definition of what constitutes old, mixed results were found on age. Some researchers argued that older people report higher level of fear than young people (e.g. On and Kim, 2009). In contrast, others suggested that elderly people are less likely to be victimized and thus they have the lowest level of fear (e.g. LaGrange and Ferraro, 1989; Chadee and Ditton, 2003). On and Kim (2009) explained that older people (aged 65 and over) often experience a drop in social networks (e.g. withdrawal from work, loss of close family members, increasing physical and psychological fragility), and their so cial isolation or feeling of loneliness intensifies fear of crime. Recently, it has been proposed that the relationship between fear of crime and age is non-linear and varies with crime type (Moore and Shephred, 2007). Past research has shown two different inverted U-shaped patterns in fear of property loss and fear of personal harm. Fear of property crime peaked at some time during middle-age, whereas fear of personal harm decreased with age (Chadee and Ditton, 2003; Moore and Shepherd, 2007). The oldest age group (75 or above) exhibited the lowest levels of fear for both property crime and personal crime (Chadee and Ditton, 2003). Prior research has shown that gender and age often interact with one another in producing the fear of crime differences (Ortega and Myles, 1987; Haynie, 1998; Pain, 2001). Significant gender differences in fear are observed among younger people. Nonetheless, this gender-fear gap has narrowed as mens reported fear of crime has gradually increased over tim e while womens has remained stable (Haynie, 1998). Attitude towards prisoner and crime and life satisfaction Much research on fear of crime has been focused on the perceived risk of crime; little is known about how peoples attitude towards prisoners and quality of life link to their fear of crime. Informal social control, trust, and social cohesion are important factors that contributed to the feelings of security; hence, one might argue that fear of crime often reflects individuals life satisfaction and their perceptions of social control. Jackson (2006) puts forward the view that public attitudes toward crime raise fundamental sociological problems but with a twist: public perceptions of deviance, social order and social control (p.253) and he claimed that public perceptions of crime reveal how people conceive social order (including the norms, values, and morals that bind communities and constitute social glue) and what they see as hostile to that social (maybe specific groups or wider social changes regarding values and morals, ethnicity diversity, and transformations in the political a nd economic arenas) (p.261). Therefore, it has been suggested that high levels of community efficacy, social cohesion, and a tight social structure (with low levels of anonymity and distrust) might inhibit fear of crime (Farrall, Gray and Jackson, 2007). In the last decades, researchers have questioned the validity of previous studies on fear of crime. LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) criticized that the experimental designs of previous studies were problematic. First, it has been suggested that measures of crime risk are often mistaken for measures of crime fear. Second, several widely used crime survey do not measure fear of crime, in which implicit questions are used in crime survey to measure fear (e.g. how safe do you feel or would you feel being out alone in your neighborhood at night?) instead of explicit questions. Hence, LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) have developed an 11-itemed crime fear survey to overcome the above shortcomings. The current study aims to use LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) crime fear questionnaires to examine gender and age effects on fear of crime in a Chinese sample. Method Sample A total of 170 participants (77 males, 92 females and 1 without specifying gender) were recruited in this study. The sample consisted of both undergraduates and postgraduates. Participants aged from 18 to 48 year-old (M = 21.94; SD = 4.07). Descriptive statistics of the sample were presented in table 1.They joined this study on a voluntary basis. Instrument Attitudes towards Prisoners Scale (Melvin, Gramling, Gardner, 1985) This scale contains 36 items. Participants were asked to rate on a 5-point Likert Scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The scale had a satisfactory reliability level, with overall alpha = .91. Life Satisfaction Scale. Life Satisfaction Scale, a five-item-scale developed by Diener and his associates measured general satisfaction towards life (Diener et al., 1985; Larsen, Diener, Emmons, 1985; Pavot Diener, 1993). It was validated locally (Wang, Yuen, Slaney, 2009). Participants were asked to rate the items on a 7-point Likert Scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The overall alpha is satisfactory at .88. Fear of Crime Scale (Ferraro, 1996) The ten items of this scale were rated on a 10-point Likert scale, raning from 1 (not afraid at all ) to 10 (very afraid). Unlike the Attitude towards Prisoners Scale, the Fear of Crime Scale had not been validated locally, thus prior to any analysis, a set of validation procedures was performed. First, two items that could not match the current research purpose were removed: while the item being raped or sexually assaulted was removed due to its gender nonequivalence, the item having your car stolen was also removed because not many college students in Hong Kong owned their own cars. After removing the two items, the Kasier-Meyer-Oklin (KMO) and the Bartletts Test of Sphericity were performed to see if the originally factor structure could be employed in this study. The KMO value of the eight items was 0.80 and the Bartletts Test of Sphericity was significant (p Results Checking for Covariates Based on previous studies, life satisfaction, religion, and living arrangement are all possible covariates. In order to be classified as a covariate, these variables should correlate with a) any of the independent variables (age and gender) and b) any of the dependent variables (total fear of crime, fear of physical harm and fear of being cheated). Preliminary analyses indicated none of these variables satisfied the above conditions, so they would be excluded in subsequent analysis. Testing of Hypothesis Prior to analysis, all variables excluding gender were mean-centred. This was done to reduce any multicollinearity and to facilitate model estimation when main effects and interactive effects were both present (Aiken West, 1991). To compare the relative influences of age and gender on total fear of crime, fear of physical harm and fear of being cheated, three sets of hierarchical regression were performed. Attitude towards prisoners was first entered into the equation as a covariate, followed by age and gender; the Age X Gender interaction term was entered afterwards. Gender Difference in Fear of Crime: There was a main effect that gender had on all three types of crime fear, where female was always significantly more fearful than male (see Table 2). See table 3 for the mean and standard deviation of the three dependent variables in each gender group. Age Effect on Fear of Crime: While age positively correlated with fear of being cheated, no significant correlation was found between age and the other fear of crime constructs (see Table 4). Yet after controlling for attitude towards prisoner as the covariate, the predictive power of age on fear of being cheated disappeared (see Table 2). Age X Gender Interaction Effect on Fear of Crime: Significant Age X Gender interaction effects on total fear of crime and fear of being cheated were found. However, such interaction effect did not happen for fear of physical harm (see Table 2). To further investigate these significant interaction effects, two sets of hierarchical regression on total fear of crime and fear of being cheated were performed after splitting the sample into male and female subgroups. Attitude towards prisoners was first entered into the equation as a covariate, followed by age. After controlling for the covariate, age was no longer a predictor of total fear of crime for both gender groups. Yet for fear of being cheated, while it could be predicted by age for female (ÃŽÂ ² = .14, p Discussion The present study aimed to look at age and gender effects on fear of crime and their relationships with attitude towards prisoner and crime, life satisfaction, living arrangement and religion in a Chinese sample. In general, women reported higher average scores on fear than men among all aspects of crime, indicating that women were always more afraid of crime than men regardless of how fear of crime was measured. Women in our sample also reported that they were most afraid of being raped or sexually assaulted, followed by fear of being murder and fear of being attacked by someone with a weapon. This pattern of results were in line with previous findings that women were more fearful than men because they were particularly vulnerable to crime and were less able than men to defend themselves physically; therefore, women perceived themselves to be at greater risk of crimes than men (LaGrange and Ferraro, 1989; Smith and Torstensson, 1997). The results were also consistent with previous s tudies that fear of sexual assault operated as a master offense among women, which in turn heightened their fear of other victimizations, e.g. murder, attacks, or burglary (Ferraro, 1995). On the other hand, fear of being murder was most common among males, followed by fear of being attacked by someone with a weapon and fear of being raped or sexually assaulted. Interestingly, the current results replicated the findings of LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) in which men reported that they were afraid of being sexually assaulted (presumably by other men). In the second part of the study, a factor analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship between gender and age of participants and their various crime perceptions. Results of the present study showed a gender effect on fear of crime, in which women had significantly higher score on total fear of crime, fear of being cheated and fear of physical harm than men. These findings were consistent with previous research in which females might have lower threshold for fear than males. An evolutionary approach has been put forward by researchers to explain this gender difference in fear of crime (e.g. Campbell, Muncer and Bibel, 2001; Fetchenhauer and Buunk, 2005; Sidebottom and Tilley, 2008). In a Dutch study, Fetchenhauer and Buunk (2005) showed that females were significantly more fearful than males when presented with scenarios (both criminal and non-criminal events) that resulted in physical injury, and they proposed that gender differences in fear of all kinds of events that inv olved physical injury may be the result of sexual selection that favoured risk-taking and status fights among males, and being cautious and protecting ones offspring among females (p.111). The current study also found a significant positive correlation between age and fear of being cheated, suggesting that older people were more afraid of being cheated than younger people. The result reflects the varying importance attached to material wealth with age: the costs of property loss might have greater impact on middle-aged group since they are more likely to have accumulated property and have dependent children compared to younger age group (Moore and Shepherd, 2007). Based on data derived from the 2001 British Crime Survey, Moore and Shepherd (2007) concluded that fear of property loss was greatest at around 40-60 years, peaked at around 45 years, whereas a lower level of fear was observed at about 16-25 years. Another possibility for the age differences in fear might be due to socialization. Past research has shown that socialization may increase the amount of contacts with others, and thus people who socialize more often may increase their likelihood of fraud victimizat ion (Van Wyk and Manson, 2001). In a recent study, Schoepfer and Piquero (2009) demonstrated that risky behaviour and age were important factors that predicted the likelihood of fraud victimization: individuals who were open to financial risk-taking and engaged in more risky behaviours were more likely to be a victim of fraud (e.g. free prize fraud, credit or bank account fraud and being billed for more than what the product is worth). It should also be noted that older people in our sample are postgraduate students who might have higher income and socialize more often and thus they have greater opportunities to be victimized than younger people. Results in this study also showed that the relationship between age and fear of being cheated was influenced by individuals attitude towards prisoner. Since not much research has been done on fear of being cheated, more studies are needed to look at the relationship between age and fear of deception. Nonetheless, no significant correlation was found between age and fear of physical harm, indicating that that age was not associated with levels of fear of being physical harm. Further analysis was performed in the next section to look at gender and age effects on various constructs of fear. Significant gender-age interaction effects were found on total fear of crime and fear of being cheated. After controlling the variable attitude towards prisoner, age was a significant predictor of fear of being cheated in females, but not in males. There was a positive correlation between age and fear of being cheated among females, suggesting that older females were more fearful of being victimized than males. This may be due in part to the fact that personal victimization can have more serious consequences for women than men. Past research has indicated that crime fear involve both emotional and evaluative components and it is shaped by the vividness of the image of crime and perceptions of the severity of the consequences of crimes, together with feelings of personal control and perceptions of victimization likelihood (Jackson, 2006). It has been found that some vict ims of fraud may experience more harmful long-term effects than those victimized by conventional crimes, and many of them continued to suffer from lasting problems with finances, self-esteem, embarrassment, and self-blaming even ten years after the incidents (Shover, Fox and Mills, 1994). Recently, Schoepfer and Piquero (2009, p.210) argued that some fraud victimizations have even been equated to those of rape since both crime are rarely reported by victims and both involved victim facilitation, and questions of guilt and responsibility are the burden of the victims; hence, this makes females more fearful of being cheated than males. However, the current results did not support some of the past findings on fear of fraud victimization. Mixed results were found in previous studies concerning gender difference on fear of property loss. For instance, LaGrange and Ferraro (1989) found no gender different on fear of being conned or swindled out of money and fear of being approach by a beg gar; whereas Moore and Shepherd (2007) showed that men were more fearful than women of property loss. One of the possibilities for the discrepancy in these findings might be due to the cultural difference in crime rates. Since fear of crime also reflects actual crime rate in society, results in the present study might also suggest that older women are more vulnerable to minor crimes, e.g. street or telephone deception, than men in the local area. Yet, no interaction effect on fear of physical harm was found in this study. Additional study might be needed to investigate how womens fear of being cheated varies with age. There are two possible limitations in the current study that should be taken into account. The first one relates to variables that were not included in the questionnaire, namely the mass media effect, crime prevalence and previous victimization experience. Due to the limitations of the standard questionnaire used in the present study, these factors were not included. It is well-established that the mass media plays an important role in shaping individuals attitude towards prisoner and the perception of crime and fear. According to the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF), people may attend to information about criminal activities from a series of amplified stations (e.g. mass media and interpersonal communication), and the risk signals may interact with a wide range of psychological, social and cultural processes in ways that intensity their actual risks (Kasperson et al. 2003). Researchers have demonstrated that tabloid readers who have an extensive level of crime media exp osure are about twice more likely to be worried than those who have limited exposure to crime source (Smolej and Kivivuori, 2006). Previous literature on media consumption and public attitude toward crime has also shown that offenders are often portrayed as different from the general population and viewed as psychopaths that prey on weak and vulnerable victims (Dowler, 2003). Recently, Reiner (2008) argued that crime stories often exaggerate the crime risks faced by higher-status people and always disproportionately representing women, children, or older people as victims, and this might heighten publics fear of crime. Over the past decade, researchers have attempted to integrate fear of crime into macro and micro levels of analysis (Ferraro, 1995; Jackson, 2004). At the macro-level, publics fear of crime is related to crime prevalence in society and local communities; whereas, at the micro-level, neighbourhood characteristics and personal characteristics (e.g. previous victimization experience, anxiety and everyday worry) may interact to produce differential perception of risk which, in turn, produces either fearful or adaptive reactions to crime (or both) (Farrall, Gray and Jackson, 2007). In future research it might be interesting to examine how these factors interact with age and gender to produce different levels of fear of being cheated. The second possible limitation is that the current findings could not be generalized into diverse cultures with different age groups. In this study, subjects were undergraduates or postgraduates recruited from a local university and they might have similar ag e, background, living situation, and ethnicity; therefore, their crime experience will be alike. In the future study, participants from various age groups and cultures are needed in order to generalize the results outside the Chinese society.