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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsInside the Dangerous Mission to Understand What Makes Extremists Tick
Inside the Dangerous Mission to Understand What Makes Extremists Tickand How to Change Their Minds
On a cool winters day in early 2014, the American academic Nafees Hamid was invited for tea at the second-story at the Barcelona apartment of a young Moroccan man. It started well enough; they sat down at the kitchen table, chatting amiably in French while two acquaintances of the host sat nearby in the living room. Halfway through the conversation, though, things took a turn. He started saying things like, Why should we trust any Westerner? Hamid recalls. Why would we not kill every one of them? Why should I even trust youyou are an Americansitting here? Why should I even let you out of my apartment? The man briefly left the kitchen and went into the living room to speak to the others in Arabic, a language in which Hamid is not fluent. But he repeatedly heard one word he did know: munafiqa term that, at best, means hypocrite; at worst, enemy of Islam.
I realized that they were talking about me, and that this was going in the wrong direction, says Hamid, who had arrived hoping to coax the Moroccan to participate in a study.
As quietly as possible, he opened the second-story window and jumped out, his fall cushioned by the awning of a fruit stand below. Adrenaline spiking, he bolted to the safety of a crowded train station a few blocks away.
Field research on jihad has its hazards. Hamid, now 36, had come to the apartment knowingfrom a questionnaire he had already filled outthat the Moroccan man harbored extremist inclinations. The effort was part of a larger project to discover the roots of radicalization and what might cause someone to fight or dieor killfor their beliefs.
But the work goes on, a part of a larger undertaking by an unusual network of policy experts and international scientists, many of whom have their own harrowing tales of escaping danger or navigating dicey situations in pursuit of groundbreaking research. Recently, the group published the first brain-imaging studies on radicalized men and young adults susceptible to radicalization. The private research firm behind the groups work, Artis International, is officially headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz., but doesnt truly have a base. Its academics and analysts operate from far-flung places, tapping an array of funding from various governments, the U.S. military and academic institutions. The central goal of the firm is to advance peace by figuring out what motivates people to become violentand how to reorient them toward conflict resolution, or prevent them from becoming violent in the first place.
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Over the following weeks, the team analyzed the data. As expected, the men expressed greater willingness to fight and die for their sacred values than for their nonsacred values. More interesting were what parts of the brain appeared involved with each question. When participants rated their willingness to sacrifice for their sacred values (defending the Quran, for example), parts of the brain linked to deliberation (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus and parietal cortex, which Pretus describes as parts of the fronto-parietal or executive-control network) were far less active than when they rated their willingness to kill and die for issues they cared about less (like the availability of halal food in public schools). Dr. Oscar Vilarroya, the lead neuro-scientist on the team, says this indicates that humans dont deliberate about their sacred values: We just act on them.
https://time.com/5881567/extremism-violence-causes-research/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_term=world_extremism&linkId=98728289
Long article, but a very worthwhile read.
KPN
(15,635 posts)the conclusion pretty much validated what I already felt I knew anecdotally by virtue of experiencing the behavior, beliefs and opinions of my own siblings especially in the past 4 years. When it comes to strongly held religious beliefs, people dont think.
hedda_foil
(16,371 posts)
And, in a twist, the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado got in touch in 2016 seeking to collaborate and study how a cadets sacred values and identity with varying groups affect their willingness to fight and die. This April, the Academy, with Artis assistance, completed a small study that found that cadets who both viewed religion as a sacred value and strongly identified as a member of a religious group took greater risks than their peers in virtual combat situations. One key takeaway, according to Lieut. Colonel Chad C. Tossell, the director of the schools Warfighter Effectiveness Research Center, is that the spiritual strength of soldiers is as important as the weapons and technology they use. An early draft of the study says the simulation designed for the research could be useful for selection and training.
Davis is encouraged by the constant interest he gets from governments, from those in the U.S. to Kenya to Kosovo. The U.S. military continues to aid in funding as the firm sets its sights on the next frontiers: figuring out how and why democratic institutions collapse and how cyberspace is being used to divide people and harden their values, turning nonsacred values into sacred ones.
drmeow
(5,012 posts)One of the co-founders of one of Artis' divisions. I managed a study that was looking at some related constructs.
Duppers
(28,117 posts)In the U.S. reichwing militias.