Combatting Jihadist Terrorism: A Quality-of-Life Perspective

Many scholars and commentators have written on ways to counteract acts of terrorism initiated by Islamist militants associated with Jihadist groups operating predominantly in the Middle East and North Africa Region (hereafter the MENA region). Most of what has been published in the academic literature with respect to slowing, eventually stopping, the rate of Islamist-inspired terrorism has focused on short-term public safety solutions to the problem. In this paper, we build a quality-of-life model to address the drivers of Jihadist terrorism and deduce the underlying factors that contribute to counterterrorism programs directly from our understanding of these drivers. Specifically, we provide suggestive evidence to show increased incidence of Jihadist terrorism is mostly motivated by increased negative sentiment of aggrieved Muslims toward their more affluent Western neighbors. This negative sentiment is influenced by a host of quality-of-life factors: economic ill-being factors (e.g., income disparities, poverty, and unemployment; and disparities in technological innovation), political ill-being factors (e.g., authoritarian tribal and exclusionary regimes), religious ill-being factors (e.g., increased Islamic religiosity, and lack of secularism), globalization and media ill-being factors (e.g., the global media), and cultural ill-being factors (e.g., perceived decadence of Western culture, and Western prejudice and discrimination). More effective counterterrorism strategies are deduced directly from understanding how these quality-of-life factors influence increased incidence of Jihadist terrorism.     

Freeze or flee? Negative stimuli elicit selective responding

Humans preferentially attend to negative stimuli. A consequence of this automatic vigilance for negative valence is that negative words elicit slower responses than neutral or positive words on a host of cognitive tasks. Some researchers have speculated that negative stimuli elicit a general suppression of motor activity, akin to the freezing response exhibited by animals under threat. Alternatively, we suggest that negative stimuli only elicit slowed responding on tasks for which stimulus valence is irrelevant for responding. To discriminate between these motor suppression and response-relevance hypotheses, we elicited both lexical decisions and valence judgments of negative words and positive words. Relative to positive words (e.g., kitten), negative words (e.g., spider) elicited slower lexical decisions but faster valence judgments. Results therefore indicate that negative stimuli do not cause a generalized motor suppression. Rather, negative stimuli elicit selective responding, with faster responses on tasks for which stimulus valence is response-relevant.     

Head up, foot down: object words orient attention to the objects' typical location

Many objects typically occur in particular locations, and object words encode these spatial associations. We tested whether such object words (e.g., head, foot) orient attention toward the location where the denoted object typically occurs (i.e., up, down). Because object words elicit perceptual simulations of the denoted objects (i.e., the representations acquired during actual perception are reactivated), we predicted that an object word would interfere with identification of an unrelated visual target subsequently presented in the object's typical location. Consistent with this prediction, three experiments demonstrated that words denoting objects that typically occur high in the visual field hindered identification of targets appearing at the top of the display, whereas words denoting low objects hindered target identification at the bottom of the display. Thus, object words oriented attention to and activated perceptual simulations in the objects' typical locations. These results shed new light on how language affects perception.     

An asymmetric effect of relational integration on recognition memory

Two experiments assessed whether conceptual relations (e.g., contains: COOKIE JAR) facilitate the retrieval of concepts (e.g., COOKIE and JAR) from long-term memory. The CARIN model of nominal combination asserts that conceptual relations are represented with and selected from the modifier noun (COOKIE). Thus, the model predicts that relational integration will facilitate memory for modifiers but not for head nouns (JAR). In Experiment 1, concepts were studied in pairs and were then tested individually. Recognition accuracy was higher for modifiers than for head nouns. In Experiment 2, the studied concepts (e.g., COOKIE JAR) were tested in the context of a new pair that instantiated either the same relation (e.g., COOKIE plate) or a different relation (e.g., COOKIE crumb). Recognition was again better for modifiers than for head nouns, but only when the same conceptual relation was instantiated at both study and test. Thus, results indicate that conceptual relations (a) facilitate recognition memory, and (b) are associated more strongly with the modifier than with the head noun.     

A factor analysis of the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory using an alcoholic population

The present study reports a factor analysis of the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory using 103 alcoholic men. Kirton in 1976 and we in an unpublished work in 1986 noted identical factor structures when responses from nonalcoholic populations to the inventory were factor analyzed. Recent reviews regarding personality characteristics of alcoholics suggest characteristics similar to the adaption-innovation concepts of Kirton. This factor analysis for an alcoholic sample supports the validity of the inventory as a measure of problem-solving style of alcoholics.     

Nonverbal discrimination of more and fewer elements by children

Fifty-six prekindergarten and 174 kindergarten children learned to choose either the card with more or the card with fewer elements in simultaneous discrimination problems. Learning was faster when the card with more elements was positive, particularly when a zero-element card was involved. This difference appeared to be attributable in part to an initial preference for “more.” On transfer trials involving all possible pairings of the training cards, subjects generally performed as though their choices were governed by the concept “more” or “fewer”. This tendency increased with age and with experience in the situation, even though conditions made verbal mediation appear unlikely.     

Letter identification in relation to linguistic context and masking conditions

With a two-choice detection procedure, identifiability of signal letters was determined in backgrounds of words, nonword letter strings, or homogeneous noise characters. Under high performance conditions of exposure duration and pre- and postmasks, there was a substantial advantage in identifiability of letters presented alone over letters embedded in words; under low performance conditions there were generally no differences between the two types of context, but some interactive effects appeared involving particular letters with serial position and type of background. No differences were obtained between word and nonword contexts. The disparities between these findings and those reported by Reicher (1969) and Wheeler (1970) may be related to the more complete elimination under the present procedures of effects of redundancy on response selection.     

Detection and placement of redundant signal elements in tachistoscopic displays of letters

On each trial of a forced-choice detection experiment, S indicated which of two signal elements was represented and also specified the cell of the 5 by 5 matrix display in which he detected the signal. Reaction time on correct choice, Correct placement trials proved virtually invariant with respect to number of redundant signal elements present in the display. These data do not support a serial model for sensory processing, but they could be accommodated by a parallel model for sensory processing together with a serial self-terminating model for processes involving comparison of elements of a display with items in memory. Further analyses of both frequency and reaction time data support the assumption that the distributions of observed detection response measures represent mixtures of true detections, guesses, and misperceptions.     

A component model for stimulus variables in discrimination learning

A general function is derived describing the conditioning of a single stimulus component in a discriminative situation. This function, together with the combinatorial rules of statistical learning theory [5, 12], generates empirically testable formulas for learning of classical two-alternative discriminations, probabilistic discriminations, and discriminations based on the outcomes of preceding trials in partial reinforcement experiments.The researches on which this paper is based were facilitated by a grant from the National Science Foundation.     

Activity anorexia: An interplay between basic and applied behavior analysis

The relationship between basic research with nonhumans and applied behavior analysis is illustrated by our work on activity anorexia. When rats are fed one meal a day and allowed to run on an activity wheel, they run excessively, stop eating, and die of starvation. Convergent evidence, from several different research areas, indicates that the behavior of these animals and humans who self-starve is functionally similar. A biobehavioral theory of activity anorexia is presented that details the cultural contingencies, behavioral processes, and physiology of anorexia. Diagnostic criteria and a three-stage treatment program for activity-based anorexia are outlined. The animal model permits basic research on anorexia that for practical and ethical reasons cannot be conducted with humans. Thus, basic research can have applied importance.