Deradicalizing Detained Terrorists

Deradicalization of terrorists constitutes a critical component of the global “war on terror.” Unfortunately, little is known about deradicalization programs, and evidence for their effectiveness is derived solely from expert impressions and potentially flawed recidivism rates. We present the first empirical assessment of one such program: the Sri Lankan rehabilitation program for former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (a terrorist organization that operated in Sri Lanka until their defeat in 2009). We offer evidence that deradicalization efforts that provided beneficiaries with sustained mechanisms for earning personal significance significantly reduced extremism after 1 year (Study 1). We also found that upon release, beneficiaries expressed lower levels of extremism than their counterparts in the community (Study 2). These findings highlight the critical role of personal significance in deradicalization efforts, offer insights into the workings of deradicalization, and suggest practical methods for improving deradicalization programs worldwide.     

Support for Leader's Decisions in Conflict and Negotiation: Women Do Not Benefit From Relevant Expertise While Men Do

In the present research, we examined the role of leaders' domain‐specific expertise and gender as affecting individuals' evaluation of proposals related to intergroup conflict. Across three studies, conducted in two different conflict‐related contexts (Israeli‐Palestinian conflict and the refugee crisis in Europe), we showed that men and women do not equally benefit from domain‐specific expertise. Having high (compared to low) domain‐specific expertise positively affected participants' attitudes towards the proposal when its author was a man but not when she was a woman. We further demonstrate that specific characteristics of the proposal (i.e., security relevance) and of the participants (i.e., level of sexism) affect reactions to different negotiation proposals. Our findings suggest that even when women acquire relevant knowledge and experience, they do not benefit from them as much as men. One implication of these findings is that training and enhancing women's expertise may not be enough to eliminate gender bias.     

Agents of Prosociality: Agency Affirmation Promotes Mutual Prosocial Tendencies and Behavior Among Conflicting Groups

Members of conflicting groups are motivated to restore their ingroup's agency, leading to antisocial tendencies against the outgroup. The present research tested the hypothesis that affirming conflicting groups' agency would increase their members' mutual prosociality. The effectiveness of agency affirmation was demonstrated in three contexts of conflict between groups: Switzerland and the EU following the 2014 referendum (Study 1), Israelis and Palestinians (Study 2), and Israeli rightists and leftists (Study 3). Study 1 found that in a nonconflictual context Swiss participants prioritized their moral (prosocial) over agentic goals, yet in the context of conflict with the EU, they prioritized their agentic over moral goals. This “primacy‐of‐agency” effect, however, was eliminated once their ingroup's agency was affirmed. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated the positive effect of agency affirmation on prosociality among Israelis referring to Palestinians and Israeli rightists and leftists referring to the adversarial political camp. This effect was mediated by group members' readiness to relinquish some power for the sake of morality. Pointing to the importance of the affirmation's specific content, Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that morality affirmation failed to increase prosociality. As such, the present research puts forward a promising strategy to reduce hostility and promote prosociality between conflicting groups.     

The synergistic effect of prosociality and physical attractiveness on mate desirability

Mate selection requires a prioritization and joint evaluation of different traits present or absent in potential mates. Herein, we focus on two such traits – physical attractiveness and prosociality – and examine how they jointly shape impressions of overall desirability. We report on two related experiments which make use of an innovative methodology combining large samples of raters and target persons (i.e., stimuli) and information on targets’ behaviour in economic games representing altruistic behaviour (Experiment 1) and trustworthiness (Experiment 2), two important facets of prosociality. In accordance with predictions derived from a cognitive perspective on mate choice and sexual strategies theory, the results show that the impact of being prosocial on an individual's overall desirability was increased further by them also being physically attractive, but only in long-term mating contexts. Furthermore, we show that men's mate preferences for certain prosocial traits (i.e., trustworthiness) were more context-dependent than women's due to differential evolutionary pressures for ancestral men and women.     

Hybridized Indigenous Healing in the Kyrgyz Republic: Helping Survivors of Violence

ABSTRACT

Harmful consequences of civil unrest in 2010, in the Southern region of the Kyrgyz Republic in Osh, continue to have an impact on communities to the present day. One of the most significant effects has been numerous undiagnosed cases of rape and other types of gender-based violence (GBV) that occurred during the interethnic conflict. The true prevalence rate of GBV cases is still unknown. For example, according to official data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (2011), there were only seven cases of rape during the conflict; however, crisis center reports documented 322 rapes (Molchanova, 2016 Molchanova, E. (2016). Okazanie psihologicheskoi pomoshci licam, postradavshim ot genderno-gonasiliya vo vremya krizisov i chrezvichainih situacii. Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic: AltynPrint Publishing House.  [Google Scholar]). Cultural norms dictate that women who experience GBV hide their “shame,” which is why only a small percentage of victims with PTSD symptoms resulting from GBV seek out services from professionals, such as from crisis centers, psychologists and psychiatrists, and police. Indigenous healers are often the first and only stop for help-seeking. However, the influences of diverse religious beliefs and practices as well as the development of Western-style helping methods in the Kyrgyz Republic have shaped the practice of traditional healing. This hybridization, which is a process of including religious and even medical practices into traditional healing, started in the middle of the 1990s, and now, the extensive networks of traditional healers in the Kyrgyz Republic often combine traditional rituals with Islamic prayer, herbal treatment, massage, and other techniques. This article explores the hybridization of indigenous healing in the Kyrgyz Republic as a consequence of a variety of social transformations, and, as a result of polymorphism, the complexity and clinical variability of posttraumatic symptoms in Kyrgyz cultural settings.     

Children's Sensitivity to Cost and Reward in Decision Making across Distinct Domains of Probability,Effort, and Delay

Many behavioral paradigms used to study individuals' decision‐making tendencies do not capture the decision components that contribute to behavioral outcomes, such as differentiating decisions driven toward a reward from decisions driven away from a cost. This study tested a novel decision‐making task in a sample of 403 children (age 9 years) enrolled in an ongoing longitudinal study. The task consisted of three blocks representing distinct cost domains (delay, probability, and effort), wherein children were presented with a deck of cards, each of which consisted of a reward and a cost. Children elected whether to accept or skip the card at each trial. Reward–cost pairs were selected by using an adaptive algorithm to strategically sample the decision space in the fewest number of trials. Using person‐specific regression models, decision preferences were quantified for each cost domain with respect to general tolerance (intercept), as well as parameters estimating the effect of incremental increases in reward or cost on the probability of accepting a card. Results support the relative independence of decision‐making tendencies across cost domains, with moderate correlations observed between tolerance for delay and effort. Specific decision parameters showed unique associations with cognitive and behavioral measures including executive function, academic motivation, anxiety, and hyperactivity. Evidence indicates that sensitivity to reward is an important factor in incentivizing decisions to work harder or wait longer. Dissociating the relative contributions of reward and cost sensitivity in multiple domains may facilitate the identification of heterogeneity in suboptimal decision making. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are Decisions Made by Group Representatives More Risk Averse? The Effect of Sense of Responsibility

We tested the hypothesis that a sense of responsibility drives group representatives' decisions to be more risk averse compared with decisions made by individuals. The hypothesis was supported when the monetary considerations (i.e., payoff inequality and the magnitude effect) were controlled for in the potential gain domain as well as in the potential loss domain. Evidence showed that this is because the group representatives were concerned about how they would view themselves (e.g., guilt and self‐blame) and also how they would be viewed by others (i.e., to avoid being blamed and looked down upon by others). This study provided new insights into understanding group representatives' decision making under risk. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.