On a cold early winter 2014, the American academic Nafees Hamid was invited for tea on the second floor of the Barcelona home of a young Moroccan. It ‘started well enough; she sat at the kitchen table, amiable chat in French during two acquaintances of the guests in the living room was nearby. In the middle of the conversation, but things have taken a turn. “He started saying things like, ‘Why should we trust all Westerners’?” Remember Hamid. “Why should we not kill any of them? Why should I trust you-you yourself are an American sitting here? Why should I even can from my apartment? ‘” The man just left the kitchen and went to talk with other living in Arabic, a language in which Hamid is not fluent. But he always heard a word he knew: Munafiq-a term that means most of hypocrites; seen in the worst case, an “enemy of Islam.” “I who speak to me, and that this is in the wrong direction,” says Hamid, who was to know the Moroccan hoping to participate in a study. The quietly as possible, he opened the window on the second floor and jumped out, muffled his fall downwardly through the awning of a fruit stand. spiking adrenaline, he has screwed a few blocks for the safety of a crowded train station. Field research on Jihad has its dangers. Hamid, now 36, had come home for the know-from a questionnaire that had filled so that the Moroccans at home to extremist tendencies. The effort was part of a larger project to discover the roots of radicalization and to fight someone or cause or kill for their faith could. But the work goes on, part of a larger company from an unusual network of political scientists and international experts, many of whom have to flee their heartbreaking stories of dangerous or risky situations in pursuit of innovative navigational search. Recently, the group published the first brain imaging studies of radicalized young people and adults at risk of radicalization. The private research company behind the work of the group, Artis International, officially based in Scottsdale, Ariz., But it is not actually a base. Its scientists and analysts who work from remote locations, a development series of governments in financing, the US military and academic institutions. The main objective of the society is to advance peace out what violent people and be motivated as reorient towards the resolution of conflicts, or prevent violent will, in the first place. Read: These researchers confuse the five different identities to go Undercover with Islamic extremists and the extreme right. Here’s what they found out that the media always so close to the authors and their possible supporters. Much of Artis’ work in the behavioral sciences, and informed by simple research methods such as surveys rooted. But the researchers also Artis the limits of the social sciences, who pushed through everything from experimental studies on psychological testing Armed Forces held on extremists. His research has lead researcher on the front of the war against ISIS, restless territories in North Africa, and more recently in Eastern Europe and cyberspace. Even Artis standards, recent brain imaging studies conducted in the work of Barcelona that Hamid had a jump window were for the level of risk, the researchers undertook significant. Scientists wanted to find hard evidence neurological former social scientific knowledge and to support the widespread assumption: the extremists may be influenced by their peers, and later that social exclusion, that beliefs can harden an extremist in the grass. In order to collect this type of information, researchers as Hamid had to scrub the streets of Barcelona for extremists; take any convincing hundreds of their surveys; and then, after most identify radicalized, coax them to undergo more brain scans at a hospital campus sea. What could go wrong? Origins: A search invalidate the roots of the Barcelona brain studies until 2005 back to absorb than the US government still have the 9/11 attacks. Richard Davis, who later found on Artis cooperation would be International two years, he had recently started as a political adviser working for the Board of the US National Security (the president’s relations) and was alarmed how the government came in its anti-terrorism strategies. “It ‘s become clear that many of the decisions that were with terrorism have been assembled important decisions they made no scientific proof field-based support with little,” he says. A central problem is that empirical studies extremism requires access to materials that governments may not want to share, such as transcripts of intercepted communications or interrogation, explains Liesbeth van der Heide, scientific assistant at the International Center for combating terrorism in The Hague. Ideally, studies also include access to the extremists themselves, who are more difficult to obtain. “There are not many of them,” he says. And those who manage to carry out violent plans “tend to die in a fight or flight.” Thus, most of the research on terrorism has tended to secondary sources in the media reports, for example, or other books or published articles to draw on, which, he says, in “repeat a sounding board, what others have He said. ” A full report was published in 2006 by 6,041 peer-reviewed studies on terrorism 1971-2003, it found that only 3% to empirical data is based. “Spare Thought” article in which the authors have discussed a problem theoretically or offered an expression accounted for 96%. This alerts Davis. He believed that every government needed interested in curbing the violence is no longer thought pieces, but a scientific understanding of people who are committed, based on primary sources. The teaching already doing this type of work were rare exceptions, but both Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer turned forensic and clinical psychiatrists, and Scott Atran, an anthropologist, has had a lot of time with members of groups jihadist militants Afghan Mujahedin issued Al-Qaeda. Davis, who was looking for the fall of 2005, and in 2007 he was convinced that she dedicated to him in the power reduction to search the floor to help start a company. They called Artis, Latin for “art”, “skill” or, in some uses, “science.” In the same year, the Artis financing put together by a number of institutions, including the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research of the US National Science Foundation and the French National Center for Scientific Research to investigate the causes of political violence. They decided to focus on a social psychological concept as “sacred values” -a person deeper, non-negotiable values that would set the stage for their brain scans Barcelona. had developed sacred values in 1990, social psychologist Jonathan Baron at the University of Pennsylvania and Philip Tetlock at the University of California, Berkeley, the concept of “sacred values” to counter the economic theories that suggested something at a price. Some values (such as human life, justice, civil rights, the environment or religious devotion) people could be so sacred that they are not ready would act against them, not the cost or the follower roller. to study Atran, the values for decades through the lens of anthropology, the application of this concept started on the investigation of violent extremists after 9/11 was. It occurred to him then that perhaps the authors of suicide bombings had in defending the core values of the rest of the world, with a view had committed. By 2007 Atran had pushed this line of thought in a series of articles on Jihad terrorists. His colleagues Artis found evidence that material incentives can backfire when opponents to the heart problems of a dispute (as the land and nation) and see “sacred.” The team Artis continues the connection between the sacred values and violence in 2014 improved when a comment of director of President Barack Obama’s National Intelligence, James Clapper Jr., gave them a renewed sense of purpose. In an interview Clapper said the US ISIS militants had underestimated because a fight prediction group was “an imponderable.” In response to this comment, Atran and his colleagues have decided that they want to measure the sacred values that use the militants on their knowledge to fight what they believed, in fact, was ponderable. ‘In the same year, they have research networks based on the investigations in Spain and Morocco responsible for the 2004 Madrid bombings. It was found that people were more willing to sacrifice their lives if they were part of a close-knit group who shared their sacred values. They started the basis for a separate study to define what eventually published in 2017 that found among members of the various forces that fought against ISIS, the ones that most agreed to fight and die for abstract values rather prioritize national unity, heritage and religion of these values through their social groups, such as family. However, by 2014, most of this work came from what was said in the interviews or surveys fighters. Atran was convinced that the sacred values were so deep and strong that the brain must develop differently than it handles decisions on more trivial issues. But to really understand the relationships between nerve pathways to sacrifice those values and the desire for them, Atran and his colleagues believed that they needed to get a look inside the heads extremists. Barcelona’s Raval district, recruitment is a maze of graffiti sprayed buildings and narrow streets. In recent years, the chic galleries and boutique clothing stores have begun between halal butchers and Arabic libraries to rise, emptied the filling of the boarded-up window by Voted waves, which mainly devastated immigrant neighborhood after the 2008 financial crisis . the venue has also become the epicenter for a number of plots discovered and is carefully monitored by national and international bodies intelligence for jihadist activities. This made it an attractive place for Hamid and his colleagues to recruit radicalized men for their study of the inaugural brain extremists. The researchers Artis will be using a combination of behavioral tests and brain scans in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI) to see if an extremist hardened sacred for his “fight” values, was vulnerable to peer influence. In early 2014, the group chose a small bag of extremists in Barcelona Pakistani community to achieve the goal that the authorities had persecuted for years. I have set their sights on 20- to 30-something first-generation Pakistani men who openly supported Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Al Qaeda affiliate based in South Asia. Initially recruitment strategy Hamid was regularly in becoming and surprising neighborhood coffee to read articles or books that could have imagined a call jihad, hoping that someone would come closer. “This is actually not working,” he says. “It had to be much more effective transparent.” So he started to look for Urdu speakers seemed they had time on their hands. When he saw likely candidates to chat with friends on the benches or tea of the many outdoor terraces in the Raval district in Hamid sip would only approach with caution. “I did not look as if I were a whole population cliché … I also think, just do not want to be slapped in the face.” He explained that he was a psychologist surveys of people highly values about the religion, culture and politics through. After he entertained for a while ‘, inviting them to take a survey to assess the level of radicalization of a person, based on three specific criteria: the support of jihadist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba; their endorsement of violence against civilians; and finally, to support their willingness to participate in jihad or armed. The survey took 30 to 60 minutes completed and paid Hamid anyone took € 20 ($22) for their time. mount radicalized been considered for the study, a person that all three criteria, in which case, Hamid would call to ask if their friends may wish to also participate in the survey. An American Pakistani, Hamid was extremely sensitive to the fact that people could feel approaching profile. (And indeed breached a number of people who were gathered nonradicalized the thrust of the survey questions, he said.) But he also acknowledged the scientific importance of this particular population of focus. “We wanted to study the radicalization associated with violent Sunni jihadists that at the time we conducted our research, the most important international terrorist threatens to tell,” he explains. It made sense to focus on the recruitment of Pakistani people (and Moroccan population for a follow-up of budding radicals brains), because they represent the two largest Sunni groups in the area. It “pulled in terrorist groups in the Barcelona region most people came from these two ethnic groups,” he says. The Artis team also believes that it is scientifically important was to study groups that are not university-a were represented student population so excessive in the study of cognitive science to know that they have their acronym: Know formed by industrialized, wealthy society and democratic (weird). “Struggling studying sacred values and the will and die in two separate ethnic groups with very different cultural backgrounds, we were able to generalize examine our claims,” said Hamid. To protect yourself, however, the researchers assigned each volunteer is the extremists and the name of the study of a number. They also tried to ask in the polls to avoid questions that could have been put into law difficult terrain. “I would say, do not say committed [volunteers] me of a crime, because this is Will involve me, ‘” says Hamid. Instead, researchers are hypothetical questions to the participants beliefs and values of judgment, rather than what a person had done or do with them intentional. By the end of 2015, Hamid and his team had convinced 146 people to participate in the survey. He and his colleagues then with the most radicalized groups 45 men who met all three criteria give their victims a fee of € 100 ($120) come to a laboratory for the rest of the ongoing study. Thirty men, aged 18 to 36, agreed. In the laboratory of the Autonomous University of Barcelona fMRI lab is a gray building blocks in the basement, lined with green grass stains, which, read on sunny days as students for books and picnic. There, a team led by Clara Pretus, a neuroscientist in his mid-20s, these 30 people sat through the successive phases of the study. The men came to the laboratory in groups of three or four. After a brief orientation would facilitate their nervous start, the brain scans. Men lie prone on the bed of the fMRI machine that supports them in a tube. They contributed to a video screen mounted glasses that you should write a statement in Urdu Flick project, and “The Prophet Muhammad can never be a caricature” or “should never be abused the Koran”, for example. Any statement touched on a subject that belonged to the group based on previous surveys and interviews. Scientists knew that the statements aligned with the single sacred values and based on the same nonsacred previous polls, and they wanted to know how their brain would react to each. To find out, they asked the men to rate how willing they would fight on a scale of 1 to 7 and to die for any clarification. The camera snapped pictures of their brains than men, a portable device used to make their assessments. After going through all the instructions, Pretus offered them the chance to shoot again, but check this time, would be able to see their responses presumably provided by in comparison with those “equal” like them. This peer group was the men presented as “the opinions of the Pakistani community in Barcelona.” But in reality, researchers had made the feedback for the sake of the experiment. In some cases, the researchers found that the responses of men to appear align. In other cases, their “colleagues” appeared to be more inclined to fight certain values and die. In another, less. After they are an opportunity to go through the slides for the last time, this time out of date and their willingness to evaluate machine to fight the men had seen the feedback of its so-called peer group of their distinction, and any statement even die once. The scientists wanted to see if the answers of its “peer group” would change to make their first reactions. In cases where someone has changed his mind, scientists from the fMRI images would come back to see what was going on in his brain when he checked the peer-to information that has forced eventually to reconsider its initial response. After having completed the final task, the men whose name they never learned, were free to take their money and go, disappear in the streets. Insights in the following weeks, the team analyzed the data. As expected, greater willingness of men to their sacred values showed to fight and die for their nonsacred values. They were more interesting, what parts of the brain involved seemed with every question. If the participants evaluated their readiness for its sacred values of sacrifice (defense of the Koran, for example), the parts of the brain to counseling associated (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus and parietal cortex, which Pretus describes as parts of fronto – parietal or “executive control network”) was far less active than if evaluated to kill for their availability issues and die (maintained using less as the availability of halal food in public schools). Dr. Oscar Vilarroya leading neuroscientists in the team, says this shows that people do not think about their sacred values, “Li single act” While this may seem like common sense, it was the discovery is important because almost all the sacred values of exploring up to this point he had to surveys and other tools were based, the judges what people say, not related to brain activity. “When you take a social survey, you can lie,” says Atran. “But brain patterns can not be forged.” It ‘was the first published study to scan the brains of extremists. Not when the values they consider most important to them, what confirmed Atran long believed to know the extremists essentially consider: that the deradicalization programs focused on extremist beliefs through logic and reasoning, or the change from material considerations and incentives , they are doomed to failure. Others have had to explain this topic did because programs such as France and wages civics- focused program called deradicalization, at the end of 2016 for life, had flopped within a year. Here was the brain research to support the case. It ‘was, however, a ray of hope for an alternative approach gave a result of the study are available: connect the areas of the brain consultancy lights when extremists realized their “colleagues” were not willing to use violence to defend a value particular. And if given the opportunity, post-brain scan their first answers to the question of reviewing “How much are you willing to fight for this value and die?” Many of them adjusted their better assessment align with their peers. Hamid says this shows that groups such as family and peer friends, play a stronger role in determining whether an extremist violence will be. You will never be able to get the views or core values to change the extremist, he says, but you can convince yourself that the person or violence is not an acceptable way to defend these values. This discovery, Atran believes could have a real impact on governments and organizations in the anti-terror work. “The lesson … not trying to undermine their values,” says Atran. Criticism and real-world applications, “Try to show other ways for their values to commit. They are” The team has been published in the Royal Society Open Science Journal in June 2019 received a flurry of attention, mainly by social psychologists and other scientists interested in human motivation. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University and author of the controversial book The softening of the American spirit, Atran and his colleagues on their “ecological validity” praised as relevant studies to real world problems. “Often to use the simplest questions are the students,” he says. “But Scott, at great expense and with great difficulty made me has always been committed to ecological validity to study the people who are actually involved in extreme behavior, including terrorist behavior.” But scientists with a background in neuroscience, including Jay Van Bavel, associate professor of psychology and neural science at New York University and Patricia Churchland, which examines the intersection of brain activity and philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, expressed more caution. Churchland review the study for the Royal Society. In its assessment, saying, it warned that brain regions and neural networks which attracted scientists their findings are not yet well understood and have been linked with a number of functions through the simple connection “advice.” Atran points out that he and his colleagues unlisted reflect the connection between the parts of the brain and behavior. On the contrary, they tried to model the brain and found that in line with the results of behavioral studies. (He adds the usual science disclaimer: “All results are preliminary, and we look for replication.”) Meanwhile, as the research academia weighs, the additional studies brain Team Artis published on radicalization. And the US military and foreign governments are already plotting how they could use the results. Since the Barcelona work started earlier, Davis and Atran have worldwide by security agents fielding calls were looking for advice on the management to employ people radicalized and how they apply their research to more problems recent, as criminal gangs spread misinformation and use weak governance under the center of the pandemic covid19. Davis insists that its researchers directly every state wants the fate of suspects or pinned nation Security in a will of them military or not driving clear advice. But he is happy to share his colleagues to send around the world their research and even on projects. And in a twist, the US Air Force Academy in Colorado contacted in 2016 to collaborate and try to study as a cadet of the sacred values and identity of the various groups to influence their willingness to fight and die. took greater risks than their counterparts in virtual combat situations in April this year, the Academy, with the help Artis’, completed a small study we found that the Cadets, considering both religion and sacred value strongly identified as a member of a religious group. A key takeaway for Lieut. Colonel Chad C. Tossell, the research director of the Center’s Warfighter school effectiveness that the “spiritual power” of the soldiers is as important as the weapons and the technologies they use. could be a first draft of the study, he says the simulation research has developed “for the selection and training of benefit.” Davis is the constant interest encourages receives from governments, from the United States, Kenya in Kosovo. , The United States military uses in financing help as the company over the next sets limits his interest to find out how and why the collapse of democratic institutions and how to use cyberspace for people and their values divide Harden, transforming nonsacred values in a sacred. Artis ‘work is primarily through scientific research base camp’, and gives the policy makers of the facts they need to respond to the problems of the day in a responsible way, says Davis. “We discuss what is the importance of empirical evidence, but it is better to have it than not having it.” -With reporting by Melissa Godin and Madeleine Roache / London illustration Picture copyright by Matthieu Bourel in time
understanding inside the dangerous mission that tick and extremists Makes How to change their minds
