(Press-News.org) Leaders often use rousing speeches to evoke powerful emotions, and those emotions may predict when a group will commit an act of violence or terrorism, according to new research published in the journal Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression. Analysis of speeches delivered by government, activist and terrorist leaders found that leaders' expressions of anger, contempt and disgust spiked immediately before their group committed an act of violence.
"When leaders express a combination of anger, contempt and disgust in their speeches, it seems to be instrumental in inciting a group to act violently," said David Matsumoto, professor of psychology at San Francisco State University.
As part of a five-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense's Minerva Initiative, Matsumoto and colleagues studied the transcripts of speeches delivered by the leaders of ideologically motivated groups over the past 100 years. The analysis included such speeches as Osama bin Laden's remarks leading up to the bombings of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The researchers analyzed the pattern of emotions conveyed when leaders spoke about their rival group and examined speeches given at three points in time before a specific act of aggression. They compared the results with the content of speeches delivered by leaders whose groups engaged in nonviolent acts of resistance such as rallies and protests.
Among leaders of groups that committed aggressive acts, there was a significant increase in expressions of anger, contempt and disgust from 3 to 6 months prior to the group committing an act of violence. For nonviolent groups, expressions of anger, contempt and disgust decreased from 3 to 6 months prior to the group staging an act of peaceful resistance.
Matsumoto says the findings suggest a leader's emotional tone may cause the rest of the group to share those emotions, which then motivates the group to take part in violent actions.
"For groups that committed acts of violence, there seemed to be this saturation of anger, contempt and disgust. That combination seems to be a recipe for hatred that leads to violence," Matsumoto said.
Anger, contempt and disgust may be particularly important drivers of violent behavior because they are often expressed in response to moral violations, says Matsumoto, and when an individual feels these emotions about a person or group, they often feel that their opponent is unchangeable and inherently bad.
"Understanding the preceding factors that lead to terrorist attacks and violent events may help predict these incidents or prevent them occurring in the first place," Matsumoto said. "Studying the emotions expressed by leaders is just one piece of the puzzle but it could be a helpful predictor of terrorist attacks."
###
This study was one of the first seven projects funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Minerva Initiative. The Initiative was established in 2008 to fund social science research on areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy.
"Emotions expressed in speeches by leaders of ideologically motivated groups predict aggression" was published online on Aug. 28, 2012 in the journal Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression. Co-authors include Hyisung C. Hwang, an SF State graduate (M.A. '08) and research scientist at Humintell LLC, and Mark G. Frank of State University of Buffalo, The State University of New York.
David Matsumoto is professor of psychology at San Francisco State University and director of Humintell LLC.
END
Small patches of ice could make up at most five to ten percent of material in walls of Shackleton crater.
Scientists using the Mini-RF radar on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have estimated the maximum amount of ice likely to be found inside a permanently shadowed lunar crater located near the moon's South Pole. As much as five to ten percent of material, by weight, could be patchy ice, according to the team of researchers led by Bradley Thomson at Boston University's Center for Remote Sensing, in Mass.
"These terrific results from the Mini-RF team contribute ...
Leipzig. More than 250 international scientists will be meeting in the first week of September in Leipzig to share their experiences on the latest methods and applications using stable isotopes. Stable isotopes are a tool that can be used in a wide range of areas in natural sciences and medicine as, with their help, it is possible to establish the origin of substances, and dynamic processes can be made visible. For example, it is possible to establish where a red wine really comes from, the cause of water damage, how the concentration of carbon dioxide at the South Pole ...
As the nation's fastest-growing immigrant group, Asian Americans are likely to be a key constituency in the 2012 presidential election, but this community is far from a monolithic voting bloc, says Russell Jeung, associate professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University.
Jeung has published an analysis of Asian American voting patterns in the 2008 presidential election, including a breakdown of nine ethnic groups and 11 religious affiliations that make up the Asian American vote.
"Usually people act in a racial bloc or a religious bloc," Jeung ...
In the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains two closely related species of mice share a habitat and a genetic lineage, but have very different social lives. The California mouse (Peromyscus californicus) is characterized by a lifetime of monogamy; the deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) is sexually promiscuous.
Researchers at the University of California Berkeley recently showed how these differences in sexual behavior impact the bacteria hosted by each species as well as the diversity of the genes that control immunity. The results were published in the May 2012 edition ...
(CHICAGO)-- Assessment of sexual function should be incorporated into cardiovascular risk evaluation for all men, regardless of the presence or absence of known cardiovascular disease, according to Dr. Ajay Nehra, lead author of a report by the Princeton Consensus (Expert Panel) Conference, a collaboration of 22 international, multispecialty researchers. Nehra is vice chairperson, professor and director of Men's Health in the Department of Urology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a red flag in younger men, less than 55 years of ...
This release is available in German.
The analyses of an international team of researchers led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, show that the genetic variation of Denisovans was extremely low, suggesting that although they were present in large parts of Asia, their population was never large for long periods of time. In addition, a comprehensive list documents the genetic changes that set apart modern humans from their archaic relatives. Some of these changes concern genes that are associated with brain function ...
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Bacteria in hyenas' scent glands may be the key controllers of communication.
The results, featured in the current issue of Scientific Reports, show a clear relationship between the diversity of hyena clans and the distinct microbial communities that reside in their scent glands, said Kevin Theis, the paper's lead author and Michigan State University postdoctoral researcher.
"A critical component of every animal's behavioral repertoire is an effective communication system," said Theis, who co-authored the study with Kay Holekamp, MSU zoologist. ...
KANSAS CITY, MO—The skin, the blood, and the lining of the gut—adult stem cells replenish them daily. But stem cells really show off their healing powers in planarians, humble flatworms fabled for their ability to rebuild any missing body part. Just how adult stem cells build the right tissues at the right times and places has remained largely unanswered.
Now, in a study published in an upcoming issue of Development, researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research describe a novel system that allowed them to track stem cells in the flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea. ...
FINDINGS:
The Affordable Care Act will fund more community health centers, making primary care more accessible to the underserved. But this may not necessarily lead to better access to subspecialty care.
In a new study, researchers from the David Geffen School of Medicine and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program at UCLA and colleagues investigated the ways in which community health centers access subspecialty care. They identified six major models and determined which of those six offered the best access:
Tin cup ...
DURHAM, N.C. -- By measuring the unique properties of light on the scale of a single atom, researchers from Duke University and Imperial College, London, believe that they have characterized the limits of metal's ability in devices that enhance light.
This field is known as plasmonics because scientists are trying to take advantage of plasmons, electrons that have been "excited" by light in a phenomenon that produces electromagnetic field enhancement. The enhancement achieved by metals at the nanoscale is significantly higher than that achievable with any other material.
Until ...
