Introduction

In January following a request from Presidential Science Advisor, John Marburger, APA’s Science Directorate initiated a call for examples of research vignettes that might inform (directly or indirectly) strategies to deal with the aftermath of the nations terrorist attacks. Over the past three months many in the field have rallied and APA's Senior Scientist, Susan Brandon, has taken charge of archiving and disseminating that information (see below). We hope that others of you will be sufficiently moved by the range of issues addressed to see the relevance of your own research in this context and to consider providing an example of your own. Dr. Marburger and his staff at OSTP have expressed appreciation for these examples and they are clearly shaping his public presentation of the issue. For example, at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science Colloquium on Science and Technology Policy last week, Dr. Marburger's keynote address was dominated by references for the need to understand the social and behavioral sciences.

Each of these vignettes is organized to answer a question by stating the problem, providing examples of relevant research and then providing implications/applications for counter-terrorism.

How can we predict level of aggression in violent interpersonal assaults?

How can we maintain attention and observant behavior in luggage screeners?

How should we design building egress procedures?

What determines whether a person helps a stranger in distress?

What kind of person becomes a follower in a terrorist group? What kind of person is likely to be a leader in such a group?

What can be done to help people cope with the ongoing threat of terrorism?

How can we best negotiate with people outside our own culture?

How do we understand the cultural determinants of decision making processes?

How can we best design computer interfaces so that people may attend to important aspects of information presented there?

How can we train people to act effectively in situations that involve high risk, without exposing them to danger during the training procedures?

How do we measure personality variables in people from other cultures?

How do we measure attitudes that a person may be trying to hide?

How can we understand the complex dynamics of terrorism?

How should we train military personnel to act effectively in situations where they must serve both as military force and peace-keepers?

What can be done to reduce the motivation of others to engage in terrorist violence against the US and its allies?

How can we detect when someone is lying?

How can we predict the likelihood of imminent conflict in international or ethnopolitical negotiations?

What is the usefulness of offender profiling methods to instances of attacks by terrorists?

How can we most effectively assess whether people are appropriate for specific jobs, including security and public safety positions?

How can we gain accurate estimates of the likelihood of future attacks by terrorists from information that comes from sources that are divergent and even contradictory?

What can behavioral scientists tell us about the worldviews and value orientations of people in the Middle East?

How can we develop a single communication system that can be used by various emergency response groups such as police, fire, medical and military units?

How can we use technology to help us read through reams of electronic documents to find relevant information?

How can we integrate information coming from various sources in crisis situations?

Statement of the problem: How can we predict level of aggression in violent interpersonal assaults?

Relevant research: Empirical research has shown that individuals who believe that their identity is unknown are more likely to behave aggressively. [1] Cross-cultural surveys have shown that this applies also to instances of serious violence: warriors who use body or face paint are more likely to kill, mutilate and torture captured prisoners than warriors who do not use such masking. [2]  Analysis of violent interpersonal assaults in Northern Ireland from 1994 to 1996 found that the use of disguises by attackers was significantly more associated with aggression at the scene of the crime and with more punitive treatment of the victims. Disguised attackers also showed a wider range of aggressive behavior. [3]

Implications for counter-terrorism: Measures that make it harder for terrorists to act anonymously should decrease the degree and range of aggressive behaviors. For example, video recording devices (with real time transmission and storage capabilities) aboard airplanes and other public transportation that might be either targets or tools of terrorists, may serve to inhibit aggression by revealing the attacker. In the instance of suicide terrorists, subsequent public access to such records, and making public the connection between these records and terrorists’ families and cohorts, might also serve to violate some sense of anonymity. The effectiveness of this latter strategy would depend, of course, on the extent to which the terrorist’s family or community encourages the act or condemns it. If the terrorist is viewed as a hero, then selected aspects of such recordings that depict the terrorist acting “unheroically” could be made public and thereby embarrass the offender’s family or community.

Statement of the problem: How can we gain accurate estimates of the likelihood of future attacks by terrorists by from information that comes from sources that are divergent and even contradictory?

Relevant research: Effective policies for counter-terrorism must be built on accurate information about the relevant domestic and foreign environments. Since so many variables are in play -- relating to dozens of countries and organizations -- different experts will need to be consulted about the probability of just the events in their domain of competence. Many of the events can be expected to be complex, for example, concerning the probability of a conjunction of two or more circumstances, or the probability of one circumstance assuming another. (To illustrate, one such complex event involves the probability of a Hizbollah attack on Israel assuming that Arafat is arrested by the Israelis.) The uncertainty inherent in such information calls for its expression in terms of probability or odds. However, human – and even, expert – judgement is often poor when it comes to estimations of the probability of events. [4]

Decision makers in Washington can thus expect to be faced with a large number of intelligence assessments from different individuals about many events, simple and complex. The difficulty is that the same or similar events will be evaluated by multiple agents, often with conflicting probabilities attached. Such conflict can arise even if no two experts evaluate exactly the same event. The laws of probability are sufficiently constraining to render different sets of judgment incompatible with each other even if no single event is common to them. To arrive at a unified and coherent picture of the uncertainty structure of the environment, it would therefore be useful to have a method of aggregating the probability estimates of a multiplicity of experts making assessments over events involving overlapping sets of variables.

An optimization algorithm has been developed [5] that accepts probability estimates from diverse judges, and returns corrected probabilities that are as close as feasibly possible to the original estimates. The algorithm has been tested on large problems involving dozens of variables, including the prediction of financial markets. [6] The objective accuracy of the estimates generated by this algorithm has been shown to be superior to the accuracy of the input estimates. In this sense, the algorithm extracts added insight about the environment that is present only in aggregate opinion, not in the judgment of individuals.

Implications for counter-terrorism: The method can return genuine probabilities for all the events in play --- that is, numerical estimates of chance that are consistent with the axioms of probability. The method can be applied even when the assessments of a single expert are probabilistically inconsistent. The method should can allow experts to express their relative confidence in some judgments compared to others, and it allow decision-makers to weight the opinion of some experts more than others.

Statement of the problem: How can we maintain attention and observant behavior in luggage screeners?

Relevant research: Psychologists have found that people’s observing behavior is controlled by the extent to which they find the object that they are looking for. [7] If we want baggage inspectors to look carefully, then they must at least occasionally detect the kinds of objects they are looking for. If they never find such objects, then they will stop looking very carefully; if they do find those objects, they will look more carefully. [8]

Implications for counter-terrorism: A computer software system for the projection onto the inspector’s scanning screen of fictitious objects in baggage or an entirely fictitious bag, called “Threat Image Projection” (TIP), has been installed in some airport security systems. [9] Besides maintaining vigilance, the rate of detection of planted objects can be used to provide an estimate of how well inspectors are doing. The Federal Aviation Administration plans to rely on TIP to measure the performance of individual screeners and to certify screening companies. An important question that has not been resolved – and which must take into account what is known about human behavior – is what performance standards the screeners must meet for a screening company to be certified or maintain its certification.

Statement of the problem: How should we design building egress procedures? [10]

Relevant research: Data have been collected since 1970 about building evacuation facilities and procedures, including those appropriate for people with disabilities. [11] For example, there were extensive field studies of crowd movement at facilities used for public assembly at the Olympic Games in 1976 and 1988. Formulas have been developed for calculating total evacuation time for a multistory building of a given population. Often, however, these have assumed that in an emergency, people perform in a sustained fashion at the best levels observed in nonemergency conditions. From studies of people's behavior in fire emergencies, [12] it is known that this is not a good assumption because it does not take into account changes in human behavior in an emergency.

The February 1993 evacuation of the World Trade Center's 110-story towers offered a special opportunity to analyze egress in a large building under emergency conditions. Those data showed that many people – especially in upper portions of the building – spent a significant portion of the total evacuation time simply waiting to make use of the heavily queued stairs. There also was evidence of suboptimal (indeed, abysmal) conditions in the exit stairwells during the several hours it took to clear the two 110-story towers. For example, some of the stairways had unusual configurations and were unfamiliar to occupants; the stairwells lacked lighting and were contaminated with smoke; there was extensive counterflow on the stairs because many firefighters and other emergency responders had to ascend the stairs to perform their duties, and some people required physical assistance, thereby slowing travel in both directions. [13] Post-evacuation interviews revealed that evacuees with walking difficulties were told to keep to the right side of the exit stairs to facilitate traffic including counterflow by emergency responders. However, on all three stairs in Tower 1 the right side of the stairs is the outer side of the stair configuration where the handrails do not extend the full length of the flights. The inside – the left side for a person descending – has full length handrails including horizontal extensions terminating at newel posts. Of course, people had even more difficulty than should have been the case and, apparently, at least one person's fall was attributed to this.

Implications for counter-terrorism. Knowledge about how to improve building egress can be provided by continuously operating video cameras in stairwells (such cameras often already are installed for security purposes.) This would provide information about the total number of evacuees and the total number of emergency responders using any given stairs, thus eliminating ambiguity about actual number of evacuees. Also, the exact chronology of outflow and inflow –data that could be used to identify each person, and thus identify where he or she came from – would be obtainable. Such information-gathering systems – combined with a time-logged record of crucial communications by emergency responders and supervisory staff within the building – would be the equivalent of the black boxes and cockpit voice recorders which are commonly used in aircraft and which have been crucial in crash investigations. [14]

Statement of the problem: What determines whether a person helps a stranger in distress?

Relevant research: Psychologists have found that in large cities where potentially lethal emergencies, accidents, thefts, or personal attacks occur more frequently, people exhibit bystander apathy – that is, they watch, but seldom help. This is a phenomenon that has come to be known as the “Bystander Effect.” [15]

The Bystander effect has been investigated in controlled conditions. For example, while performing a drawing task either alone or in the presence of an observer, registered nurses (who rated themselves as either high-competent or low-competent) and general education students (who did not rate themselves as highly competent) were made to think that they heard a workman fall off a ladder in an adjoining room. The high-competent nurses who witnessed the emergency with another bystander helped as frequently as the general education students who witnessed the emergency alone; the low-competent nurses evidenced the familiar bystander effect. Responses to the post-emergency questionnaire indicated that at the time of the emergency, despite their disparate behaviors, both high- and low-competent women felt strongly that they should do something to help the workman. The minimization of the bystander effect for the high-competent subjects was mediated by confidence in their ability to help the workman and in knowing what steps to take to help.  

The bystander effect also has been shown to be affected by the number of people around who observe the apparent attack. If a person is alone or with one or two others, they are more likely to help than if they are among a larger group of people. Interrogation of people in such situations suggest that people are uniformly concerned about the person being attacked, but whether they help may also depend on the extent of guilt and shame they thought they would feel if they did not help, and how embarrassed they might be by trying to help and failing – for example, it has been found that men with a high degree of masculinity are less likely to help. [16] Also, if the person feels that they have some personal relationship with the victim or somehow identify with them, they are more likely to help. [17]

Implications for counter-terrorism: Knowing when people are likely to help and when they will not is important in the design of local emergency systems and protocol: how should the neighborhood emergency or crisis center be constructed so as to maximize the likelihood that people will be helped? The same infrastructure design issues are important to transportation systems, which are likely targets of terrorist attacks and where victims may require assistance. These issues also are germane to the recruitment and training of personnel who are likely to be on the front line in attack or other emergency situations.

Statement of the problem: What kind of person becomes a follower in a terrorist group? What kind of person is likely to be a leader in such a group?

Relevant research: Who are the followers? If the movement sees itself as acting in the name of the “proper” authorities, and preserving or restoring the “established” values and conventions of a society, the followers are apt to be right-wing authoritarians. “Right-wing” as used here means an individual who submits to those whom he considers the established/proper authorities. Religious fundamentalists in many faiths are right-wing authoritarians. The Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale assesses how submissive, aggressive and conventional a person is. This test has been shown to be reliable across time and valid in cultures outside North America. As a group, “high RWAs” tend to be very prejudiced and aggressive. Their motivations to attack come from fear of what they perceive to be a dangerous, disintegrating, and increasingly immoral world; their fear-based impulse to attack is released by a powerful self-righteousness. These individuals tend to be quite dogmatic in their beliefs and steadfast in their resolve, with markedly inconsistent and compartmentalized thinking. [18]

Who are the leaders? Usually they are right-wing authoritarians who also score highly not only on the RWA but also on the “Social Dominance Orientation Scale.” [19] Social dominators are highly prejudiced, power-hungry individuals with a strong drive to dominate others and with little moral restraint. They may be either reactionary or revolutionary; however, they gravitate to right-wing groups because members in these groups are gullible. Skilled social dominators present whatever image will bring them power, without necessarily believing in what they say they stand for. For example, they tend to agree that it is more important to look religious than to actually be such, and are likely to strongly believe in letting other people die for “the cause,” and profess their own willingness to do so too, but have little intention of actually letting that happen. [20]

Implications for counter-terrorism: We can understand some of the precipitating causes that make people more likely to join terrorist groups to the extent that we can assess those who are terrorists independently of their particular cultural and political contexts. For example, educational institutions that develop and maintain fundamental religious beliefs or very strict Marxist-Leninist doctrine are equally likely to be places where young people can be recruited into terrorist groups. We also can increase the rate at which such individuals are identified because of how personality variables are likely to cluster together. For example, because individuals who score high on authoritarianism also are highly prejudiced in terms of attitudes about race, ethnicity and sex, these prejudices can be a way of identifying individuals who are more vulnerable to joining terrorist groups.

Statement of the problem: What does can be done to help people cope with the ongoing threat of terrorism?

Relevant research: Terror Management Theory (TMT) is a psychological theory of how people cope with their awareness of the inevitability of death, and how a core fear of human mortality and vulnerability leads to a need for self-esteem, faith in a cultural worldview, and hostility toward those who hold different cultural worldviews. [21]

From the perspective of TMT, the recent terrorist attacks provided Americans with a massive reminder of death and the fragility of life, coupled with an attack on the psychological structures that normally protect us from fears of death and vulnerability. People’s responses to the attacks have been highly similar to what has been found in over 150 experiments, conducted in at least 9 different countries, on the effects of reminders of death and threats to one’s cultural worldview: (1) reminders of mortality lead people to respond more negatively to those who criticize one’s country and to behaviorally distance themselves from such individuals; reminders of mortality also lead people to respond with more positively to those who praise one’s country and to behaviorally approach such persons; (2) increased attraction to heroes and more reverence for cultural icons, such as American flags or crucifixes, (3) increased need for information and understanding, (4) increased desire for justice and punishment of moral transgressors, (5) a shift toward desires for security over desires for freedom, (6) increased desire to help, especially those who are part of one’s own culture. [22]

Implication for counter-terrorism: Death-related fear, and the various psychological defenses that this fear gives rise to, can be minimized by actions that increase valuing of one’s culture and self-esteem, and that develop and maintain close personal relationships with family, loved ones, friends, and those who share one’s beliefs and values.

Statement of the problem: How can we best negotiate with people outside our own culture?

Relevant research: Cross-cultural negotiation situations can be understood in the context of a “dynamic constructivist model” that allows for input both from within the individual negotiator (reflecting their own cultural values) and from the particular negotiation situation. Critical components of the model are (1) cultural setting (social and economic class, socialization processes from parents and schools, culturally endemic conflict [such as the American penchant for consumer choice that results in arguments about which store to go to], and what kind of behaviors are viewed as normal in negotiation situations); [23] (2) aspects of the negotiator or perceiver (what beliefs these individuals have, and more importantly, whether these beliefs are activated, because activation of very culturally-bound beliefs are more likely in conflicts involving danger). [24] These individual characteristics are magnified by how willing the individuals involved are to tolerate having no definite, immediate answer to the problems they are facing; and finally, (3) the social context of the negotiation: what are the roles of the individuals involved? What is their accountability to a constituency and to the audience that watches them? What time pressures and cognitive load must the negotiators must sustain? And what was their immediate history: what happened last time?

Implications for counter-terrorism: This dynamic model can be used to analyze negotiation situations and to produce better negotiators. Negotiators may control or at least know some of the relevant characteristics of their counterpart (such as previous history, the presence of an audience, their own cognitive load), to increase their effectiveness. This model also can be use to predict when a cultural context effect will be strong or weak – and to understand and identify bicultural individuals, who can internalize multiple cultures and then match their own cultural patterns with those of an opponent (for example, the terrorists of Sept. 11 who were “sleepers” in American culture). These bicultural individuals might be identified by exposing them to cultural icons that are known to trigger activation of associated cultural knowledge structures that will influence their behavior. [25]

Statement of the problem: How do we understand the cultural determinants of decision making processes?

Relevant research: Incorporating a substantial body of research from anthropology and from organizational, developmental and cognitive psychology, a “Cultural Lens” model has been developed that can capture cultural differences in reasoning, judgment, and authority structure. [26] It allows for someone to see the world as if through another’s eyes and to understand and evaluate options as others might. This ‘decentering’ allows the outsider to anticipate actions, judge accurately, and intervene effectively. A Decentering training program has been developed, implemented and evaluated for use in understanding knowledge structures in terrorist groups.

Implications for counter-terrorism: The Cultural Lens model can be used to develop profiles of goals, patterns, and weaknesses of new potential terrorist groups that have been identified among foreign nationals. [27] It can help to anticipate the timing, precision and complexity of future actions by a particular foreign national group. [28] The model also can identify vulnerabilities within groups, an understanding of which can then help to thwart future terrorist actions. The model already has been used to identify the potential impact of national culture on routine pilot safety decisions.

Statement of the problem: How can we best design computer interfaces so that people may attention to important aspects of information presented there?

Relevant research: Psychological science has contributed heavily to the development, testing and modification of instrument panels since World War II. [29] The contribution of psychology, specifically, the psychology of human factors, remains vital to both military and civilian transportation systems today, especially aviation. [30] The issue that is of primary concern in these kinds of “human/machine” interactions is how best to design the machine so that the human perceives relevant information as efficiently as possible.

Essentially the same challenge is present for those who wish to use computers to relay information to humans in a maximally effective manner. Commercial use of the internet for selling goods requires communicating important aspects of the buyer/seller interaction via the computer medium: how do we make the customer feel like they have a personable relationship with the seller? How do we assure the customer of good and reliable service? How do we relate the reputation of the seller, and establish trust? How do we assure the customer of privacy?

Investigations of computer systems have shown that people respond favorably to features on the screen that are prominent and easy to read. [31] Furthermore, people infer that these prominent features provide more information and greater assurances than features that are less prominent, even though the informational and privacy assurance qualities of the prominent and nonprominent features are the same. It apparently is possible to manipulate the assumptions and inferences people make by relatively trivial manipulation of the interface medium.

Implications for counter-terrorism: Americans are increasingly willing to use the internet as a mode of commercial transaction, as well as a method for information gathering. What we know about how people use this medium is critical to making effective use of it, especially in instances of emergency communication of vital information, such as risk factors in travel, threat of exposure to toxins, or other imminent danger situations. We cannot assume that all information is equally available and used; we must design the delivery system with the human receiver in mind.

Statement of the problem: What can be done to reduce the motivation of others to engage in terrorist violence against the US and its allies?

Relevant research: From the perspective of Terror Management Theory (TMT), aggression, human conflict, and war are rooted, at least in part, in the threat to psychological security posed by those with different beliefs and values that implicitly threaten protection from anxiety provided by one’s own beliefs and values. Although economic, military, and other concerns certainly play an important role in international conflict, it is the ideological threat posed by a worldview different from one’s own that rouses the passions necessary for people to risk their own lives in an attempt to destroy those who pose such psychological threats. According to this view, therefore, terrorist violence is rooted in the failure of a culture to meet the psychological and physical needs of its members, and the displacement of the fear and anger that results from this thwarting of needs onto a more powerful culture whose beliefs and values pose a threat to one’s own cultural worldview.

A large number of experiments, conducted in nine different countries, have found that (1) reminders of mortality increase the tendency to apply stereotypes and view others in simple closed-minded ways; [32] [33] (2) prejudice and intergroup hostility is heightened by conditions that undermine one’s self-esteem and faith in one’s own cultural worldview; [34] (3) the tendency to respond negatively toward those different from oneself can be reduced and sometimes eliminated by values from one’s culture that promote tolerance and respect for others; (4) because people use their affiliation with close others and members of their culture to assuage their existential fears, such individuals are especially influential in influencing attitudes, values, and behavior tendencies.

Implications for counter-terrorism: Communication campaigns that use core Islamic values to motivate Muslims to oppose terrorism are more likely to be effective than those that either ignore or oppose such values. Reducing the appeal of terrorism and hostility toward the US might be best accomplished by encouraging respected moderate Muslims to speak out against such activity. The message needs to get out that Allah does not value violence and murder. [35]

Statement of the problem: How can we detect when someone is lying? An improvement over the traditional polygraph.

Relevant research: Current lie detection methods, based on the polygraph technique, rely upon detecting changes in the physiological characteristics of a subject while they are asked a series of questions. Among the physiological characteristics measured are respiration rate, skin resistivity, blood pressure, and heart rate.

The question methods vary. Each involves comparisons between physiological responses to presumably innocuous questions and those that elicit emotional reactions. [36] For example, the Guilty Knowledge Test consists of asking a person a series of multiple choice questions, all dealing with facts with which only those knowledgeable about a crime would be familiar. The test assumes that the guilty individual’s recognition of the correct multiple choice alternative that contains actual details of the crime will lead to stronger physiological responses than to incorrect alternatives.

There are two main problems with the current method. The first is that it relies on monitoring natural physiological responses which may fluctuate for reasons other than deception. The second problem is that it is vulnerable to the deployment of countermeasures by the subject. People who are aware of how strong physiological responses to questions are taken as indicative of truthfulness or deceit can manipulate their bodies to produce exaggerated results, for example, by holding their breath (decrease respiration) or by constricting the anal sphincter muscle, tongue-biting, or thinking of exciting thoughts (increase heart rate). As a result, these methods produce false negatives (a deception is missed) and false alarms (the person is not lying, but inquisitor believes the person is).

Because of the effectiveness of such countermeasures, there is a need for a detectable response to lying that cannot be manipulated by the subject during testing.

Implications for counter-terrorism: The new methodology is one where the person is conditioned to produce a unique, involuntary, innocuous, and (to the subject) visibly undetectable, physiological response that does not occur naturally (that is, without the conditioning protocol). This response, which is not under the voluntary control of the person nor are they even aware that they are making it, then serves as the baseline against which changes (reactions to questions) can be assessed. Feasibility data indicate that this procedure is more accurate (shows a lower false alarm rate) and more sensitive (shows a lower false negative rate) than the traditional method. [37]

The application of this new methodology to instances of subject interrogation and recruitment assessment are clear. Very importantly, this methodology can be used cross-culturally, because the underlying physiology is not culturally determined.

Statement of the problem: How can we predict the likelihood of imminent conflict in international or ethnopolitical negotiations?

Relevant research: In international or ethnopolitical negotiations, violent conflict may occur either because one or both sides hold positions that make a peaceful compromise impossible, or because the leaders are willing to compromise, but are frustrated in their attempts to negotiate and decide that armed conflict is the only feasible solution.

Communications have both content and structural characteristics. Content -- what the leader explicitly says -- is easily manipulated so that deception is easy. The integrative/cognitive (IC) structure of messages, however, tends to reveal how the leader implicitly thinks about the issue. Because IC structures are implicit, IC structural markers are less susceptible to deliberate deception. Methods of objectively measuring IC structure have been developed. [38] These work for most languages and can use a wide variety of sources: interviews, position papers, speeches, manifestoes, letters, etc.

Previous research applying the IC scoring technique to official government statements has reliably shown that (a) prior to the outbreak of war, IC of high-level officials of the contending parties show substantial decreases, while no such drops are found prior to confrontations being resolved through peaceful negotiation; and (b) prior to a surprise attack by one side, the communications of the eventual attacker, but not of the target, show a substantial IC decrease. This pattern has been found in many 20th century confrontations, including the beginning of World War I, the Berlin blockade, the long-term relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the Cuban Missile Crisis, [39] the Persian Gulf War, and most of the major surprise attacks during the century including Pearl Harbor, the Nazi invasion of the USSR, and the North Korean invasion of South Korea. In chronic conflicts punctuated by periodic wars (for example, in the Middle East), the drop occurs a few months prior to the outbreak of war; in other cases, such as surprise attacks, a few weeks prior to the attack. [40]

Implications for counter-terrorism: It is possible to score the IC of messages in real time while negotiations are ongoing. A drop in the IC of messages from one side may foreshadow that they are about to break off negotiations and resort to violence, and may be a cue for special defensive measures or pre-emptive action. There also is some evidence that adding other content analytic measures to the IC analysis, such as scores for “need for power,” can improve predictive accuracy. The obverse of this analysis is that a leader may want to impress the opponent with his own unshaken resolve, when in fact he is ready to make concessions. In such cases, uncompromising and perhaps threatening content, coupled with the maintenance of a high level of IC, may reveal the leader’s actual flexibility.

Statement of the problem: What is the usefulness of offender profiling methods to instances of attacks by terrorists?

Relevant research: Offender profiling is used extensively in the U.S. Available since 1974, the FBI and other agencies currently produce over 2,000 profiles each year. [41] Although studies on the effectiveness of profiling have shown that profiling leads directly to the identification of subjects in less than 10% of the cases, [42] profiles are generally viewed as useful by law enforcement agents. [43]

Profiles are developed on the basis of information collected at the crime scene that might indicate pertinent characteristics of the offender, such as personality, work history, family, social life, and age. The primary aim of many profiles, especially those used in this country, is to uncover the motivations of the offender, [44] which may lead to describing offenders in terms of a particular typology. [45] However, terrorist violence often is so well-organized that post-event investigations can be very difficult and offer relatively little useful information, and typologies are very difficult to create for terrorists because the spectrum of terrorism covers a wide range of different groups and individuals. Also, unlike other violent offenders, terrorists do not usually suffer from psychological disorders. [46]

Investigation of the application of profiling techniques to instances of attacks by terrorists shows two problems. The first is whether the profiles are accurate enough to be useful; accuracy is found to vary widely. The second is what impact the profile has had on the investigation. In some cases (e.g., the Atlanta Olympics bombing), the profile had a real impact on the investigation, so much so that when corroborative evidence was not found, investigators were slow to abandon the model and look elsewhere.

Application to counter-terrorism: We need further investigations into the usefulness of profiling techniques for dealing with terrorism. Previous studies have found that when profiling has been used, its impact has been either negligible or even detrimental to the investigation. In order to be useful for counter-terrorism, profiling techniques must be extended so as to focus less on using the motivations and social circumstances of the terrorist as clues. At present, profiles should not have an exclusive, directional impact on an investigation.

Statement of the problem: How can we most effectively assess whether people are appropriate for specific jobs, including security and public safety positions? [47]

Relevant research: Psychological science has a long history of personnel evaluation and selection, beginning with the First World War. [48] Years of development of selection procedures have shown that the first step in personnel selection is a thorough analysis of the job, which is accomplished by surveys, observations or interviews. These data then are used to describe what knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics are required on the job. They also serve to identify performance criteria. Screening measures are developed – which may include tests of cognitive abilities or personality traits, performance tests, structured interviews, or biodata instruments. Specific selection criteria are established (such as cut scores and minimal qualifications). Development of an instrument, or adaptation of existing measures, typically is conducted through a validity study: the scores on the new or modified instrument are compared against other indices that are recognized already to accurately measure the desired performance or outcome. Once developed, these instruments undergo periodic validation procedures to ensure their continued utility and legal compliance. 

Training programs are used not only to prepare new job incumbents with necessary skills, but as additional screening tools. Following a training program with an appropriate evaluation ensures that job incumbents have acquired skills effectively and serve as a further screening measure by identifying those who have not succeeded in training.

Examples of positions in the federal sector for which screening measures have been developed include, but are not limited to:

Air Traffic Control Specialists (Federal Aviation Administration)

Border Patrol Officers (Immigration & Naturalization Service)

Detention Enforcement Officer (Immigration & Naturalization Service)

Immigration Officers (Immigration & Naturalization Service)

Special Agent (Federal Bureau of Investigation)

Special Agent (Drug Enforcement Administration)

Implications for counter-terrorism: Existing methodology, developed and refined through almost a century of psychological research on measurement, will serve in the development or adaptation of selection procedures for transportation security personnel.

Statement of the problem: How can we train people to act effectively in situations that involve high risk, without exposing them to danger during the training procedures?

Relevant research: One way to do this is to use computer-based immersive virtual environment technology (IVET). This is a synthetic environment that organizes sensory information so that the person perceives that they are in the actual environment. This technology has already been used in a variety of training situations from the very practical (such as training someone to use a lathe [49]) to the more technical (such as teaching medical personnel how to read fMRIs [50]). It has been used as a teaching aid for children [51] and as a research tool – for example, to look at differences in spatial memory as a function of age. [52] It also has been used in therapy, to expose individuals to situations that are anxiety-producing without actually posing any physical threat. [53]

Psychology has a long history of the development, use, and evaluation of machines in learning situations. [54] It is important to compare how humans react in virtual reality situations with how they react in the actual situations, of course, to assess the usefulness of the IVET technology.[55], [56]

Application to counter-terrorism: This technology could be use not only to train military and civilian personnel how to act in situations of high stress and danger, but to assess and evaluate people who are recruited to operate in hostile situations. Furthermore, it is possible that IVET technology could be used as an interview or interrogation device, to expose a hostile agent to a “virtual situation” that might elicit some kind of behavior that would illuminate his or her history and training experiences.

Statement of the problem: How do we measure personality variables in people from other cultures?

Relevant research: In attempting to measure emotional states and personality traits, the nonequivalence of psychological constructs can be a major source of error. [57] However, the emotions of anxiety and anger appear to be universal, [58] and fear and rage are intense emotions that can be identified by facial expressions across cultures and even species. [59]

Anxiety has been dichotomized to state anxiety, which includes feelings of worry and arousal of the autonomic nervous system that fluctuates over time, and trait anxiety, which is the tendency to perceive stressful situations as threatening that is relatively stable over time. [60] The STAI S-Anxiety scale was constructed to measure the intensity of state anxiety and individual differences in trait anxiety; this scale has been extensively evaluated and revised, [61] adapted in more than 50 languages and dialects, and used frequently in cross-cultural research. The State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory was constructed to measure the experience, expression and control of anger; this also has undergone extensive evaluation and assessment in cross-cultural applications. [62]

Implications for counter-terrorism: Psychological tests that are easy to administer and take a short amount of time are useful in the interrogation or recruitment of individuals from another culture to the extent that they are valid across cultures. Tests that measure emotions that are universal – such as fear and anger – are more likely to be cross-cultural.

Statement of the problem: How do we measure attitudes that a person may be trying to hide?

Relevant research: Decades ago, psychologists showed that semantic meaning could be activated rapidly and spontaneously by the mere presentation of a word, and that this meaning would, in turn, activate associated concepts in the mind. [63] There is compelling evidence that people can evaluate words automatically – that is, without conscious awareness. For example, if an experimenter presents a series of pairs of words, with the first word (the prime) appearing for 200 ms, and the second (the target) appearing 100 ms later, people make faster decisions as to whether the target had a positive or negative emotional loading when the prime and target are evaluatively congruent (i.e., both are negative or both are positive) than when they are incongruent. [64] Note that this decision is made without the person’s awareness that the prime occurred. These results, given the conditions under which the stimuli were presented, show that the participants are evaluating the primes without conscious control, which means that deception is very unlikely.

Researchers interested in assessing intergroup stereotypes and prejudices at the unconscious level have employed similar procedures. For example, race prejudice can be measured by pairing Black and White face primes with target adjectives. White participants have been shown to respond faster to Black-negative and White-positive pairs than Black-positive and White-negative pairs. [65]

Implications for counter-terrorism: This technique can be used to interrogate or interview individuals who are trying to hide certain attitudes or prejudices that they know will be condemned by the interviewer or that will identify them as belonging to some criminal group.

Statement of the problem: How can we understand the complex dynamics of terrorism?

Relevant research: Social and behavioral scientists are increasingly using mathematical models to investigate phenomena that reflect complex interactions among a relatively large number of variables. The human cannot conceptualize more than how two or three variables might interact in a dynamic manner. A computer, however, has virtually unlimited capacity in this regard.

Economists and political scientists have been using mathematical models to investigate political violence for almost 20 years. [66] Such models can be used descriptively – for example, to show that there are cyclical patterns to terrorist activities, with resource intensive tactics having the longest cycle [67] (an outcome that provides clear evidence of terrorist rationality) – and to predict events. For example, these models accurately predicted that the widespread introduction of metal detectors at airports would lead to a reduction in the number of skyjackings, but an increase in the number of other kinds of terrorist attacks that could not be deterred by metal detectors.

Application of this methodology to 549 separate terrorist, hostage-taking events showed that of eleven variables measured, four were significant to the final outcome of the incidents: requesting two or more demands, having a number of different nationalities among the terrorists and having a large attack force, all increased the likelihood of success by the terrorists, whereas if a greater number of people were killed, the terrorists were more likely to fail. An unexpected outcome was that the outcomes of the hostage-taking were not affected by whether the government agency allowed a deadline to pass without taking action. [68] It also was found that “no-negotiation” policies in hostage-taking situations did not (contrary to stated policy) increase the protection of a government from being a target by hostage-takers. [69]

Implications for counter-terrorism: Mathematical models offer a way of understanding complex human dynamics. However, to be most useful, the large databases upon which these models were developed and tested over the past twenty years must be updated for information relevant to current terrorist threats.

Statement of the problem: How should we train military personnel to act effectively in situations where they must serve both as military force and peace-keepers?

Relevant research: The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff [70] recognized that the number of instances where conventional military strategies are useful has declined dramatically since the end of the Cold War. “Military Operations of Other Than War (MOTTW)” have increased in frequency. These are situations where ground level personnel and equipment must operate in a complex environment to alternately build bridges and towns or destroy them (that is, wage peace or war). Assessments of such situations have shown that they present unique and peculiar challenges. [71] An example of one such challenging situation was the October, 1993 deaths of 18 Army Rangers in Mogadishu, Somalia. The U.S. military apparently was technologically well-equipped for that mission, but lacked appropriate intelligence from ground forces that depended the effectiveness of human factors aspects of the operation.

MOTTW is based on principles that to a large degree require considerations of the role of human factors. These principles are (1) identification and implementation of a clear and defined objective; (2) unity of effort despite the changing demands of the situation; (3) creation of adequate security in the face of hostile factions; (4) exercise of restraint in the face of what might be continual hostility from civilian or military counterparts; (5) exercise of perseverance even in instances of relative quiet; (6) ensuring that the operation is viewed as legitimate by the host government. Human factors research has shown repeatedly that there is not clear-cut distinction between systems design and operation. The special challenge of MOTTW is that the operator will have to react to continually changing demands and operating conditions.

Implications for counter-terrorism: Representative MOTTW scenarios and case studies have been used in order to systematically analyze how the six constituting principles of MOTTW impact on a the soldier’s physical and psychological capabilities and limitations. This information then can be used in the modification of standard unit training for light Army infantry units. [72]

Statement of the problem: What can behavioral scientists tell us about the worldviews and value orientations of people in the Middle East?

Relevant research: American sociologist Mansoor Moaddel has two major research projects. The first is a comparative historical analysis of ideological production in the Islamic world since the nineteenth century: Islamic modernism in India, Egypt, and Iran; liberal-nationalism in Egypt, Syria, and Iran; and Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria. [73] The second project is comparative surveys in Islamic countries. In collaboration with sociologists in Egypt, Iran and Jordan, he has launched two waves of surveys in Egypt, Jordan, and Iran (Based on the same questionnaire, his colleague from Spain carried out a similar survey in Morocco). Because data collection in Egypt, Iran, and Morocco was completed before the September 11 terrorist attacks, the National Science Foundation provided funding to carry out a second wave of surveys to assess the impact of September 11 and the United States’ response on the value orientations and the long-term concerns of the publics in these three Islamic countries. [74]

The questionnaire used in these surveys covered a wide variety of topics, including the persuasiveness of religious beliefs, religiosity, the relationship between religion and democracy, the role of religion in society and government, gender role, family values, interpersonal trusts, national identity, and attitude toward Western culture. This questionnaire also allowed the investigators to explore the similarities and differences in value orientations between these Islamic countries, and to provide comparisons between them and Western societies. Since the samples were based on random sampling procedures, the findings could be generalized to the adult population of these countries with a high level of validity.

Implications for counter-terrorism: The long term strategy of fighting terrorism must be based on understanding the dynamic of culture and how monolithic culture imposed from above by authoritarian regimes stifle rational thought process, and thereby contribute to the rise of fundamentalist and extremist discourses. Among the many interesting findings that the projects described here have produced, three appear to speak directly to the issue of terrorism and political violence:

• While culture producers are dedicated and driven individuals with considerable emotional energy, the kind of ideological obstacles they face determine their orientation toward moderation or extremism.

• The harbingers of Islamic fundamentalism are coming primarily from the rank of educated middle class professionals.

• Whereas level of education has a direct negative effect on trust in government and in mosque across the three countries, there is a critical difference between Egypt and Jordan, on the one hand, and Iran, on the other. In Egypt and Jordan, the higher the level of education, the higher is individual religiosity. In Iran, level of education is associated with an increase in orientation toward modernism.

Statement of the problem: How can we integrate information coming from various sources in crisis situations?

Relevant research: Managing any physical or medical crisis requires incident managers to process multiple information streams to make effective and timely decisions. Massive casualties to people and/or infrastructure – particularly communications infrastructure – can overload the management resources of the first responder and health care communities.

The Enhanced Consequence Management Planning And Support System (ENCOMPASS) is an integrated set of software tools that support the information needs of multiple distributed first responder agencies. It has two primary subsystems, one which supports the functions of incident commanders at all levels, and another which supports medical personnel by analyzing patient symptoms for possible bioagent action or disease epidemic. [75] SPAWAR Systems Center – San Diego currently is testing ENCOMPASS in diverse user communities under realistic conditions.

Software and user testing completed in 2001 for both military and civil first responder agencies showed that (1) the user must be thoroughly trained prior to test execution; (2) emergency operations are complex and highly agency-specific, so that system functions are valuable in quite different ways – and to different degrees – to different communities; (3) historical, legal, and political conditions generate considerable independence across agencies vis a vis operating concepts and approaches to technology. These conditions must be considered when the system is implemented.

Implications for counter-terrorism: Complex technologies require complex testing. The social context of multi-user systems must be included before evaluative statements of system performance can be made. In addition, such testing should address how the technologies may change the job, rather than only how they may support it.

Statement of the problem: How can we use technology to help us read through reams of electronic documents to find relevant information?

Relevant research: The words that people use in communication are ill suited to standard word-based search engines. Communicators frequently invent new uses for old words, use ambiguous terms (the word “strike,” for example has more than 80 definitions), and use multiple words to refer to the same idea. Whereas standard information management approaches typically impose a single conceptual structure on their users, people may use many different terms to refer to the same idea. [76] Humans constantly categorize, but their categories are unstable both from individual to individual and from time to time, depending on their needs and interests. [77] Most knowledge management tools are based on a symbolic approach to documents, where each word in a document is a symbol with a discrete and specific meaning. As a result, document retrieval systems that depend on the presence of exact words fail to retrieve relevant documents. Human language is not like this, however. In short, human language is fuzzy and it requires fuzzy tools to deal with its meaning.

Biomimetic information management systems provide those fuzzy tools by using neural networks and other soft-computing techniques that emulate the way biological brains work. [78] The technology learns the meanings of words from the documents it indexes and can recognize the relevance of documents based on their meaning. Biomimetic knowledge management systems are self-organizing; they do not require the laborious construction of rigid, expensive, ontologies or prestructured rule bases. They discover the meaning of words in the same way that people do, by bootstrapping context. They allow true fuzzy semantic comparisons. The result is an ad hoc categorization system that adapts itself to the intelligence problem at hand, rather than forcing the analyst to adapt to the system. [79]

Implications for counter-terrorism: Intelligence is probably the single most important tool for dealing with terrorism. All forms of physical security have limitations, but having knowledge of the intentions of the adversary can prevent their actions and provide an opportunity to reinforce physical deterrents. The same kind of attentional limitations that play a role in any vigilance task limit the ability of intelligence analysts to fully exploit the opportunities in the texts that they have available. Tools that help them to focus on the documents with the highest probability of providing valuable information have been found useful for minimizing the impact of these inherent limitations.

Statement of the problem: How can we develop a single communication system that can be used by various emergency response groups such as police, fire, medical and military units?

Relevant research: One of the most critical problems in emergency response is the lack of interoperable communications. No authority exists to arbitrate the choice of communications systems across different community agencies (e.g., police, fire, medical) or the choice of systems across the same agency in neighboring jurisdictions. This problem is compounded where support components (e.g., National Guard or military units that may be charged with civil support) are involved.

The “Domestic Emergency Response Information System” is a set of interoperable communications technologies designed to support emergency responses among multiple organizations under crisis conditions. [80] SPAWAR Systems Center (SSC) – San Diego has been charged by Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense with testing this system. The tests will include scenario development and the establishment and maintenance of agency liaisons. To this end, SSC is working with a consortium of private industry participants to develop scenarios that are relevant, realistic, and appropriate to the information needs of the sponsor. This is being accomplished by soliciting the input and approval of representatives from each participating agency, as well as related “stakeholders” (e.g., city government).

Implications for counter-terrorism: The most difficult dimension of the evaluation of the introduction of new technologies into group settings is social. These settings can be complex, especially when they involve life-critical missions; such settings typically have well-defined procedures and values that must be respected. The challenge is to evaluate system performance in terms of support to an existing context, as well as to project changes to that context that might be enabled by system use. Effective evaluation must establish credibility and the “buy in” of agencies that are not typically the subject of technology testing efforts. It must ensure that required data can be collected from conditions embedded in an otherwise “free-flowing” timeline. It must accommodate the impact of technologies on operating concepts; i.e., address the impact of new systems on current task procedures and social interactions, and make that impact explicit. Finally, it must ensure that data are collected in such a way that results may be compared with other, similar testing efforts.

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[80] The Domestic Emergency Response Information System is being developed under the sponsorship of several companies by SPAWAR Systems Center – San Diego. Contact Steve Murray, murrays@spawar.navy.mil.

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