{"id":5456,"date":"2017-09-16T15:18:10","date_gmt":"2017-09-16T13:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?p=5456"},"modified":"2023-08-11T10:18:57","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T08:18:57","slug":"culture-and-cognition-research-on-the-isis-frontline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/icci-blog\/culture-and-cognition-research-on-the-isis-frontline\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture-and-cognition research on the ISIS Frontline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Are&nbsp;decisions in extreme conflicts driven by cost\u2013benefit calculations? The work of Scott Atran and colleagues on ISIS fighters casts doubt on this common social science assumption. It illustrates how relevant a cognition-and-culture approach may be both to current world issues and to theoretical concerns. Their recent article in&nbsp;<em>Nature Human Behaviour<\/em>, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/s41562-017-0193-3.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The devoted actor\u2019s will to fight and the spiritual dimension of human conflict<\/a>&#8221;&nbsp;is aimed at&nbsp;better understanding what drives ISIS fighters to make costly sacrifices.<\/p>\n<p>From the abstract:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Frontline investigations with fighters against the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS), combined with multiple online studies, address willingness to fight and die in intergroup conflict. The general focus is on non-utilitarian aspects of human conflict, which combatants themselves deem \u2018sacred\u2019 or \u2018spiritual\u2019, whether secular or religious. Here we investigate two key components of a theoretical framework we call \u2018the devoted actor\u2019\u2014sacred values and identity fusion with a group\u2014to better understand people\u2019s willingness to make costly sacrifices. We reveal three crucial factors: commitment to non-negotiable sacred values and the groups that the actors are wholly fused with; readiness to forsake kin for those values; and perceived spiritual strength of ingroup versus foes as more important than relative material strength. We directly relate expressed willingness for action to behaviour as a check on claims that decisions in extreme conflicts are driven by cost\u2013benefit calculations, which may help to inform policy decisions for the common defense.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are&nbsp;decisions in extreme conflicts driven by cost\u2013benefit calculations? The work of Scott Atran and colleagues on ISIS fighters casts doubt on this common social science assumption. It illustrates how relevant a cognition-and-culture approach may be both to current world issues and to theoretical concerns. Their recent article in&nbsp;Nature Human Behaviour, &#8220;The devoted actor\u2019s will to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":685,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v15.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Culture-and-cognition research on the ISIS Frontline - International Cognition and Culture Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/icci-blog\/culture-and-cognition-research-on-the-isis-frontline\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Culture-and-cognition research on the ISIS Frontline - International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Are&nbsp;decisions in extreme conflicts driven by cost\u2013benefit calculations? The work of Scott Atran and colleagues on ISIS fighters casts doubt on this common social science assumption. It illustrates how relevant a cognition-and-culture approach may be both to current world issues and to theoretical concerns. Their recent article in&nbsp;Nature Human Behaviour, &#8220;The devoted actor\u2019s will to [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/icci-blog\/culture-and-cognition-research-on-the-isis-frontline\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-09-16T13:18:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-08-11T08:18:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The ICCI Team\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/\",\"name\":\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/icci-blog\/culture-and-cognition-research-on-the-isis-frontline\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/icci-blog\/culture-and-cognition-research-on-the-isis-frontline\/\",\"name\":\"Culture-and-cognition research on the ISIS Frontline - International Cognition and Culture Institute\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-09-16T13:18:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-08-11T08:18:57+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#\/schema\/person\/3663e04874ff7df2f070d2982a1474ad\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/icci-blog\/culture-and-cognition-research-on-the-isis-frontline\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#\/schema\/person\/3663e04874ff7df2f070d2982a1474ad\",\"name\":\"The ICCI Team\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cdc7166b2c4c44441b1c2c13cea716e8?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fcognitionandculture.local%2Fwp-content%2Fthemes%2Fbelle%2Fuser.png&r=g\",\"caption\":\"The ICCI Team\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5456"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/685"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5456"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18090,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5456\/revisions\/18090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}