Security and Human Behaviour – Session 6 Terror

[a_cubed]

William Burns, Decision Research, CSUSM

Resilience in the Face of Terrorism: Risk Communication as Inoculation

Ratio of behavioural component of response to terrorist events (mostly incorrect) compared to the actual direct impact is approx 15:1. So while reducing loss of life is a good goal, minimisation of the over-reaction in the aftermath is also very important. Pre-emptive risk communication is the sensible approach.

A sensible risk message (terrorists aim to succeed in making you afraid, don’t let them win) has a significant impact on people’s responses to terrorist activity.

Chris Hoofnagle, UC Berkeley

Mobile Payments : Consumer Benefits & New Privacy Concerns

On Teror: I am terrified of motivational speakers, flying coach class on United and children’s products from China.

In a credit card, no party to the transaction has a complete view of the sale.  Merchants know what was bought but not exactly who you are. The CC issuer knows where and how much you spent, but does not know what you spent. This drives loyalty cards.

Mobile payments means that everyone in the chain can see all of the information.

 

Richard John, USC

Games Terrorists Play

Talking today about the non-rational terrorist.

Stackelberg competition game model.

Defender (leader) chooses counter-measures; attacker (follower) chooses attack.

Can we benefit from the irrationality of our adversaries? Terrorists often do not maximise their expected value – they follow irrational strategies which do not lead to their apparent goals. Reference: Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. We can do better than a strong Stackelberg equilibirum if we understand our opponents’ irrationality.

Persuading protection forces to act rationally and use these random approaches is a hard problem in itself.

Steven LeBlanc, Harvard

Constant Battles

The myth of the peaceful, Noble Savage. Humans have always had warfare and high death rates. There is a tendency to wish away prehistoric warfare by calling it something else or pretending it never existed. THe evolutionary pressures on surviving warfare are significant in the human genome?

Where data is good 15-25% of males die from warfare and 5% of females.

Death rates decrease with incrased social complexity. You are safer if you pay taxes. The more taxes you pay, the safer you are.

Mark Levine, Exeter

The Psychology of Violence Prevention

How to enroll the support of collective psychology to suppress violent action.

The action of third parties is seen in traditional psychology is seen as mostly negative: mob violence, mass hysteria, peer group pressure.

Looking at CCTV records of third party interventions (or lack of intervention) in violence.

Larger groups are less violent. How do third parties coordinate successfully.

Identity and eye-gaze: 52 participants, asked to view the same video with different priming questions about their identification with the subjects.

Ingroup bias: men look more at the men, women look more at the women. Men look more at the “perpetrator”, women look less at the “perpetrator”.

When people are primed in terms of their gender identity, they look at the third parties more than just the participants in the violence.

When primed to think of themselves are part of the group rather than as an individual, the women look more widely, whereas the men look more focussed. When primed as individuals, men and women look equally focussed/broadly.

John Mueller, OSU

Terrorism Since 9/11 – the American Cases

Only one occurrence in the US since 9/11 where a muslim terrorist killed anyone in the US, and almost no injuries. Hal of the cases appear to have been partly instigated by agent provocateurs of the government and all of the attemtped terrorists have been incompetent and mostly highly unbalanced.

Current Mood: fascinated

Originally published at blog.a-cubed.info