Cargando…

Resisting hostility generated by terror: An agent-based study

We propose an agent-based model leading to a decrease or an increase of hostility between agents after a major cultural threat such as a terrorist attack. The model is inspired from the Terror Management Theory and the Social Judgement Theory. An agent has a cultural identity defined through its acc...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Huet, Sylvie, Deffuant, Guillaume, Nugier, Armelle, Streith, Michel, Guimond, Serge
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6331148/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30640904
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209907
_version_ 1783387099535245312
author Huet, Sylvie
Deffuant, Guillaume
Nugier, Armelle
Streith, Michel
Guimond, Serge
author_facet Huet, Sylvie
Deffuant, Guillaume
Nugier, Armelle
Streith, Michel
Guimond, Serge
author_sort Huet, Sylvie
collection PubMed
description We propose an agent-based model leading to a decrease or an increase of hostility between agents after a major cultural threat such as a terrorist attack. The model is inspired from the Terror Management Theory and the Social Judgement Theory. An agent has a cultural identity defined through its acceptance segments about each of three different cultural worldviews (i.e., Atheist, Muslim, Christian) of the considered society. An agent’s acceptance segment is composed from its acceptable positions toward a cultural worldview, including its most acceptable position. An agent forms an attitude about another agent depending on the similarity between their cultural identities. When a terrorist attack is perpetrated in the name of an extreme cultural identity, the negatively perceived agents from this extreme cultural identity point of view tend to decrease the width of their acceptance segments in order to differentiate themselves more from the threatening cultural identity. We generated a set of populations with cultural identities compatible with data from a survey on attitudes among a large sample representative of the population of France; we then simulated the reaction of these agents facing a terrorist attack from Muslim extremists. For most populations, the average attitude toward Muslims becomes more negative. However, for some specific populations, we noticed the opposite effect as the average attitude of the population toward Muslims becomes less negative. In these populations, the Muslim agents strongly differentiate themselves from the terrorists’ extreme cultural identity, and the other agents are aware of these changes. These reactions are due to particular properties of their cultural identities that are identified in this paper.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6331148
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-63311482019-01-31 Resisting hostility generated by terror: An agent-based study Huet, Sylvie Deffuant, Guillaume Nugier, Armelle Streith, Michel Guimond, Serge PLoS One Research Article We propose an agent-based model leading to a decrease or an increase of hostility between agents after a major cultural threat such as a terrorist attack. The model is inspired from the Terror Management Theory and the Social Judgement Theory. An agent has a cultural identity defined through its acceptance segments about each of three different cultural worldviews (i.e., Atheist, Muslim, Christian) of the considered society. An agent’s acceptance segment is composed from its acceptable positions toward a cultural worldview, including its most acceptable position. An agent forms an attitude about another agent depending on the similarity between their cultural identities. When a terrorist attack is perpetrated in the name of an extreme cultural identity, the negatively perceived agents from this extreme cultural identity point of view tend to decrease the width of their acceptance segments in order to differentiate themselves more from the threatening cultural identity. We generated a set of populations with cultural identities compatible with data from a survey on attitudes among a large sample representative of the population of France; we then simulated the reaction of these agents facing a terrorist attack from Muslim extremists. For most populations, the average attitude toward Muslims becomes more negative. However, for some specific populations, we noticed the opposite effect as the average attitude of the population toward Muslims becomes less negative. In these populations, the Muslim agents strongly differentiate themselves from the terrorists’ extreme cultural identity, and the other agents are aware of these changes. These reactions are due to particular properties of their cultural identities that are identified in this paper. Public Library of Science 2019-01-14 /pmc/articles/PMC6331148/ /pubmed/30640904 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209907 Text en © 2019 Huet et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Huet, Sylvie
Deffuant, Guillaume
Nugier, Armelle
Streith, Michel
Guimond, Serge
Resisting hostility generated by terror: An agent-based study
title Resisting hostility generated by terror: An agent-based study
title_full Resisting hostility generated by terror: An agent-based study
title_fullStr Resisting hostility generated by terror: An agent-based study
title_full_unstemmed Resisting hostility generated by terror: An agent-based study
title_short Resisting hostility generated by terror: An agent-based study
title_sort resisting hostility generated by terror: an agent-based study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6331148/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30640904
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209907
work_keys_str_mv AT huetsylvie resistinghostilitygeneratedbyterroranagentbasedstudy
AT deffuantguillaume resistinghostilitygeneratedbyterroranagentbasedstudy
AT nugierarmelle resistinghostilitygeneratedbyterroranagentbasedstudy
AT streithmichel resistinghostilitygeneratedbyterroranagentbasedstudy
AT guimondserge resistinghostilitygeneratedbyterroranagentbasedstudy