Papers by Michael Moncrieff
Social network analysis and counterterrorism: a double-edged sword for international humanitarian law
Journal of conflict and security law, Feb 8, 2024
Evidence of Counterterrorism Effectiveness in Theory and Practice: Incremental Solutions for a Complex Problem
SSRN Electronic Journal
Evolutionary Psychological Science, Nov 28, 2023
Models of radicalization have typically placed grievances at the heart of radicalization. In cont... more Models of radicalization have typically placed grievances at the heart of radicalization. In contrast, we argue that viewing the radicalizing agent as decidedly proactive, and less reactive, better accounts for the available data. At the core of our radicalization model is the functional structure of envy. The operative properties of the emotion align with essential and conspicuous features of the radicalization process: a motivation to monitor social differentials, an identification of sources of postulated welfare costs, an impulse to eliminate or depower purported competitors, an attempt to diffuse responsibility for one's aggressive actions, and the rejoicing at the envied agent's misfortune. Two of those operative properties are particularly important for our understanding of radicalization. Envy motivates the neutralization of competitors when responsibility for welfare costs is not objectively attributable to others' wrongdoing toward the party who feels injured. The "process of typification" serves as a means to diffuse responsibility. It extends the reach of individual concerns by downplaying the particulars of the personal situation motivating the envious agent while evoking universally shared interaction templates (e.g., humiliation, injustice) to appeal to a broader audience.
Frontiers in Psychology, Mar 29, 2023
Emotions are conspicuous components of radicalization, violent extremism, and conspiracy ideation... more Emotions are conspicuous components of radicalization, violent extremism, and conspiracy ideation. Of the emotions studied for their contribution to those social pathologies, envy has been relatively unexplored. We investigate the relationship between envy, radicalization, and conspiracy ideation. Envy appears to affect core aspects of radicalization, particularly the endorsement of extremism and the acceptance of violent means to achieve one's ends, while radicalization facilitates the adoption of conspiracy ideation, rather than the latter being a cause of radicalization. Implications for future research on radicalization and violent extremism are discussed.
The R.A.S.H. Mentality of Radicalization
Journal of Cognition and Culture, Apr 3, 2023
SSRN Electronic Journal
The network concept and social network analysis have played a prominent role in political discour... more The network concept and social network analysis have played a prominent role in political discourse during the War on Terror and in the analysis of terrorist organizations. A candid discussion about the suitability and legality of social network analysis under international law is lacking in the literature. Approaching the topic from a legal-empirical perspective, we describe network analysis using non-specialist language and address some of the challenges that complicate social network analysis for international law. We argue that social network analysis is incompatible with the rules on targeting under international humanitarian law. However, social network analysis retains some use in international humanitarian law for understanding intra-group dynamics to facilitate conflict classification, to examine and determine legally relevant qualities about the internal networks of armed groups, and to ascertain the strength of relations between armed groups.
Emotions are conspicuous components of radicalization, violent extremism, and conspiracy ideation... more Emotions are conspicuous components of radicalization, violent extremism, and conspiracy ideation. Of the emotions studied for their contribution to those social pathologies, envy has been relatively unexplored. We investigate the relationship between envy, radicalization, and conspiracy ideation. Envy appears to affect core aspects of radicalization, particularly the endorsement of extremism and the acceptance of violent means to achieve one’s ends, while radicalization facilitates the adoption of conspiracy ideation, rather than the latter being a cause of radicalization. Implications for future research on radicalization and violent extremism are discussed.
In the study of the process of radicalization, precedence has been given to answering ‘how’ quest... more In the study of the process of radicalization, precedence has been given to answering ‘how’ questions over the exact qualification of the concept of radicalization itself. What does it mean to be radicalized? What are the cognitive entailments of such state? What are the features that makes radicalization recognizable? We rely on a game theoretic model to characterize the essence of what it is to be radicalized. Our model of the radicalized agent’s rational behavior elucidates his construal of typical social transactions. We further propose that the rationality of the radicalized mind entails a cognitive calibration specifying a modality of thought we call the R.A.S.H. mentality. It incorporates a particular risk preference (that action is always optimal) and attitude (that one’s temerity calls for requital) which are both essential aspects of the radicalized mind. The R.A.S.H. mentality throw in a new light core findings of the radicalization literature.
Our model of radicalization articulates three readings of the phenomenon focusing on: (1) the rat... more Our model of radicalization articulates three readings of the phenomenon focusing on: (1) the rationality of the radicalized agent, (2) the prime mover explaining important facets of the phenomena, and (3) the strategic typification of concerns for the persuasion of wider audiences. We show that the rationality of the radicalized agent can be characterized as the calibration of specific parameters that determines a specific modality of thought that we capture in an abstract model we call the R.A.S.H. mentality – a model incorporating a particular risk preference and commitment to action which accounts for essential aspects of the radicalized mind. We propose further to reorient the causal arrow that has been privileged in the models of radicalization so far by linking radicalization to the experience of envy, an emotion that motivates individuals to monitor their surroundings, to assess the prosperity of others, and to seek the eradication of the status divergence. We conclude with ...
Perception of Drag Queens Survey
PsycTESTS Dataset, 2017
Frontiers in Psychology, 2018
Our research brings to light features of the social world that impact moral judgments and how the... more Our research brings to light features of the social world that impact moral judgments and how they do so. The moral vignette data presented were collected in rural and urban Croatian communities that were involved to varying degrees in the Croatian Homeland War. We argue that rapid shifts in moral accommodations during periods of violent social strife can be explained by considering the role that coordination and social agents' ability to reconfigure their social network (i.e., relational mobility) play in moral reasoning. Social agents coordinate on (moral) norms, a general attitude which broadly facilitates cooperation, and makes possible the collective enforcement of compliance. During social strife interested parties recalibrate their determination of others' moral standing and recast their established moral circle, in accordance with their new or prevailing social investments. To that extent, social coordination-and its particular promoters, inhibitors, and determinants-effects significant changes in individuals' ranking of moral priorities. Results indicate that rural participants evaluate the harmful actions of third parties more harshly than urban participants. Coordination mediates that relationship between social environment and moral judgment. Coordination also matters more for the moral evaluation of the harmful actions of moral scenarios involving characters belonging to different social units than for scenarios involving characters belonging to the same group. Participants high in relational mobility-that ability to recompose one's social network-moralize similarly wrongdoings perpetrated by both in-and out-group members. Those low in relational mobility differentiate when an out-group member causes the harm. Additionally, perceptions of third-party guilt are also affected by specifics of the social environment. Overall, we find that social coordination and relational mobility affect moral reasoning more so than ethnic commitment.
Evolutionary Psychology, 2017
The drag queen cultural phenomenon has been described at length. However, the depiction of outlan... more The drag queen cultural phenomenon has been described at length. However, the depiction of outlandish and hyperbolic womanhood and taunting and formidable behavior at the core of drag queens’ public persona has still to be fully accounted for. We argue that these aspects of the drag queen’s public appearance could best be understood in a signaling framework. Publicly donning extravagant woman’s costumes attracts harassment and brings financial, mating, and opportunity costs, generating the conditions for the transmission of honest signals. By successfully withstanding those odds, drag queen impersonators signal strategic qualities to members of the gay community. Data collected among gay and straight participants support a costly signaling reading of the drag queen cultural phenomenon. Participants generally agree that successful drag queens typically incur costs, while gaining specific social benefits.
Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2013
Religious propositional attitudes and underdetermination of public representation: Commentary on Ara Norenzayan's Big Gods
Religion, 2014
ABSTRACT The commentary addresses a specific aspect of Norenzayan's work: the use of the ... more ABSTRACT The commentary addresses a specific aspect of Norenzayan's work: the use of the notion of credible display as developed by J. Henrich (“The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation and Religion: Credibility Enhancing Displays and their Implications for Cultural Evolution,” Evolution and Human Behavior 30 [4] 2009: 244–260) to make sense of typical (extravagant) religious behaviors. Norenzayan ascribes an essential role to those displays in the diffusion of religious beliefs. The authors maintain that to use the concept of CRED is not appropriate given the typical natures of religious beliefs and behaviors. Contrary to Norenzayan's essential claim in Big Gods, they defend the hypothesis that audiences have no indubitable way of inferring from religious actions the religious beliefs of performing agents. It is essentially explained by the fact that there does not exist any necessary link between proclaimed religious beliefs and observable religious behaviors. Religious behaviors are public representations, generally more or less rigidly stipulated, hence they typically have more to do with social coordination than with genuine expression of performers' religious propositional attitudes, that is, they do not require genuine religious beliefs. Furthermore, as there is no guarantee or necessity that the religious behavior be systematically associated to true beliefs, such behaviors are eminently recruitable for individual aims and ends (social gains, status enhancement), which might partly explain why they get maintained in various cultural traditions.
What War Narratives Tell About the Psychology and Coalitional Dynamics of Ethnic Violence
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2019
Models of ethnic violence have primarily been descriptive in nature, advancing broad or particula... more Models of ethnic violence have primarily been descriptive in nature, advancing broad or particular social and political reasons as explanations, and neglecting the contributions of individuals as decision-makers. Game theoretic and rational choice models recognize the role of individual decision-making in ethnic violence. However, such models embrace a classical economic theory view of unbounded rationality as utility-maximization, with its exacting assumption of full informational access, rather than a model of bounded rationality, modeling individuals as satisficing agents endowed with evolved domain-specific competences. A newer theoretical framework hypothesizing the existence of a human coalitional psychology, an evolved domain of competence, allows us to make sense of core features of memorial narratives about ethnic violence. Qualitative data from the interviews of fifty-seven participants who were impacted by the Croatian Homeland War support expectations entailed by a coali...
Why Such Constriction of the Moral Sphere? The Importance of Social Coordination in Croatia’s Ethnic Conflict
We explore the relationship between coalitional alignment and memories of the Croatian Homeland W... more We explore the relationship between coalitional alignment and memories of the Croatian Homeland War. Fifty-seven Croatian citizens with war experiences participated in a semi-structured interview. Participants less affected by the war and high in ethnic commitment recalled more morally charged memories than participants low in commitment. Participants highly affected by the war similarly recalled morally charged memories; however, the qualitative nature of the memories differed between high and low commitment. Offspring of mixed marriages and Orthodox participants reported more virtuous behaviors than other participants. The findings contribute to the literature on the intractability of conflict.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2018
Our research brings to light features of the social world that impact moral judgments and how the... more Our research brings to light features of the social world that impact moral judgments and how they do so. The moral vignette data presented were collected in rural and urban Croatian communities that were involved to varying degrees in the Croatian Homeland War. We argue that rapid shifts in moral accommodations during periods of violent social strife can be explained by considering the role that coordination and social agents' ability to reconfigure their social network (i.e., relational mobility) play in moral reasoning. Social agents coordinate on (moral) norms, a general attitude which broadly facilitates cooperation, and makes possible the collective enforcement of compliance. During social strife interested parties recalibrate their determination of others' moral standing and recast their established moral circle, in accordance with their new or prevailing social investments. To that extent, social coordination-and its particular promoters, inhibitors, and determinants-effects significant changes in individuals' ranking of moral priorities. Results indicate that rural participants evaluate the harmful actions of third parties more harshly than urban participants. Coordination mediates that relationship between social environment and moral judgment. Coordination also matters more for the moral evaluation of the harmful actions of moral scenarios involving characters belonging to different social units than for scenarios involving characters belonging to the same group. Participants high in relational mobility-that ability to recompose one's social network-moralize similarly wrongdoings perpetrated by both in-and out-group members. Those low in relational mobility differentiate when an out-group member causes the harm. Additionally, perceptions of third-party guilt are also affected by specifics of the social environment. Overall, we find that social coordination and relational mobility affect moral reasoning more so than ethnic commitment.
Evolutionary Psychology, 2017
The drag queen cultural phenomenon has been described at length. However, the depiction of outlan... more The drag queen cultural phenomenon has been described at length. However, the depiction of outlandish and hyperbolic womanhood and taunting and formidable behavior at the core of drag queens' public persona has still to be fully accounted for. We argue that these aspects of the drag queen's public appearance could best be understood in a signaling framework. Publicly donning extravagant woman's costumes attracts harassment and brings financial, mating, and opportunity costs, generating the conditions for the transmission of honest signals. By successfully withstanding those odds, drag queen impersonators signal strategic qualities to members of the gay community. Data collected among gay and straight participants support a costly signaling reading of the drag queen cultural phenomenon. Participants generally agree that successful drag queens typically incur costs, while gaining specific social benefits. The drag queen phenomenon has drawn much attention over the past decades (
The drag queen cultural phenomenon has been described at length. However, the depiction of outlan... more The drag queen cultural phenomenon has been described at length. However, the depiction of outlandish and hyperbolic womanhood and taunting and formidable behavior at the core of drag queens' public persona has still to be fully accounted for. We argue that these aspects of the drag queen's public appearance could best be understood in a signaling framework. Publicly donning extravagant woman's costumes attracts harassment and brings financial, mating, and opportunity costs, generating the conditions for the transmission of honest signals. By successfully withstanding those odds, drag queen impersonators signal strategic qualities to members of the gay community. Data collected among gay and straight participants support a costly signaling reading of the drag queen cultural phenomenon. Participants generally agree that successful drag queens typically incur costs, while gaining specific social benefits.
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Papers by Michael Moncrieff