No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
An Empirical Assessment of the Role of Emotions and Behavior in Conflict Using Automatically Generated Data
Abstract
Automated event data extraction techniques have revolutionized the study of conflict dynamics through the ability of these techniques to generate large volumes of timely data measuring dynamic interactions among actors around the world. In this paper, we describe our approach for adapting these techniques to extract data on sentiments and emotions, which are theorized to crucially contribute to escalating and de-escalating conflict. Political scientists view political conflict as resulting from a series of strategic interactions between groups and individuals. Psychologists highlight additional factors in political conflict, such as endorsements and condemnations, the public's attitude toward its leaders, the impact of public attitudes on policy, and decisions to engage in armed conflict. This project combines these two approaches to examine hypotheses regarding the effects that different emotional impulses have on government and dissident decisions to escalate or de-escalate their use of hostility and violence. Across the two cases examined-the democratic Philippines and authoritative Egypt between 2001 and 2012-we found consistent evidence that intense societal fear of dissidents and societal disgust toward the government were associated with increases in dissident hostility. Conversely, societal anger toward dissidents was associated with a reduction in dissident hostility. However, we also found noticeable differences between the two regimes. We close the article with a summary of these similarities and differences, along with an assessment of their implications for future conflict studies.
... The authors share two background assumptions: First, despite a growing trend toward multipolarity, Euro-centrism or Western-centrism is still a problem afflicting IR theory, 28 which is why the authors go beyond the usual focus on old powers and embrace an analysis of rising powers. Second, growing importance of emotions in IR -such as shame, honour, and pride -are increasingly taken into account as independent or explanatory variables, 29 and justifies the interest in a topic such as status that draws heavily on emotions. ...
... It also highlighted differences in the impact of certain classes of affect on behaviors; for example, the impact of societal disgust expressed toward the government. In the Philippines, societal disgust toward the government was associated with reduced repressive behaviors; whereas, in Egypt societal disgust expressed toward the government increased repressive behaviors (Shellman, 2013b). ...
Herein, MAJ Gregory Seese, MAJ Shawn Stangle, CPT Robby
Otwell, SFC Matthew Martin, and LTC Rafael Linera provide a broad overview of significant
improvements in the understanding of human cognitive processes afforded by recent
developments in neuroscience. These methods show that traditional collection approaches fail
to provide holistically effective metrics to plan and assess modern persuasive efforts. The
authors note that media neuroscience techniques that where once cost prohibitive and
confined to a laboratory are now affordable, compact, and mobile. They argue that USASOC
can capitalize on recent advancements in media neuroscience and integrate the field’s most
currently available equipment, training, and techniques into the PSYOP force. This new
technology can be leveraged to augment and enhance the existing social/behavioral science
methods presently in use. This will then contribute to an increase in the effectiveness of DoD
influence campaigns, as it modernizes both the practices and equipment used within the PSYOP
Force.
... In both Egypt and the Philippines, societal fear, anger and disgust expressed by the population/society toward dissidents resulted in increases in dissident hostility. Conversely, in Egypt, government hostility increased in response to societal disgust whereas in Philippines it decreased [76]. ...
During the 2015 SPIE DSS conference, nine panelists were invited to highlight the trends and use of context for information fusion. This paper highlights the common issues and trends presented from the panel discussion. The different panelists highlighted methods of filtering methods, data aggregation, and the importance of context for realtime analytics. Using the panelist perspectives, the review organizes the common issues and themes as well areas of future analysis of content and context enrichment from information fusion.
Combining discourse analysis with quantitative methods, this article compares how the legislatures of Turkey, the US, and the EU discursively constructed Turkey's Kurdish question. An examination of the legislative-political discourse through 1990 to 1999 suggests that a country suffering from a domestic secessionist conflict perceives and verbalizes the problem differently than outside observers and external stakeholders do. Host countries of conflicts perceive their problems through a more security-oriented lens, and those who observe these conflicts at a distance focus more on the humanitarian aspects. As regards Turkey, this study tests politicians' perceptions of conflicts and the influence of these perceptions on their preexisting political agendas for the Kurdish question, and offers a new model for studying political discourse on intra-state conflicts. The article suggests that a political agenda emerges as the prevalent dynamic in conservative politicians' approaches to the Kurdish question, whereas ideology plays a greater role for liberal/pro-emancipation politicians. Data shows that politically conservative politicians have greater variance in their definitions, based on material factors such as financial, electoral, or alliance-building constraints, whereas liberal and/or left-wing politicians choose ideologically confined discursive frameworks such as human rights and democracy.
United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) recently published a white paper describing the “Gray Zone”, security challenges characterized by “ambiguity about the nature of the conflict, opacity of the parties involved…competitive interactions among and within state and non-state actors that fall between the traditional war and peace duality.”¹ Ambiguity and related uncertainty about actors, situations, relationships, and intent require new approaches to information collection, processing and fusion. General Votel, the current SOCOM commander, during a recent speech on “Operating in the Gray Zone” emphasized that it would be important to get left of the next crises and stated emphatically, “to do that we must understand the Human Domain.”² This understanding of the human domain must come from making meaning based on different perspectives, including the “emic” or first person/participant and “etic” or third person/observer perspectives. Much of the information currently collected and processed is etic. Incorporation and fusion with the emic perspective enables forecasting of behaviors/events and provides context for etic information (e.g., video).³ Gray zone challenges are perspective-dependent; for example, the conflict in Ukraine is interpreted quite differently by Russia, the US and Ukraine. Russia views it as war, necessitating aggressive action, the US views it as a security issue best dealt with by economic sanctions and diplomacy and the Ukraine views it as a threat to its sovereignty.⁴ General Otto in the Air Force ISR 2023 vision document stated that Air Force ISR is needed to anticipate strategic surprise.⁵ Anticipatory analysis enabling getting left of a crisis inherently requires a greater focus on information sources that elucidate the human environment as well as new methods that elucidate not only the “who’s” and “what’s”, but the “how’s and “why’s,” extracting features and/or patterns and subtle cues useful for forecasting behaviors and events; for example discourse patterns related to social identity and integrative complexity.⁶ AFRL has been conducting research to enable analysts to understand the “emic” perspective based on discourse analysis methods and/or text analytics.⁷ Previous results demonstrated the value of fusion of emic and etic information in terms of improved accuracy (from 39% to 86%) in forecasting violent events.8 This paper will describe new work to extend this to anticipatory analysis in the gray zone.
We examined how leaders’ expressions of emotion and emotion-related appraisals in their speeches were associated with subsequent political aggression by their groups. We obtained records of speeches anchored to identified acts of aggression and selected for analysis those speeches that were available at three points in time prior to those acts. We then coded the speeches for their expressions of emotion and emotion-related appraisals and tested the differences in that content separately for groups that committed acts of aggression and those that did not, which we labeled acts of resistance. Leaders’ expressions of contempt and disgust and the appraisals related to them differentiated the two groups. We discuss the unique potential contributions of expressions of contempt and disgust to aggression and violence.
Competing hypotheses on the relationship between government and dissident behavior emerge from both formal and empirical models. Yet, the current literature lacks a comprehensive theoretical account of such contradictory effects. This study develops a theory to account for a large number of competing hypotheses within a single framework. The theory explains various government and dissident tactical choices over the course of an internal political struggle by focusing on leaders, their motivations, and the link between their motivations and actions. The theory gives rise to a process model of sequential government-dissident interactions that is used to test several implied hypotheses. Empirical sequential time-series models of government and dissident behavior find support for most of the theory's implied hypotheses in Israel (1979–2002) and Afghanistan (1990–99).
In response to a request from Vice President Al Gore in 1994, the CIA established "The State Failure Task Force," a group of independent researchers to examine comprehensively the factors and forces that have affected the stability of the post-Cold War world. The Task Force's goal was to identify the factors or combinations of factors that distinguish states that failed from those, which averted crises over the last 40 years. The study represents the first empirical effort to identify factors associated with state failure by examining a broad range of demographic, societal, economic, environmental, and political indicators influencing state stability. The Task Force found that three clusters of variables had significant correlation with subsequent state failures: (1) quality of life; (2) openness to international trade; and (3) the level of democracy. However, it is the interaction among these variables that provided the most important insights. Following are excepts from Phase II of the State Failure Task Force findings.
A number of studies of crisis behavior assume that political behavior goes through a series of clear phases characterized by distinct patterns of interactions. Correct identification of these phases is important in crisis forecasting and in the application of mediation techniques such as preventive diplomacy. To date, empirical work with these data sets has identified crisis phases contextually (by human coders) rather than through any systematic procedures. This study uses several statistical techniques to identify and analyze phases in an event data set measuring the political behavior between eight Middle Eastern actors for the period July 1979 to June 1995, and concludes with observations on how these analytic approaches might be applied to the problem of crisis early warning.
This paper describes in technical detail the Kansas Event Data System (KEDS) and summarizes our experience in coding Reuters data for the Middle East. The components of KEDS are first described; this discussion is intended to provide sufficient detail about the program that one could develop a more sophisticated machine-coding system based on our research. We then discuss a number of problems we have encountered in machine coding, focusing on the Reuters data source and the KEDS program itself. The paper concludes with a discussion of future approaches to machine coding in event data research and other potential applications of the technology. Keywords. event data, natural language, full-text databases, international relations, social science.
The nature of the association between anger and 5 appraisal-action tendency components--goal obstacle, other accountability, unfairness, control, and antagonism--was examined in terms of specificity, necessity, and sufficiency. In 2 studies, participants described recently experienced unpleasant situations in which 1 of the appraisal-action tendency components was present or absent and indicated which emotions they had experienced. The results showed that (a) other accountability and arrogant entitlement, as an instance of unfairness, are specific appraisals ability for anger; and most important, (b) none of the components is necessary or sufficient for anger. The findings suggest that the relation between emotions and appraisal-action tendency components should be conceptualized instead as a contingent association, meaning that they usually co-occur.
The authors suggest that the traditional conception of prejudice--as a general attitude or evaluation--can problematically obscure the rich texturing of emotions that people feel toward different groups. Derived from a sociofunctional approach, the authors predicted that groups believed to pose qualitatively distinct threats to in-group resources or processes would evoke qualitatively distinct and functionally relevant emotional reactions. Participants' reactions to a range of social groups provided a data set unique in the scope of emotional reactions and threat beliefs explored. As predicted, different groups elicited different profiles of emotion and threat reactions, and this diversity was often masked by general measures of prejudice and threat. Moreover, threat and emotion profiles were associated with one another in the manner predicted: Specific classes of threat were linked to specific, functionally relevant emotions, and groups similar in the threat profiles they elicited were also similar in the emotion profiles they elicited.
Why does a dissident group go through phases of violence and nonviolence? Many studies of states and dissidents examine related issues by focusing on structural or rarely changing factors. In contrast, some more recent work focuses on dynamic interaction of participants. We suggest forecasting state–dissident interaction using insights from this dynamic approach while also incorporating structural factors. We explore this question by offering new data on the behavior of groups and governments collected using automated natural language processing techniques. These data provide information on who is doing what to whom at a directed-dyadic level. We also collected new data on the attitudes or sentiment of the masses using novel automated techniques. Since obtaining valid and reliable time-series public opinion data on mass attitudes towards a dissident group is extremely difficult, we have created automated sentiment data by scraping publicly available information written by members of the population and aggregating this information to create a pollof opinion at a discrete time period. We model the violence and nonviolence perpetrated by two groups: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines. We find encouraging results for predicting future phase shifts in violence when accounting for behaviors modeled with our data as opposed to models based solely on structural factors.
Mass political conflict is typically examined in terms of violence and in isolation from routine civil interactions. The authors argue that mass conflict is multidimensional and that violence should be treated as an outcome of conflict, as well as a form of action. They define three dimensions of conflict—contentiousness, coerciveness, and change goals—and indices of the civil society that are central to mapping global trends in mass conflict. A strategy for mapping mass conflict and civil interactions using the PANDA protocol to generate highly reliable event data is outlined, and these indices are used to trace two democratic transitions (in Poland and South Korea), a conflict crisis that was repressed (China), and a conflict escalation that flared into a civil war (the former Yugoslavia). Automation has major advantages over human coding in terms of transparency, integration with existing event data series, real-time availability, and long-term maintenance costs. It also opens new ways of thinking about event data and the assessment of reliability.
The project focuses on the interrelationship between both government and dissident leaders’ “micromotives” and the regime’s/group’s “macrobehavior” (Schelling 1978). That is, I explain how dissident and government leaders’ individual motives transpire into events such as the clashes with riot police, cooperative agreements, and terrorist activities we observe in Chile, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Israel. In contentious political struggles between the government and an opposition group, how does a state’s choice among tactics (e.g., violence versus negotiation) influence an opposition group’s choice among tactics? Conversely, how does an opposition group’s choice among tactics influence a state’s choice among tactics? This project proposes a theory to answer these questions and posits a research design to test the theory's implications.
The theory restricts attention to a two actor world composed of a government and a dissident group, in which the government implements policies and defends those policies and dissidents challenge those policies and the government's authority to rule. Thus, the government and the dissidents are viewed as opponents of one another. Suppose further that each entity is controlled by a rational leader and that each leader gets utility from maintaining their tenure. To protect their positions of authority, leaders direct actions towards one another. Each leader’s choice of action is influenced by three factors: internal threat, external threat, and resource pools.
First, each leader faces threats from his or her coalition of supporters (internal threat). For leaders to remain in power, they must have a coalition of followers that support them. The likelihood of a leader maintaining power decreases, as his or her support erodes. In this simplified world, a leader’s coalition of supporters judges the leader’s performance in office based on the successes and failures he or she has in interactions with the opponent. Thus, one’s actions are a function of previous outcomes in interactions with the opponent.
Second, leaders face threats from the opponent itself (external threat) such as assassination, imprisonment, exile, revolution, and coup d'état. Thus, leaders must prevent violent backlash and upheaval. As a result, a leader’s action is a function of past opponent behavior.
However, each action is costly and under certain conditions, resource pools constrain leaders’ tactical choices. Leaders’ motives compel them to monitor the levels of internal and external threat in their environment and the availability of resources when choosing actions to direct at their opponent. Each leader chooses from an action set containing hostile and cooperative means. The theoretical implies the ways in which leaders behave towards one another in different decision-making contexts.
To capture the argument, the author specifies a system of equations that s state and dissident leaders' choices in sequential response to one. Using a most-different-systems design, the author performs empirical tests of the theoretical in the countries of Chile, Venezuela, Israel, and Afghanistan using event data and time series econometric techniques. The data come from the Intranational Political Interactions (IPI) project and the Kansas Event Data Systems (KEDS) project. The results show strong support for the hypotheses in most countries and weaker support in others.
One way to demonstrate progress in a field of scientific inquiry is to show that factors believed to explain some phenomenon can also be used effectively to predict both its occurrence and its nonoccurrence. This study draws on the state strength literature to identify relevant country macrostructural factors that can contribute to different kinds and levels of intensity of conflict and country instabilities. A pattern classification algorithm—fuzzy analysis of statistical evidence (FASE)—is used to analyze the relationships between country macrostructural factors and historical instances of country instability. A split-sample validation design is used to evaluate the ability of FASE to generate competent predictions, using the standard forecasting performance metrics overall accuracy, recall, and precision. The results demonstrate the potential for FASE to accurately forecast not just the occurrence but also the level of intensity of country-specific instabilities out 5 years with about 80% overall accuracy.
A total of 108 armed conflicts has been recorded for the years 1989-98. Of these, 36 were active in 1998. This marks an increase from 1997, after an overall decline in the number of conflicts per year since 1992. The number of wars nearly doubled in 1998, after a marked decrease that had also started in 1992. Most wars took place in Africa. Seven interstate armed conflicts were recorded for the whole period, of which two were active in 1998.
This study posits a theory to explain government and dissident sequential responses to one another and develops a statistical model to test the implied hypotheses. While competing hypotheses emerge from both formal and empirical models, the current literature lacks a single, coherent, theoretical, and empirically corroborated model of the interactive relationship between dissident and government behavior. The study seeks to fill this lacuna in the literature by developing a comprehensive theory to account for a large number of competing hypotheses within a single framework. The subsequent empirical tests enable one to find support for the various competing hypotheses under different sets of conditions. The analyses of Chile (1983—1992) and Venezuela (1987— 1992) provide evidence that the model captures well the sequential responses of Chilean and Venezuelan governments and dissidents.
While some of the intrastate war literature calls for the disaggregation of civil conflict, most of those studies focus on the geography of civil conflict failing to take into account the various actors involved in such conflicts. This study addresses the multi-actor nature of civil conflict by examining whether 'actor aggregation' affects the inferences drawn from quantitative studies of civil conflict. Using two cases, Cambodia (1980-2004) and Indonesia (1980-2004), the authors examine how multiple dissident groups' behavior aggregated together can affect the inferences drawn from quantitative studies of government-dissident interactions. The results demonstrate that researchers may draw different inferences and commit both Type I and Type II errors using different actor aggregations. The results have myriad implications for the study of civil conflict and conflict processes.
Emotions are viewed as having evolved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life-tasks. Each emotion has unique features: signal, physiology, and antecedent events. Each emotion also has characteristics in common with other emotions: rapid onset, short duration, unbidden occurrence, automatic appraisal, and coherence among responses. These shared and unique characteristics are the product of our evolution, and distinguish emotions from other affective phenomena.
Drawing on an appraisal-tendency framework (J. S. Lerner & D. Keltner, 2000), the authors predicted and found that fear and anger have opposite effects on risk perception. Whereas fearful people expressed pessimistic risk estimates and risk-averse choices, angry people expressed optimistic risk estimates and risk-seeking choices. These opposing patterns emerged for naturally occurring and experimentally induced fear and anger. Moreover, estimates of angry people more closely resembled those of happy people than those of fearful people. Consistent with predictions, appraisal tendencies accounted for these effects: Appraisals of certainty and control moderated and (in the case of control) mediated the emotion effects. As a complement to studies that link affective valence to judgment outcomes, the present studies highlight multiple benefits of studying specific emotions.
Crises in the Twentieth Century: Handbook of Foreign Policy Crises
- Jonathan Wilkenfeld
- Michael Brecher
- Sheila Moser
Wilkenfeld, Jonathan, Michael Brecher, and Sheila Moser. Crises in the Twentieth Century: Handbook of Foreign
Policy Crises. Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, 1988.
The Wages of War, 1816-1965: A Statistical Handbook
- J Singer
- Melvin David
- Small
Singer, J. David and Melvin Small. The Wages of War, 1816-1965: A Statistical Handbook. New York: John Wiley
and Sons, 1972.
The State Failure Task Force Report: Phase II Findings. McLean, VA: Science Applications International Corporation
- Daniel C Esty
- Jack Goldstone
- Ted Robert Gurr
- Barbara Harff
- Marc Levy
- Geoffrey D Dabelko
- Pamela T Surko
- Alan N Unger