Neuroimaging 'will to fight' for sacred values : An empirical case study with supporters of an Al Qaeda associate
Hamid, Nafees (Department of Security and Crime Science. University College London)
Pretus, Clara (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Psiquiatria i de Medicina Legal)
Atran, Scott (Gerald Ford School of Public Policy. Institute for Social Research. University of Michigan)
Crockett, Molly J. (Department of Psychology. Yale University)
Ginges, Jeremy (Department of Psychology. New School for Social Research)
Sheikh, Hammad (Department of Psychology. New School for Social Research)
Tobeña, Adolf 1950- (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Psiquiatria i de Medicina Legal)
Carmona Cañabate, Susana (Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón. Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Gregorio Marañón (IiSGM))
Gómez, Ángel (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Espanya). Departamento de Psicología Social y de las Organizaciones)
Davis, Richard (School of Politics and Global Studies. Arizona State University)
Vilarroya Oliver, Óscar (Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques)

Data:	2019
Resum:	Violent intergroup conflicts are often motivated by commitments to abstract ideals such as god or nation, so-called 'sacred' values that are insensitive to material trade-offs. There is scant knowledge of how the brain processes costly sacrifices for such cherished causes. We studied willingness to fight and die for sacred values using fMRI in Barcelona, Spain, among supporters of a radical Islamist group. We measured brain activity in radicalized individuals as they indicated their willingness to fight and die for sacred and non-sacred values, and as they reacted to peers' ratings for the same values. We observed diminished activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), inferior frontal gyrus, and parietal cortex while conveying willingness to fight and die for sacred relative to non-sacred values-regions that have previously been implicated in calculating costs and consequences. An overlapping region of the dlPFC was active when viewing conflicting ratings of sacred values from peers, to the extent participants were sensitive to peer influence, suggesting that it is possible to induce flexibility in the way people defend sacred values. Our results cohere with a view that 'devoted actors' motivated by an extreme commitment towards sacred values rely on distinctive neurocognitve processes that can be identified.
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Fmri ; Will to fight ; Neuroimaging ; Violent extremism ; Radicalization ; Sacred values
Publicat a:	Royal Society Open Science, Vol. 6 Núm. 6 (january 2019) , p. 181585, ISSN 2054-5703

DOI: 10.1098/rsos.181585
PMID: 31312469

13 p, 756.2 KB

El registre apareix a les col·leccions:
Articles > Articles de recerca
Articles > Articles publicats