Resisting hostility generated by terror: An agent-based study
Authored by Sylvie Huet, Guillaume Deffuant, Armelle Nugier, Michel Streith, Serge Guimond
Date Published: 2019
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0209907
Sponsors:
French National Research Agency (ANR)
French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)
Platforms:
Java
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Mathematical description
Model Code URLs:
https://www.comses.net/codebases/7740ee38-9a35-4a82-a0ee-9b48949df5fc/releases/1.0.0/
Abstract
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.
Tags
Model
Local convergence
Management theory