Resisting hostility generated by terror: An agent-based study

PLoS One. 2019 Jan 14;14(1):e0209907. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0209907. eCollection 2019.

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Christianity*
  • Female
  • France
  • Hostility*
  • Humans
  • Islam*
  • Male
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Socioeconomic Factors
  • Terrorism*

Grants and funding

This work was funded by CNRS, Mission Interdisciplinarity (Défi S2C3), http://www.cnrs.fr/mi/ and Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR 11-FRQU-004-01). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.