Heroic Age Watch Online

[Jeremias Resendez]

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Online militant propaganda videos by ISIS and other groups are strongly implicated in recruitment to terrorism in the West1,2,3,4. Indeed, over 80% of ISIS offenders arrested in the US had watched ISIS propaganda5. Beyond mere use of social media and high production values, ISIS has pioneered a heroic martyr narrative. Distinct from traditional militant appeals based on duty to and religious obligation to kindred communities under threat (the social martyr narrative), the heroic narrative emphasizes individual benefits, notably personal glory and empowerment through sacrifice and righteous violence. Indeed, evidence indicates ISIS is deliberately using both heroic and social narratives to expand its appeal to different recruitment pools characterized by different psychological dispositions and needs associated with attraction to extremism. While a body of literature links terrorism to dispositional altruism6,7,8, the heroic narrative appears tailor-made to attract egoists. The heroic narrative helps to explain the surge of converts and criminals among western recruits for ISIS9,10, as well as the documented lack of religious indoctrination and training prior to mobilization11.

The current study integrates behavioral evaluations, dispositional assessments, and neuroscience measures (EEG) to examine the psychological and neural processes impacted by propaganda videos. This integrative social neuroscience approach advances understanding of processes and mechanisms linking narratives and persuasion at higher resolution than behavioral studies alone.

Electrodes with significantly different log power between heroic and social videos were identified in each frequency band (Fig. 2). Within the theta band, heroic videos were associated with reduced power at posterolateral and frontal electrodes but increased power at centro- and posterior medial electrodes. All channels demonstrated greater alpha power for heroic clips, except for the most fronto-lateral electrodes (F7/8, and AF7/8). Heroic videos elicited greater power over frontocentral sites in the low beta band, and greater power over left frontolateral sites across the low beta, high beta, and low gamma bands. In contrast, social videos were associated with great posterior power across all three higher bands, with the broadest effects within the highest frequency band.

EEG oscillations important for classifying heroic or social narratives. Scalp plots of weights from the linear support vector machine indicating importance of each electrode and frequency band for classifying a video as heroic (red) or social (blue). Values are scaled to the overall maximum beta weight.

First, findings are consistent with our theoretical framework, which argues that narrative transportation is a key mechanism underlying the recruitment appeal of ISIS propaganda videos. Behaviorally, subjective narrative transportation ratings were strongly positively related to greater preference for particular propaganda videos. Moreover, narrative transportation was also positively associated with global power in the beta and gamma frequency bands.

Second, heroic and social narrative videos elicited distinct patterns of brain activation in affecting appeal, consistent with these being distinct and distinguishable narrative types. The frontal theta and low beta results provide insights into the affective mechanisms that distinguish between social and heroic narratives. Heroic videos elicited widespread increases in frontal beta, which is consistent with heroic videos being more personally relevant. In contrast, social martyr narratives were associated with increased power at frontolateral sites within the theta band and less global alpha, suggesting the social narratives required greater attention and potential emotion regulation. In previous event-related experiments, brief increases in theta power follow errors and negative feedback, while beta oscillations track positive feedback (e.g.39,40). Greater beta power over frontal sites for heroic narratives is also consistent with greater positive expectations. Past work has also demonstrated widespread decreases in alpha power associated with autobiographical memory (e.g.41). Thus, heroic videos may be more likely to lead individuals to reflect on their own past experiences.

Prior to providing video evaluations, participants completed several online measures including demographic information, age, income, and education. They also completed self-report measures to assess religiosity as well as other-focused and self-focused dispositions. Religiosity was assessed using three items from the Duke University Religiosity Index47 which ask participants to indicate the extent to which religious beliefs and spirituality play an important role in their everyday lives. Participants were given the option to report their religious affiliation, if any (see Table S1). There were a wide variety of religions represented in this community sample, so it was not possible to directly compare religions.

Dispositional focus on the self was assessed using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory50. The NPI is a 40-item self-report measure that assesses seven aspects of narcissism: authority, self-sufficiency, superiority, exhibitionism, exploitativeness, vanity, and entitlement. Participants indicate their agreement or disagreement with each statement.

For univariate analysis, log-transformed power values were averaged at each electrode within each frequency band for each subject for heroic and social videos separately. Paired-samples t-tests were then conducted at each electrode, within each frequency band. Statistical significance was assessed using threshold-free cluster enhancement, a method that takes into account both height (t-statistic) and extent (neighboring electrodes with similar response) of differences in power between heroic and social videos52,53. Here, family-wise error was assessed using 5000 Monte Carlo samples, calculated within each frequency band, separately for positive and negative differences.

For classification analysis, log power density within each 1 s window served as samples for training a linear classifier. Thus, each sample contained 320 features (64 channels 5 frequency bands). Classification analysis was performed using a support vector machine (SVM) with a linear kernel as implemented in fitcecoc in MATLAB 9.2 (R2017a, MathWorks). Prior to training, power density within each frequency band was standardized. When the number of clean segments were not equal between the heroic and social videos, random subsampling was used to equalize trial numbers. Classifier performance was evaluated by the average accuracy over 10 repetitions of tenfold cross-validation. Classifier significance was assess using a randomization test against chance (50%) with 10,000 Monte Carlo simulations. In order to provide an estimate of the stability of the average classifier accuracy, a 95% bootstrap interval was calculated.

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Beierle, a 40-year-old resident of Deltona, Florida, died after shooting himself Friday. Police say he shot and killed 61-year-old Nancy Van Vessem and 21-year-old Maura Binkley and injured five others at the Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio.

In 2014, Rodger targeted a sorority on his college campus and killed six and injured another 14 people in Isla Vista, California. Before his rampage, Rodger posted a manifesto online blaming women for the fact that he was still a virgin. Rodgers has been referenced in several other killings, including a van-ramming attack in Toronto earlier this year that killed 10.

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