Shannon C. Houck

The hidden implications of radical group rhetoric: Integrative complexity and terrorism

We compared the public rhetoric of two terrorist groups to ideologically-similar non-terrorist groups on integrative complexity and its two sub-components (dialectical complexity and elaborative complexity). We further attempted to use these constructs to understand when the two focal terrorist groups engaged in violent acts. Results suggested that terrorist group rhetoric was uniformly simpler than non-terrorist rhetoric, and that this simplicity was especially in evidence for elaborative forms of complexity. Secondly, results more weakly suggested that a pattern of complex thinking associated with defensive thinking – namely, higher elaborative and lower dialectical complexity – became more prevalent in terrorist rhetoric as a violent act became imminent. These results demonstrate that scoring the complexity of public rhetoric can potentially be used to understand the psychology of terrorist groups from a distance.

What People Think About Torture: Torture Is Inherently Bad … Unless It Can Save Someone I Love

Prior research suggests peoples abstract views of torture are often negative. We suspected, however, that those views might not fully represent torture perceptions in a scenario where they felt closeness to the potential victims. To test this idea, participants read a scenario about a crisis situation and completed measurements of their support for torture usage in the scenario. Scenarios varied in their degree of personal closeness to the victim. Results from 2 studies suggest that people were considerably more likely to support torture in applied, personally relevant scenarios compared to at-a-distant scenarios involving unknown victims. These studies can inform both our understanding of torture perceptions and the current cultural debate between deontologists and consequentialists about this topic.

Ideologically Motivated Perceptions of Complexity Believing Those Who Agree With You Are More Complex Than They Are

While prior research has found linguistic complexity to be predictive across multiple domains, little research has examined how people perceive—or misperceive—linguistic complexity when they encounter it. Drawing from a model of the motivated ideological lens through which people view linguistic complexity, two studies examined the hypotheses that (a) participants are more likely to overestimate the complexity of political candidates when they believe they align with their own political views and (b) this complexity overestimation effect will be particularly strong for political liberals. Both studies presented participants with paragraphs from political candidates that varied in their actual integrative complexity levels and asked them to estimate the complexity of the paragraph. Consistent with expectations, Study 1 found that participants were significantly more likely to overestimate complexity levels for political candidates with whom they shared ideological beliefs and that this effect was particularly in evidence for political liberals. Study 2 replicated this basic pattern and further demonstrated that this effect was dependent on participants’ knowledge of their ideological agreement with the paragraph author. Because people misperceive linguistic complexity, researchers should move beyond thinking solely about how complex political rhetoric is; we have to also consider the degree that the intended audience may over- or underestimate complexity when they see it.

Ecological Origins of Freedom: Pathogens, Heat Stress, and Frontier Topography Predict More Vertical but Less Horizontal Governmental Restriction:

What kinds of physical environments make for free societies? The present research investigates the effect of three different types of ecological stressors (climate stress, pathogen stress, and frontier topography) on two measurements of governmental restriction: Vertical restriction involves select persons imposing asymmetrical laws on others, while horizontal restriction involves laws that restrict most members of a society equally. Investigation 1 validates our measurements of vertical and horizontal restriction. Investigation 2 demonstrates that, across both U.S. states and a sample of nations, ecological stressors tend to cause more vertically restrictive societies but less horizontally restrictive societies. Investigation 3 demonstrates that assortative sociality partially mediates ecological stress→restriction relationships across nations, but not in U.S. states. Although some stressor-specific effects emerged (most notably, cold stress consistently showed effects in the opposite direction), these results in the main suggest that ecological stress simultaneously creates opposing pressures that push freedom in two different directions.

Understanding what makes terrorist groups’ propaganda effective: an integrative complexity analysis of ISIL and Al Qaeda

ABSTRACT The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) became an increasingly powerful terrorist organisation in a relatively short period of time, drawing more recruits than its former affiliate, Al Qaeda. Many have attributed ISIL’s successful expansion in part to its extensive propaganda platform. But what causes terrorist groups to be effective in their communication to the public? To investigate, we examined one aspect of terrorists’ rhetoric: Integrative complexity. In particular, this historical examination provides a broad integrative complexity analysis of public statements released by key members of ISIL and Al Qaeda over a 10-year period when ISIL was rapidly growing as a terrorist entity (2004–2014). Findings revealed that (a) ISIL demonstrated less complexity overall than Al Qaeda (p < .001) and (b) ISIL became increasingly less complex over this focal time period (p < .001), while Al Qaeda’s complexity remained comparatively stable (p = .69). Taken together, these data suggest that as ISIL grew in size and strength between 2004 and 2014 – surpassing Al Qaeda on multiple domains such as recruitment, monetary resources, territorial control, and arms power – it simultaneously became less complex in its communication to the public.

The Strategic Manipulation of Linguistic Complexity: A Test of Two Models of Lying:

To what degree is complex language driven by personal cognitive factors versus strategic self-presentation? Studies teasing apart these two influences on complexity are hard to design and evidence bearing on the question is not abundant. To fill this gap, the present studies explored two models relevant to a form of communication full of strategic implications: deception. The cognitive strain model suggests that because lies are cognitively draining, deception will generally reduce complexity, whereas the strategic model expects the liar to adjust complexity up or down depending on the perceived benefits. Three studies tested differential predictions from these models by scoring different forms of linguistic complexity (dialectical and elaborative) for deceptive communications in real-world and experimental contexts. Results from these studies support the value of a strategic model of the effect of lying on complex language, thus suggesting that people strategically manipulate the complexity of their language to accomplish specific goals.

Cognitive complexity of clients and counsellors during motivation-based treatment for smoking cessation: an observational study on occasional smokers in a US college sample

Objective Motivational interviewing (MI) is a widely used and promising treatment approach for aiding in smoking cessation. The present observational study adds to other recent research on why and when MI works by investigating a new potential mechanism: integrative complexity. Setting The study took place in college fraternity and sorority chapters at one large midwestern university. Participants Researchers transcribed MI counselling sessions from a previous randomised controlled trial focused on tobacco cessation among college students and subsequently scored clients’ and counsellors’ discussions across four counselling sessions for integrative complexity. Interventions This is an observational secondary analysis of a randomised controlled trial that tested the effectiveness of MI. We analysed the relationship between integrative complexity and success at quitting smoking in the trial. Primary and secondary outcome measures Success in quitting smoking:Participants were categorised into two outcome groups (successful quitters vs failed attempters), created based on dichotomous outcomes on two standard variables: (1) self-reported attempts to quit and (2) number of days smoked via timeline follow-back assessment procedures that use key events in participants’ lives to prompt their recall of smoking. Results We found (1) significantly higher complexity overall for participants who tried to quit but failed compared with successful quitters (standardised β=0.36, p<0.001, (Lower Confidence Interval.)LCI=0.16, (Upper Confidence Interval) UCI=0.47) and (2) the predictive effect of complexity on outcome remains when controlling for standard motivational and demographic variables (partial r(102)=−0.23, p=0.022). Conclusions Taken together, these results suggest that cognitive complexity is uniquely associated with successful quitting in MI controlled trials, and thus may be an important variable to more fully explore during treatment.

Ethically Investigating Torture Efficacy: A New Methodology to Test the Influence of Physical Pain on Decision-Making Processes in Experimental Interrogation Scenarios

Tortures effectiveness is a frequently debated yet under-researched topic. This article describes a new experimental method to ethically investigate one component of torture: The influence of physical pain on peoples decisions to reveal secret or false information. In particular, participants played a game that was designed to be a proxy of an interrogation scenario. As part of the game, participants were instructed to keep specific information hidden from an opponent while their hand was submerged in varying temperatures of ice water (a cold pressor test that causes pain). Further, their opponent (actually a confederate) verbally pressured them to reveal the information. Participants could choose to give false information to their opponent, true information, or a combination of both. Results suggested the potential usefulness of this method to examine the effectiveness of using pain for information retrieval in a scenario similar to interrogation: Analyses revealed that participants were more likely to reveal false information when exposed to the cold pressor test, and this effect became more pronounced as manipulated water temperatures became colder (from 10 degrees to 5 degrees to 1 degree). This study offers a methodological advance on a challenging topic to research, and can inform our understanding of the efficacy of physical pain as an information retrieval tool.

An Integrative Complexity Analysis of Religious and Irreligious Thinking

Stereotypical views cast religious believers as closed-minded, unthinking individuals, and irreligious persons as comparatively more intellectual and complex. But are these perceptions accurate? To investigate, three studies assessed differences between religious and irreligious thinking on Integrative Complexity (IC). In Study 1, six atheist–Christian opponents were selected for IC. Findings revealed that Christians were significantly more complex than their atheist counterparts overall, but variability existed across comparisons. Study 2 examined persons writing about what matters most to them, finding that people more likely to generate religious language had significantly higher complexity. Study 3 evaluated a famous atheist-to-religious convert (C.S. Lewis) who wrote comparable materials during an irreligious and religious phase of his life. Results demonstrated that Lewis’ complexity was higher during his religious phase. Taken together, Studies 1 to 3 suggest that religious thinkers are sometimes more complex than nonreligious thinkers and vice versa—variability that sometimes goes unnoticed in public circles.

Psychological Spacetime: Implications of Relativity Theory for Time Perception

It has been an accepted scientific fact in physics for almost 100 years that time speeds up and slows down for an observer based on factors—such as motion and gravity—that affect space. Yet this fact, drawn from the theory of relativity, has not been widely integrated into the study of the psychology of time. The present article helps to fill in this gap between physics and psychology by reviewing evidence concerning what a psychological spacetime processor—one that accounted for the theory of relativity’s empirically validated predictions of the compensatory relationship between time and space—would look like. This model of the spacetime processor suggests that humans should have a psychological mechanism for slowing time down as motion speeds up, a prediction that already has widespread research support. We also discuss several novel hypotheses directly suggested by the spacetime model and a set of related speculations that emerge when considering spacetime (some of which have already received empirical support). Finally, we compare and contrast three very different potential reasons why we might have developed a spacetime processor in the first place. We conclude that the spacetime model shows promise for organizing existing data on time perception and generating novel hypotheses for researchers to pursue. Considering how humans might process spacetime helps reduce the existing gap between our understanding of physics and our understanding of human psychology.