Researchers at ICST are engaged in a number of basic and applied research projects. These include:
Mimicry, Deception and Violence: A Multidisciplinary Investigation of Social, Psychological and Cultural Dynamics in Terrorist Movements
How do we know who is responsible for terrorist acts? Much of what we know about terrorist behavior is predicated on our ability to accurately attribute responsibility to terrorist actors, be they individuals or movements. We know little, however, about when and why terrorist groups will sometimes claim responsibility (sometimes even claiming responsibility for acts committed by other groups), while at other times, they will take steps to protect themselves from being identified with specific acts committed to highlight their grievances and goals. This project seeks to address these questions by bringing together a multidisciplinary collaboration from leading experts in psychology, history, religious studies, entomology, political science, communications and computer science to develop an innovative empirical, data-driven program of research to uncover the individual, group, social and cultural dynamics of mimicry and deception in terrorist behavior and to examine their roles, functions and expressions as part of terrorist tactics and strategy.
Assessing the Effectiveness of Current De-Radicalization Initiatives and Identifying Implications for the Development of US-Based Initiatives
De-radicalizing terrorists - can it be done? In recent years, a number of exciting innovations have emerged in the world of counterterrorism. Among these is the increasing prevalence of prison-based intervention programs in various countries collectively aimed at promoting the disengagement and deradicalization of terrorists. This project seeks to find out if these projects are successful (and if so, how this success is measured), if ‘de-radicalization’ represents an achievable and meaningful objective, and if so, what lessons we can take from existing initiatives for the design of such a program in the United States.
Competitive Adaptation in Terrorist Networks: A Multidisciplinary Basic Research Proposal for Modeling the Social, Psychological, and Cultural Properties of Adaptive Militant Networks in Five Countries
How do violent non-state actors learn and adapt? There is growing recognition among scholars and practitioners that the counterterrorism literature suffers from a lack of primary-source field research. This shortcoming is largely due to researchers’ reluctance to enter the field to conduct interviews with active or disengaged terrorists and their supporters. As a result, much of our knowledge and understanding about terrorist movements comes from news reports and other secondary sources. This contributes to systematic bias in data analysis and skewed findings that do not correlate strongly with the reality of terrorist behavior, leading to the development of vague and impractical policy recommendations. Researchers at Penn State, working with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, are combining the results of ethnographic field research with sophisticated modelling tools to develop a meso-level model of terrorist networks. This model will combine insights from organization theory, social psychology, network analysis, and agent-based modeling into a platform that counterterrorism practitioners can use to aid decision-making, prioritize and evaluate the impact of specific interventions, and forecast future developments in terrorist activity.
The Global Self-Immolation Events Database (GS-IED)
Self-immolation is the act of setting oneself on fire. Though often associated with mental illness, the act of self-immolation is increasingly prevalent as an extreme from of political protest. Unlike other acts of political violence (such as suicide bombing), acts of self-immolation typically involve only the death of the actor him or herself. ICST is developing The Global Self-Immolation Events Database (GS-IED). The database seeks to identify and track the prevalence and spread of self-immolation in the context of political conflict.
Defining an Analytic Construct for Tailored Deterrence: Contributions of Social Science Research
A panel of social scientists has been assembled to identify the potential contributions of the social and behavioral sciences to the development and assessment of tailored deterrence strategies. This project will determine what questions deterrence analysts can and should pose to social scientists, how answers to these questions or further understanding might be found within the social sciences, and how these questions can be integrated into a construct that helps deterrence analysts consider options to solving real-world problems.