The paper Schneier is talking about is at
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.31.2.42
Udhay
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/07/securitymatters_0712
Commentary by Bruce Schneier
The Evolutionary Brain Glitch That Makes Terrorism Fail
07.12.07 | 2:00 AM
Two people are sitting in a room together: an experimenter and a
subject. The experimenter gets up and closes the door, and the room
becomes quieter. The subject is likely to believe that the
experimenter's purpose in closing the door was to make the room quieter.
This is an example of correspondent inference theory. People tend to
infer the motives -- and also the disposition -- of someone who
performs an action based on the effects of his actions, and not on
external or situational factors. If you see someone violently hitting
someone else, you assume it's because he wanted to -- and is a
violent person -- and not because he's play-acting. If you read about
someone getting into a car accident, you assume it's because he's a
bad driver and not because he was simply unlucky. And -- more
importantly for this column -- if you read about a terrorist, you
assume that terrorism is his ultimate goal.
It's not always this easy, of course. If someone chooses to move to
Seattle instead of New York, is it because of the climate, the
culture or his career? Edward Jones and Keith Davis, who advanced
this theory in the 1960s and 1970s, proposed a theory of
"correspondence" to describe the extent to which this effect
predominates. When an action has a high correspondence, people tend
to infer the motives of the person directly from the action: e.g.,
hitting someone violently. When the action has a low correspondence,
people tend to not to make the assumption: e.g., moving to Seattle.
Like most cognitive biases, correspondent inference theory makes
evolutionary sense. In a world of simple actions and base
motivations, it's a good rule of thumb that allows a creature to
rapidly infer the motivations of another creature. (He's attacking me
because he wants to kill me.) Even in sentient and social creatures
like humans, it makes a lot of sense most of the time. If you see
someone violently hitting someone else, it's reasonable to assume
that he's a violent person. Cognitive biases aren't bad; they're
sensible rules of thumb.
But like all cognitive biases, correspondent inference theory fails
sometimes. And one place it fails pretty spectacularly is in our
response to terrorism. Because terrorism often results in the
horrific deaths of innocents, we mistakenly infer that the horrific
deaths of innocents is the primary motivation of the terrorist, and
not the means to a different end.
I found this interesting analysis in a paper by Max Abrams in
International Security. "Why Terrorism Does Not Work" (.PDF) analyzes
the political motivations of 28 terrorist groups: the complete list
of "foreign terrorist organizations" designated by the U.S.
Department of State since 2001. He lists 42 policy objectives of
those groups, and found that they only achieved them 7 percent of the time.
According to the data, terrorism is more likely to work if 1) the
terrorists attack military targets more often than civilian ones, and
2) if they have minimalist goals like evicting a foreign power from
their country or winning control of a piece of territory, rather than
maximalist objectives like establishing a new political system in the
country or annihilating another nation. But even so, terrorism is a
pretty ineffective means of influencing policy.
There's a lot to quibble about in Abrams' methodology, but he seems
to be erring on the side of crediting terrorist groups with success.
(Hezbollah's objectives of expelling both peacekeepers and Israel out
of Lebanon counts as a success, but so does the "limited success" by
the Tamil Tigers of establishing a Tamil state.) Still, he provides
good data to support what was until recently common knowledge:
Terrorism doesn't work.
This is all interesting stuff, and I recommend that you read the
paper for yourself. But to me, the most insightful part is when
Abrams uses correspondent inference theory to explain why terrorist
groups that primarily attack civilians do not achieve their policy
goals, even if they are minimalist. Abrams writes:
The theory posited here is that terrorist groups that target
civilians are unable to coerce policy change because terrorism has an
extremely high correspondence. Countries believe that their civilian
populations are attacked not because the terrorist group is
protesting unfavorable external conditions such as territorial
occupation or poverty. Rather, target countries infer the short-term
consequences of terrorism -- the deaths of innocent civilians, mass
fear, loss of confidence in the government to offer protection,
economic contraction, and the inevitable erosion of civil liberties
-- (are) the objects of the terrorist groups. In short, target
countries view the negative consequences of terrorist attacks on
their societies and political systems as evidence that the terrorists
want them destroyed. Target countries are understandably skeptical
that making concessions will placate terrorist groups believed to be
motivated by these maximalist objectives.
In other words, terrorism doesn't work, because it makes people less
likely to acquiesce to the terrorists' demands, no matter how limited
they might be. The reaction to terrorism has an effect completely
opposite to what the terrorists want; people simply don't believe
those limited demands are the actual demands.
This theory explains, with a clarity I have never seen before, why so
many people make the bizarre claim that al Qaeda terrorism -- or
Islamic terrorism in general -- is "different": that while other
terrorist groups might have policy objectives, al Qaeda's primary
motivation is to kill us all. This is something we have heard from
President Bush again and again -- Abrams has a page of examples in
the paper -- and is a rhetorical staple in the debate. (You can see a
lot of it in the comments to this previous essay.)
In fact, Bin Laden's policy objectives have been surprisingly
consistent. Abrams lists four; here are six from former CIA analyst
Michael Scheuer's book Imperial Hubris:
1. End U.S. support of Israel
2. Force American troops out of the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia
3. End the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and (subsequently) Iraq
4. End U.S. support of other countries' anti-Muslim policies
5. End U.S. pressure on Arab oil companies to keep prices low
6. End U.S. support for "illegitimate" (i.e. moderate) Arab
governments, like Pakistan
Although Bin Laden has complained that Americans have completely
misunderstood the reason behind the 9/11 attacks, correspondent
inference theory postulates that he's not going to convince people.
Terrorism, and 9/11 in particular, has such a high correspondence
that people use the effects of the attacks to infer the terrorists'
motives. In other words, since Bin Laden caused the death of a couple
of thousand people in the 9/11 attacks, people assume that must have
been his actual goal, and he's just giving lip service to what he
claims are his goals. Even Bin Laden's actual objectives are ignored
as people focus on the deaths, the destruction and the economic impact.
Perversely, Bush's misinterpretation of terrorists' motives actually
helps prevent them from achieving their goals.
None of this is meant to either excuse or justify terrorism. In fact,
it does the exact opposite, by demonstrating why terrorism doesn't
work as a tool of persuasion and policy change. But we're more
effective at fighting terrorism if we understand that it is a means
to an end and not an end in itself; it requires us to understand the
true motivations of the terrorists and not just their particular
tactics. And the more our own cognitive biases cloud that
understanding, the more we mischaracterize the threat and make bad
security trade-offs.
- - -
Bruce Schneier is the CTO of BT Counterpane and the author of Beyond
Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World.
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
