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Chapter 9 THE POWER OF MORAL BELIEF SCOTT ATRAN Suicide attacks have grown exponentially in recent years, and while they account for only 5% of terrorist events, they result in roughly 50% of the casualties due to terrorism (Atran 2006b). This poses a seemingly difficult question for an evolutionary analysis of security: how would such a selfdestructive behavior not only survive, but thrive, especially in a world of limited resources? Villarreal (this volume) proposes some explanations for the evolutionary roots of self-destructive individual behaviors, suggesting that they are intricately tied to the origins of group behaviors, which manifest themselves in humans as belief systems. Here, I briefly outline the consequences of moral beliefs for terrorist and antiterrorist activities. I suggest that decision making based on moral beliefs or values creates risk/reward pathways that fall outside typically used risk-assessment frameworks based on economics, utility, or rational decision making. Importantly, adherence to a set of moral values confers benefits to the groups to which the believing individuals identify. Value-committed people show willingness to invest in the future and delay immediate gratification (e.g., medical students who work and study intensely without initial reward). So, unlike most regular army and police, terrorist groups comprising value-committed members may be able to survive on fewer resources. Actions such as suicide bombing may further serve as “costly signals ” that give the groups an appearance of vigor and robustness (see also Sosis and Alcorta, this volume). Thus, moral value–driven group associations create a positive feedback that increases group attractiveness at a low resource cost. As a result, rather than relying on conscription or forced participation, which is often the last resort of resource-depleted and faltering organizations (e.g., various paramilitary fighting organizations in Africa, and Japanese “kamikaze” pilots at the end of World War II), jihadist organizations have been successful, and selective, in engaging new martyrs. Indeed, there is no 141 recruitment of would-be martyrs, only a bottom-up enlistment process. As Sheikh Hamed al-Betawi, the spiritual guide of Hamas, recently summarized : “Our people don’t own airplanes and tanks, only human bombs. Those who carry out martyrdom operations are not retarded, not hopeless, not poor, but are the best of our people. They do not flee from life. They are educated, not illiterate, successful in their lives” (author’s interview, September 2004, Nablus, West Bank). Demographic profiling and interviews support these claims. Would-be suicide bombers are not desperate, nor are they necessarily wooed by promises of prosperity in the afterlife. Diffusing the threat of suicide bombers will require a better understanding of the decision-making calculations that result in a person choosing the jihaddist pathway. Instrumental decision making involves strict cost-benefit calculations regarding goals and entails abandoning or adjusting goals if costs for realizing them are too high. Although the field of judgment and decision making has made enormous progress, much more is known about economic decision making than about morally motivated behavior. Indeed, a common criticism of a cost-benefit framework, which may for example put a dollar value on human health outcomes, is that it doesn’t deal well with moral or ethical decisions. Further, there is little knowledge, study, or theoretical discussion of what we term “morally essential” or “sacred” values, which differ from instrumental values of realpolitik and the marketplace because they incorporate ethical (including religious) beliefs that can drive action independently of its prospect of success (Atran 2006a). Current approaches to resolving resource conflicts or countering political violence assume that adversaries make instrumentally rational choices. However , recent work by myself and colleagues suggests that culturally distinct value frameworks constrain preferences and choices in ways not readily translatable (fungible, substitutable) across moral frameworks. Standard political and economic proposals for resolving longstanding conflicts (e.g., just material compensation for suffering) may not be the optimal when conflicts involve clashes of essential values. In particular, adversaries in violent political conflicts often conceptualize the issues under dispute as sacred values, such as when groups of people transform land from a simple resource into a “holy site” to which they may have noninstrumental moral commitments. Nowhere is this issue more pressing than in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute , which the majority of people in almost every country surveyed (e.g., in the June 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, see: http://pewglobal.org/) consistently view as the greatest danger to world peace. Our research team—including...

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