Using Behavioral Indicators to Detect Potential Violent Acts

RAND Description:

Provides an overview of research on how observable behavioral indicators might be used to detect potential violent attacks, such as by suicide terrorists or those laying improvised explosive devices.

Source: RAND Corporation

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Human Performance Modification: Review of Worldwide Research with a View to the Future

From the Summary: 

The development of technologies to modify natural human physical and cognitive performance is one of increasing interest and concern, especially among military services that may be called on to defeat foreign powers with enhanced warfighter capabilities. Human performance modification (HPM) is a general term that can encompass actions ranging from the use of “natural” materials, such as caffeine or khat as a stimulant, to the application of nanotechnology as a drug delivery mechanism or in an invasive brain implant. Although the literature on HPM typically addresses methods that enhance performance, another possible focus is methods that degrade performance or negatively affect a military force’s ability to fight.

Advances in medicine, biology, electronics, and computation have enabled an increasingly sophisticated ability to modify the human body, and such innovations will undoubtedly be adopted by military forces, with potential consequences for both sides of the battle lines. Although some innovations may be developed for purely military applications, they are increasingly unlikely to remain exclusively in that sphere because of the globalization and internationalization of the commercial research base.
Based on its review of the literature, the presentations it received, and on its own expertise, the Committee on Assessing Foreign Technology Development in Human Performance Modification chose to focus on three general areas of HPM:

• Human cognitive modification as a computational problem (Chapter 2), 
• Human performance modification as a biological problem (Chapter 3), and 
• Human performance modification as a function of the brain-computer interface (Chapter 4).

 Source: Committee on Assessing Foreign Technology Development in Human Performance Modification, Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council.

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Understanding Peer Effects in Financial Decisions

Abstract:

Using a high-stakes field experiment conducted in partnership with a large financial brokerage in Brazil, we attempt to disentangle channels through which a person's financial decisions affect his peers'. When someone purchases an asset, his peers may want to purchase it as well, both because they learn from his choice (“social learning") and because his possession of the asset affects others' utility of owning the same asset (“social utility"). We randomize whether one member of a peer pair is allowed to possess an asset that he chose to purchase. Then, we randomize whether the second member of the pair 1) receives no information about the first member, or 2) is informed of the first member's desire to own the assetandthe result of the randomization that determined possession. This allows us to estimate the effects of (a) learning plus possession, and (b) learning alone, relative to a control group, allowing us to separately identify effects of the “social learning" and “social utility" channels. In the control (no information) group, 42% of individuals purchased the asset; this increases to 71% in the “social learning only" group; and, it increases to 93% in the “social learning and social utility" group. We find thatboth“social learning" and “social utility" channels are quantitatively important, and have independent, statistically significant effects on the decision to purchase the asset.

Source: CEGA Working Papers, Center for Effective Global Action, UC Berkeley [via eScholarship repository]

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