Culture Catches January 2013 The 600-Pound Gorilla: Why We Need a Smaller Defense Department The Defense Department

is kept from being proportional to its actual role by organizational inertia and its size. Use of force, and the abundance of manpower and materiel that enable it, are traditional strengths, but the military is unsustainable at its present cost. Without a reduction, the Nation is weakened economically, and overreliance on the military has a corresponding effect on both U.S. status and on domestic regard for the military, even as fewer Americans than ever have served or understand what the military does. Relying on the inherent goodness of man is insufficient; the U.S. Armed Forces must remain the most-capable, but leaders must assess what is needed, and the long-term effects of military responses and adjust accordingly. http://www.ndu.edu/press/smaller-defense-department.html Army Making Cultural Training a Priority (Thanks to Jessica Gallus) Chemical weapons engulf soldiers carrying 60-pound rucksacks, their mud-filled boots trenching through a river dividing simulated enemy lines. Troops run in the desert to acclimate to harsh conditions with winter temperatures as low as 8 degrees, summer as high as 120. The training becomes increasingly realistic in the weeks before deployment, mirroring the topography they may endure, but not necessarily the human terrain -- the cultures they'll be dealing with. And in a foreign land, something as seemingly innocuous as a thumbs-up sign or shaking a woman's hand can land a soldier in trouble. http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/12/us/troops-cultural-training/index.html?iref=obnetwork Developing Joint Force Leaders for Globally-Integrated Operations The 20th Century posed significant challenges to global stability and to the very existence of the United States and its allies. Working through a network of strong alliances and with the effective application of Americas economic and military instruments of power, the U.S. was instrumental in shaping the course of global events throughout the latter half of the century. Twenty-first Century challenges are uniquely different but equally significant in their potential to undermine U.S. security. These challenges, however, are not limited to one country or one region of the world. Rather, these challenges are simultaneously global, local, and transnational, and whose benefactors or proponents leverage advanced technologies and the effects of globalization to enhance their positions and causes worldwide. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/developing-joint-force-leaders-for-globally-integratedoperations An Army of None: Why the Pentagon Is Failing to Keep Its Best and Brightest As the war in Iraq wore into its most-corrosive years, a problem began to emerge -- the military, and especially the U.S. Army, was losing its young officers. Editorials were published and examples cited, and by early 2011, the crisis had been recognized at the military's highest levels. But the young captains and lieutenants whose departures at the

height of the Iraq war caused this soul-searching at the Pentagon are only half of the story, the superficial half; these are young warriors in harm's way with young spouses and toddlers back home. The military's retention crisis cuts deeper into the heart of the Army. The more-complicated and more-important half of the story is about the colonels. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/10/an_army_of_none Why Cant the U.S. Military Grow Better Leaders? Military personnel policy is equal parts art and science. If it were all science, the Pentagon and its military services would have figured out long ago how to get the most out of each man and woman in uniform, give them rewarding careers, and win wars, to boot. The fact that the U.S. militarys personnel engine isnt firing on all cylinders is the topic of Tim Kanes new book, Bleeding Talent: How the U.S. Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why Its Time for a Revolution. The one-time Air Force officer will elaborate on the topic at the Hudson Institute on Jan. 31, where he serves as chief economist (wow: two dismal sciences in a single scholar!). Battleland conducted this email chat with Kane last week. http://nation.time.com/2013/01/21/why-cant-the-u-s-military-grow-better-leaders/ I Killed People in Afghanistan. Was I Right or Wrong? When I joined the Marine Corps, I knew I would kill people. I was trained to do it in a number of ways, from pulling a trigger to ordering a bomb-strike to beating someone to death with a rock. As I got closer to deploying to war in 2009, my lethal abilities were refined, but my ethical understanding of killing was not. I held two seeminglycontradictory beliefs: Killing is always wrong, but in war, it is necessary. How could something be both immoral and necessary? http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-killed-people-in-afghanistan-was-i-right-orwrong/2013/01/25/c0b0d5a6-60ff-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_story.html The Quantified Warrior A fifth-generation fighter takes more than 1,500 measurements a second over every conceivable aircraft parameter. Yet the most-important part of the fighter, the pilot, doesnt have a single measurement recorded during flight. This is in a day and age when nearly anyone can record a half-dozen physiological data streams in his quest to become fitter or healthier, including a log of alpha rhythms to diagnose sleep quality. For an elite athlete or corporate executive, the sky is the limit in terms of quantified physiological parameters. The Defense Department has flirted with the concept of human performance monitoring and augmentation over the last several decades, but the idea has never become a central tenet in either manpower or acquisition planning. Now, as the services prepare to reduce force strength over the next four years, they must find a way to do more with less. http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2012/12/12187387 Technical Briefing: Data-Farming Data-farming is not all that new, but it is still not well-understood, even in the operations research and modeling and simulation communities. But as researchers come to

understand it, they come to love it. Unlike data mining, in which analysts sift enormous amounts of existing information for useful nuggets, data farmers grow their own. Researchers ask a what if question, build a model and run a simulation thousands or even millions of times on a super-computer or high-performance computing grid. Then they look for trends, anomalies and outliers in the grown data. http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130103/TSJ01/301030005/Technical-BriefingData-Farming?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Training%20&%20Simulation%20Journal Empirical Studies of Conflict Project ESOC identifies, compiles, and analyzes micro-level conflict data and information on insurgency, civil war, and other sources of politically motivated violence worldwide. ESOC was established in 2008 by practitioners and scholars concerned by the significant barriers and upfront costs that challenge efforts to conduct careful subnational research on conflict. The ESOC website is designed to help overcome these obstacles and to empower the quality of research needed to inform better policy and enhance security and good governance around the world. http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/the-empirical-studies-of-conflict-project Which Tribe Should We Engage? A Tribal Engagement Assessment Methodology Current Special Operations Forces doctrine and Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concepts lack an analytical methodology supporting initial planning for tribal engagement non-kinetic targeting. The existing doctrine outlines the intelligence requirement for Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operating Environment (JIPOE). However, the doctrines do not have a systematic approach to analyzing the potential for tribal support to U.S., HN, or partnered state/non-state actors activities against an Irregular Force. This tool can support a wide range of Irregular Warfare or intelligence operations in tribal societies. The source of this methodology was developed through eleven interviews by the author with Special Operation Forces and intelligence professional subject matter experts (SME) in February 2011. Each of the SMEs have extensive experience in tribal engagement from U.S. operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Philippines and other tribal contingency areas. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/which-tribe-should-we-engage-a-tribal-engagementassessment-methodology Countering Islamist Radicalization in Germany In May 2012, German Salafists protested in the streets of Bonn and Solingen. The protests, which began after the Pro Nordrhein-Westfalen (Pro-NRW) citizens movement displayed pictures of the Prophet Muhammad, left 29 police officers injured and resulted in the arrests of 108 Salafists.[1] The clashes between police and Salafists were unprecedented in Germany. Concern over violent Salafists in Germany has featured prominently in domestic intelligence assessments since 2010.[2] According to the Federal Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt fr Verfassungsschutz, BfV), violent Salafists are increasingly seeking to launch terrorist attacks in Germany, a country which after 9/11 mainly served as a logistics hub for

foreign battlefields. In light of recent Salafist-inspired plots,[3] this article provides details on the countrys general approach to counter-radicalization, and identifies some of the problems with coordinating counter-radicalization programs at the federal level. It also offers insight on specific outreach and trust-building initiatives between the German authorities and the Salafist community. http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/countering-islamist-radicalization-in-germany GOP Congressman Warns That Library Books about Muslim Culture Will Undermine Christianity (Thanks to Diane Ungvarsky) There was no photo-op or press release from Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) office when a local library in his district was awarded a federal grant to expand its collection. Instead, in an exceedingly-rare move, Jones actually criticized the grant money that will soon be coming to eastern North Carolina for one reason: it will be used to buy books about Muslim culture. http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/01/15/1452861/walter-jones-muslimbooks/?mobile=nc 842 Libraries and Humanities Organizations Awarded Bookshelf on Muslim History and Culture The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced today that 842 libraries and state humanities councils in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands will be awarded the Muslim Journeys Bookshelf, a collection of books, films, and other resources that will introduce the American public to the complex history and culture of Muslims in the United States and around the world. http://www.neh.gov/news/press-release/2013-01-09 Officer Education: What Lessons Does the French Defeat in 1871 Have for the US Army Today? The Armys Professional Military Education (PME) is broken. The current focus and methodology of PME do not adequately prepare our officers to think critically. Though the education provided is, generally speaking, of a good standard, it is not focused on the development of critical thinkers, as required by Congress and demanded by the armed forces likely future missions. PME spends too much time indoctrinating officers, rather than empowering them to think for themselves. This paper contends that the current system of PME is scarily similar to the French system of officer education prior to 1870 and that we risk a repeat of the French experience in their war with Prussia if we do not adequately tackle the problem. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/officer-education-what-lessons-does-the-frenchdefeat-in-1871-have-for-the-us-army-today Intellectual Curiosity and the Military Officer

A degree doesnt make you smart. A formal education doesnt make you wise. But without that piece of paper from somewhere, you wont get promoted. Just turn that box green, and to the promotion board, your intellectual merit is validated. But should it? Recently, the age-old military debate of whether a technical or humanities degree makes a better war-fighter has again reared its head. Both sides are right and wrong. They each also miss the point about what continuing education in a strategic framework really means. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/intellectual-curiosity-and-the-military-officer When Company Command Becomes an Advisory Tour The last thing a Company Commander expects following the Captains Career Course is to take command of his company, then immediately remove the most-experienced and talented leaders, and quickly deploy them on an advisor team to Afghanistan. Even more unexpected is to leave your company behind while you lead a 12-man team in Afghanistan advising a battalion-sized (Kandak) element, at an echelon of leadership above any of your own experiences. The Brigade I was assigned to, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Task Force Strike, was one of the first BCTs to get assigned this mission-set. This article will describe how A Company, 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, approached this mission from the initial stage of training through the Relief-in-Place (RIP), in order to provide future advisor teams with some expectation management and lessons learned. Based on the evidence of our deployment, I will make a recommendation about what the focus of advisors should look like in order to be successful in todays Afghanistan. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/when-company-command-becomes-an-advisory-tour Officer Training Goes Virtual, Mobile Developers are moving a leadership training simulator for officers from an immersive trainer to a laptop, making the technology both more mobile and less expensive. A proof-of-concept demonstration at the University of Southern California on Oct. 4 was the first attempt to shrink the Emergent Leader Immersive Training Environment, or ELITE, from a full-room simulator to a laptop version. ELITE is a project from USCs Institute for Creative Technologies; it currently consists of a life-size virtual human that is projected onto a wall, recreating an office-type scenario. A student can interact with the virtual human and attempt to provide counseling or mediate a problem. http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130129/TSJ01/301290016/Officer-TrainingGoes-VirtualMobile?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Training%20&%20Simulation%20Journal Sorry, Our MI Unit Is Too Busy to Give You a Briefing that Might Save Lives Someone passed to me an e-mail in which a senior Army military intelligence officer declined a request to brief another unit on the "green on blue" threat presented by Afghan soldiers and police. "I respectfully decline the offer for Dr. Bordin to conduct an OPD," Col. Sharon Hamilton wrote last May to Lt. Col. Frank Tank. (I know, that name

may sound odd, but it is real -- Tank is a Knowlton Award-winning officer who has written for the Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin.) Col. Hamilton explained that Bordin "must remain focused on Brigade mission requirements." She wasn't being completely candid. But Hamilton's real problem with Bordins giving a briefing was that the Army, at that time, was unhappy with a controversial report Bordin had just produced on "green-on-blue" killings of American soldiers by Afghan army and police personnel. That report, "A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility," subsequently became very well-known. http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/01/28/sorry_our_mi_unit_is_too_busy_to_give _you_a_briefing_that_might_save_soldiers_lives Stanley McChrystal on the Intersection of Politics and the Military (Thanks to Julio Mateo) Retired Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal told Comedy Centrals Jon Stewart Tuesday that the interplay of politics and the military is complex, and that its often difficult to completely separate the two. You can never, as a soldier particularly a senior one completely ignore politics, McChrystal told Stewart on The Daily Show. He later added: We need to understand that civilians and military come from a slightly-different culture. The military, all professional, has a tendency to be too insular now. There is not enough [overlap]. So, you have a tendency to have different languages, different backgrounds. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/01/09/stanley-mcchrystal-on-theintersection-of-politics-and-the-military-video/ Watch full interview here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-8-2013/exclusive---stanley-mcchrystalextended-interview-pt--1 Defining Terrorism: A Strategic Imperative On September 11, 2012, a group of assailants, now believed to be part of, or affiliated with, the terrorist organization Ansar al-Sharia attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing the American Ambassador and three others. In the following weeks, U.S. political discourse focused on one question: was the event a terrorist attack or simply a spontaneous response to a viral internet video mocking the prophet Muhammad and the Islamic religion? For counter-terrorism scholars and practitioners alike, the debate reaffirmed familiar challenges associated with studying terrorism or developing counterterrorism strategies. Namely, terrorism is a difficult concept to define. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/defining-terrorism-a-strategic-imperative On Torture, a Debate We Need In retrospect, a better title for the terrific film Zero Dark Thirty would have been Rorschach. As with the famous ink-blots developed by Swiss psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach, some people look at the film and conclude that torture works, others

conclude that it doesnt, still others think the movie advocates torture, while some and now we have gotten to me dont know what to think. I am implacably opposed to torture ... unless it can save lives. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-zero-dark-thirty-and-the-torturedebate-we-need/2013/01/28/79c0a54a-697e-11e2-95b3-272d604a10a3_story.html The Case for Torture: Ex-CIA Officials Explain Enhanced Interrogations Did enhanced interrogation techniques help us find Osama Bin Laden and destroy alQaeda? Were they torture? Were they wrong? Yesterday, three former CIA officials grappled with those questions in a forum at the American Enterprise Institute. The discussion was supposed to be about Zero Dark Thirty. But it was really a chance to see, in person, the thinking of the people who ran and justified the detainee interrogation program. Its also a chance to examine our own thinking. Do we really understand what the CIA did and why? Was the pay-off worth the moral cost? And what can we learn from it? Former CIA director Michael Hayden led the panel. He was joined by Jose Rodriguez, who ran the agencys National Clandestine Service, and John Rizzo, who served as the CIAs chief legal officer. The stories they told, and the reasons they offered, shook up my assumptions about the interrogation program. They might shake up yours, too. Heres what they said. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2013/01/the_case_for _torture_ex_cia_officials_explain_enhanced_interrogations.html How We Fight: Fred Kaplans Insurgents The American occupation of Iraq in its early years was a swamp of incompetence and self-delusion. The tales of hubris and reality-denial have already passed into folklore. Recent college graduates were tasked with rigging up a Western-style government. Some renegade military units blasted away at what they called anti-Iraq Forces, spurring an inchoate insurgency. Early on, Washington hailed the mess a glorious mission accomplished. Meanwhile, a forgotten war simmered to the east in Afghanistan. By the low standards of the time, common sense passed for great wisdom. Any American military officer willing to criticize his own tactics and question the viability of the mission brought a welcome breath of fresh air. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/books/review/fred-kaplans-insurgents-on-davidpetraeus.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hpw And another review: The Pied Piper of the Insurgency Fred Kaplans new book, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, dissects the past decade of American-waged battle to see how it has worked out. It assays the U.S. militarys successes and failures, along with the squabbling over whether or not counter-insurgency, as championed by Petraeus, is the way to go. Kaplan has the reportorial chops for

the job. Now the military-affairs columnist at Slate, the online magazine, he authored The Wizard of Armageddon, about the Pentagons nuclear-war priesthood, 30 years ago. Battleland conducted this email chat with Kaplan over the New Years weekend . . . http://nation.time.com/2013/01/02/the-pied-piper-of-the-insurgency/ Interview with Author of Galula: The Life and Writings of the French Officer Who Defined the Art of Counterinsurgency OM: Which were the role of Mao and the exposure to Chinese civil war in Galulas story? It seems to be his decisive formative lab experience like Russia was for George Kennan. AAC: Unquestionably, of all the influences exerted on Galulas treatise, Mao and the Chinese Civil were the greatest. Galula had a strong intellectual admiration for Maoist revolutionaries, despite being very opposed to what they stood for. Before the Chinese Civil War, Galula had no interest in insurgency or counterinsurgency. He had not fought as a Partisan during WW2; he had no experience or interest in these fields until he was exposed to China as of late 1945, in the thick of its civil war. There, his analytical penchant led him to see himself as the decipherer of Mao, intent on getting to the bottom of what the revolutionaries were fundamentally about. Galula cut through the egalitarian propaganda and all that surrounding the Peoples revolution. Above all, he wanted to understand why these guys were gaining momentum as they were, despite the unfavorable odds. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-galula-doctrine-an-interview-with-galulasbiographer-aa-cohen War by Other Means: Book Review of Invisible Armies For the counterinsurgency experts of a century ago, the extension of European empire into the Middle East offered exciting possibilities. The Italians bombed Libyans on the eve of World War I, but that was just the beginning. From 1919 onward, the fledgling Royal Air Force was busy dropping bombs on Afghan, Somali, and Iraqi tribesmen. In 1926, French artillery shelled the center of Damascus. It was in this context that Elbridge Colby, an American Army captain, wrote an article, How to Fight Savage Tribes, in order to educate his countrymen and challenge what he saw as their nave faith in international law. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/books/review/invisible-armies-by-maxboot.html?pagewanted=all None of Us Were Like This Before: Why Hasnt the U.S. Military Done a Better Job of Addressing Torture by Our Soldiers? That was the question that kept on coming back to me as I read Joshua Phillips' None of Us Were Like This Before. It is not a perfect book, but it is an important one. Yes, there are ethical and moral reasons for conducting a comprehensive review of instances of torture of Iraqis, Afghans, and others by American soldiers over the last 10 years. But

there also are practical reasons . . . http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/01/02/none_of_us_were_like_this_before_why _hasn_t_the_us_military_done_a_better_job_of_ad Why Does Jared Diamond Make Anthropologists So Mad Jared Diamond is once again inflaming my tribe. In his new book, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies, Diamond questions the practice of psychologists who base their claims about human nature entirely on people from WEIRD Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. In fact, Diamond writes, people in small-scale societies, people who gather and hunt, herd animals or farm, may have figured out better ways than WEIRD ways to treat people, solve social problems, and stay healthy. So far, this sounds pretty much like an embrace of the cross-cultural diversity that we anthropologists work to understand, even to celebrate. So what's the backlash all about? http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/01/14/169374400/why-does-jared-diamond-makeanthropologists-so-mad The Nudgy State: How Five Governments Are Using Behavioral Economics to Encourage Citizens to Do the Right Thing In the January/February issue of Foreign Policy, behavioral economist Richard Thaler urges governments to "apply behavioral science to find solutions to persistent problems." Here are five places that are already doing just that. United States: U.S. President Barack Obama gave behavioral policymaking its highest profile endorsement yet in 2009 by appointing Harvard legal scholar and Thaler's Nudge coauthor Cass Sunstein to run the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. As "regulation czar," Sunstein was given a wide mandate to apply cost-benefit analyses to programs including the new health-care law and the Dodd-Frank financial regulations. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/02/the_nudgy_state Whole-of-Government Support for Irregular Warfare Much has been written about the mixed results of the counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kilcullen notwithstanding, counterinsurgency theory (COIN) has been one of those rare disciplines largely informed and defined by its losers. Part of the problem is that COIN is more of a tactical tool-kit than a strategic doctrine, since it focusses on the earlier part of the four-phase cycle. For its part, Irregular Warfare (I.W.) pursues those activities needed to achieve an intermediate end-state of local stability to enable longer-term COIN success through sustainable economic growth. Though unfairly discredited, the phased framework of shape-clear-hold-build remains applicable over time when adapted to local circumstances. For the overall process to succeed, COIN needs to harmonize independent stake-holders toward a well-defined mission. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/whole-of-government-support-for-irregular-warfare

Modularity of the Cultural Mind: Contributions of Cultural Neuroscience to Cognitive Theory (Thanks to Wendy Chambers) A central question in the study of the mind is how cognitive functions are shaped by a complex interplay of genetic and experiential processes. Recent evidence from cultural neuroscience indicates that cultural values, practices, and beliefs influence brain function across a variety of cognitive processes from vision to social cognition. This evidence extends to low-level perceptual systems comprised of domain-specific mechanisms, suggesting the importance of ecological and cultural variation in the evolutionary and developmental processes that give rise to the human mind and brain. In this article, we argue that investigating the architecture of the human mind will require understanding how the human mind and brain shape and are shaped by culturegene co-evolutionary processes. http://pps.sagepub.com/content/8/1/56.abstract Reappraisal Defuses Strong Emotional Responses to Israel-Palestine Conflict Reappraisal is a widely-used cognitive strategy that can help people to regulate their reactions to emotionally charged events. Now, new research suggests that reappraisal may even be effective in changing peoples emotional responses in the context of one of the most intractable conflicts worldwide: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Negative intergroup emotions play a crucial role in decisions that perpetuate intractable conflicts, observes lead researcher Eran Halperin of the New School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel. With this in mind, Halperin and his colleagues wondered whether cognitive reappraisal, a strategy that involves changing the meaning of a situation to change the emotional response to it, might be effective in diminishing such negative intergroup emotions. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/reappraisal-defusesstrong-emotional-responses-to-israel-palestine-conflict.html Psychological Common Ground Could Ease Tensions Among Those With Different Religious Beliefs Understanding how thoughts of mortality influence individuals' beliefs sheds light on the commonalities among different groups' motivations and could help ease tensions between opposing viewpoints, according to University of Missouri experiments that tested the relationship between awareness of death and belief in a higher power. The study found that thoughts of death increased atheists, Christians, Muslims, and agnostics conviction in their own world views. For example, contrary to the war-time aphorism that there are no atheists in foxholes, thoughts of death did not cause atheists to express belief in a deity. "Our study suggests that atheists' and religious believers' world views have the same practical goal," said Kenneth Vail, lead author and doctoral student in psychological science in MU's College of Arts and Science. "Both groups seek a coherent world view to manage the fear of death and link themselves to a greater and immortal entity, such as a supreme being, scientific progress or a nation. If people were more aware of this psychological similarity, perhaps there might be more understanding and less conflict among groups with different beliefs."

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130107121051.htm Integrating the Streams of Morality Research: The Case of Political Ideology The scientific study of morality has blossomed in the past decade, yielding key insights into the psychological processes underlying moral judgments. This blossoming has generally taken place along two streams of research: one concerning cultural and individual differences in these processes, and one concerning their situational determinants. Although these two streams often examine the same factors (e.g., the role of contamination in moral judgment), they have not systematically built on each others findings, and their empirical approaches remain distinct. In this article, we describe how these streams have begun to converge in recent empirical work, highlighting work on political ideology as one example. We then discuss the benefits an integrated research approach can have for moral psychology, especially in (a) delineating the links between moral judgment and moral behavior and (b) expanding the range of moral behaviors studied in order to more fully represent everyday moral life. http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/21/6/373.abstract Ideology and Prejudice: The Role of Value Conflicts Past research has linked conservative values with prejudiced thoughts, but are conservatives actually more racially prejudiced than liberals? In the second of two studies, participants reported their political ideology and then rated their impressions of target individuals of various races who had either liberal or conservative views on divisive political issues (e.g., welfare, affirmative action). The researchers found that participants rated target individuals who shared their political ideology more favorably regardless of the targets' race. This suggests that both liberal and conservative individuals react less favorably toward people who do not share their ideology. In addition, because many minority groups are perceived to hold liberal values, these results offer an alternative explanation for findings of racial prejudice in conservative individuals. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/01/01/0956797612447820.abstract The Call to Make Science Less Partisan Gets New Members Since 2007, on too many occasions to count, I have noted that by being overwhelmingly partisan scientists in academia are putting themselves at risk. Not financially. If funding mattered, all scientists would vote Republican - when it comes to funding, Republicans have spent more than Democrats on science even in the period when science, and all academia, lurched far to the left. Republicans do not cut funding because scientists vote Democrat. I meant they put themselves at risk when it comes to the legitimacy of their fields in the eyes of the public. http://www.science20.com/science_20/call_make_science_less_partisan_gets_new_me mbers-100330 The Liberals War on Science Believe it or not and I suspect most readers will not there's a liberal war on science. Say what? We are well aware of the Republican war on science from the

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eponymous 2006 book (Basic Books) by Chris Mooney, and I have castigated conservatives myself in my 2006 book Why Darwin Matters (Henry Holt) for their erroneous belief that the theory of evolution leads to a break-down of morality. A 2012 Gallup poll found that 58 percent of Republicans believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years, compared with 41 percent of Democrats. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-liberals-war-on-science Double-Dipping Suspected in Research Tens of millions of research dollars may have been awarded in the last decade to already-funded research projects despite rules against duplicate funding, suggests an analysis of science grant awards. Government and private research funding organization rules generally prohibit scientists from accepting funds for the same project from different sources, without disclosing the money. Such "double-dipping" by researchers, however, may account for nearly $70 million in overlapping funds awarded by the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation and Energy Department, as well as the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, the study says. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/01/30/research-duplication/1877141/ Twice the Price There is nothing more central to the modern world of international science than the research grant. And with government budgets squeezed, there is nothing more important than making sure that what money remains for project-based science is spent wisely. So scientists everywhere should be disturbed that two separate pieces in Nature this week report on the lack of oversight of potential waste and overlap between research grants. http://www.nature.com/news/twice-the-price-1.12311 Empathy Varies by Age and Gender: Women in Their 50s Are Tops According to a new study of more than 75,000 adults, women in that age group are more empathic than men of the same age than younger or older people. "Overall, late middle-aged adults were higher in both of the aspects of empathy that we measured," says Sara Konrath, co-author of an article on age and empathy forthcoming in the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological and Social Sciences. "They reported that they were more likely to react emotionally to the experiences of others, and they were also more likely to try to understand how things looked from the perspective of others." For the study, researchers Ed O'Brien, Konrath and Linda Hagen at the University of Michigan and Daniel Grhn at North Carolina State University analyzed data on empathy from three separate large samples of American adults, two of which were taken from the nationally representative General Social Survey. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130184324.htm Adding New Members to Group Increases Distrust Among Older Members

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Adding a new member to a working group can create distrust between members and hinder group functions, but a new study suggests that the distrust created is between older group members rather than about the newcomers- especially when previous group performance with just the older group members is poor. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130184153.htm Improving Students Learning with Effective Learning Techniques Many students are being left behind by an educational system that some people believe is in crisis. Improving educational outcomes will require efforts on many fronts, but a central premise of this monograph is that one part of a solution involves helping students to better regulate their learning through the use of effective learning techniques. Fortunately, cognitive and educational psychologists have been developing and evaluating easy-to-use learning techniques that could help students achieve their learning goals. In this monograph, we discuss 10 learning techniques in detail and offer recommendations about their relative utility. We selected techniques that were expected to be relatively easy to use and hence could be adopted by many students. Also, some techniques (e.g., highlighting and rereading) were selected because students report relying heavily on them, which makes it especially important to examine how well they work. The techniques include elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, summarization, highlighting (or underlining), the keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning, rereading, practice testing, distributed practice, and interleaved practice. To offer recommendations about the relative utility of these techniques, we evaluated whether their benefits generalize across four categories of variables: learning conditions, student characteristics, materials, and criterion tasks. Learning conditions include aspects of the learning environment in which the technique is implemented, such as whether a student studies alone or with a group. http://psi.sagepub.com/content/14/1/4.abstract Related: Best and Worst Learning Techniques In a world as fast-changing and full of information as our own, every one of us from schoolchildren to college students to working adults needs to know how to learn well. Yet evidence suggests that most of us dont use the learning techniques that science has proved most effective. Worse, research finds that learning strategies we do commonly employ, like rereading and highlighting, are among the least effective. http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/09/highlighting-is-a-waste-of-time-the-best-andworst-learning-techniques/?iid=us-category-mostpop2 Its Time for a Slow Conversation Movement I could not be a bigger proponent of technology. My career has been built mostly around the Internet. My day job as a venture capitalist focuses on innovations in digital media and big data, and new models of business information and community connectivity. But and you knew there would be a "but" as we begin 2013, I can't help feeling that the proliferation of new communication channels and "smart" devices has only further fragmented and strained the flow of real conversations. It has obscured content

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that is worth consuming. As multi-tasking has morphed into multi-casting that is, it is now often less about trying to do more at the same time than trying to tell more at the same time it has all increasingly gotten in the way of what we are trying to optimize, which is connectivity. In fact, it is quite clear that in many instances it has diluted the quality and relevance of our conversations. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/its_time_for_a_slow_conversation_m.html IARPA Solicitation: Office of Incisive Analysis IARPA invests in high-risk, high-pay-off research that has the potential to provide our nation with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries. This research is parsed among three Offices: Smart Collection, Incisive Analysis, and Safe & Secure Operations. This BAA solicits abstracts/proposals for the Office of Incisive Analysis (IA).IA focuses on maximizing insights from the massive, disparate, unreliable and dynamic data that are or could be available to analysts, in a timely manner. We are pursuing new sources of information from existing and novel data, and developing innovative techniques that can be utilized in the processes of analysis. IA programs are in diverse technical disciplines, but have common features: (a) Create technologies that can earn the trust of the analyst user by providing the reasoning for results; (b) Address data uncertainty and provenance explicitly. http://www.iarpa.gov/Programs/ia/solicitation_incisive.html

Book Recommendations Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism Steven Corman, Jeffry Halverson, & H.L. Goodall The Scramble for Africa Thomas Pakenham Consilience E. O. Wilson Talking to the Enemy: Religion, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists Scott Atran The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion Jonathan Haidt Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC Amy Zegart

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Upcoming Events 20-22 Feb 2013 Success 2nd Annual Cultural and Linguistic Advancement for Mission Washington, DC http://www.marcusevansassets.com/doc/pdfs/Ep_19636.pdf 20-23 Feb 2013 Society for Cross-Cultural Research Conference (jointly with the Society for Anthropological Sciences) Mobile, AL http://www.sccr.org/meetings.html Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting Denver, CO http://www.sfaa.net/sfaa2013.html International Conference on Cultural Intelligence: Culture in International Security, Law Enforcement, and Irregular Warfare Washington, DC http://culturalintel.org/Home.html 10 Jun 2013 Sixth Military Anthropology Workshop Cranfield University, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/cds/symposia/maw.html Sixth International Spatial Socio-Cultural Knowledge Workshop Defence Academy of the United Kingdom http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/cds/symposia/sskw.html International Symposium on Culture in Conflict Defence Academy of the United Kingdom http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/cds/symposia/cic.html International Workshop on Protecting Cultural Property during Operations: Implications for Strategy Tactics and Preservation, Local and Global Defence Academy of the United Kingdom http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/cds/symposia/pcp.html 20-22 Jul 2013 Conference International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology Regional Los Angeles, CA http://www.iaccp.org/drupal/node/435

19-23 Mar 2013

10-11 Apr 2013 National and

10-11 Jun 2013

12-13 Jun 2013

14 June 2013 Military

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23-27 Jun 2013

International Academy of Intercultural Research Reno, NV http://www.intercultural-academy.net/conferences/up-coming-iairconferences.html 29 Aug 1 Sep 2013 American Political Science Association Chicago, IL http://www.apsanet.org/content_77049.cfm?navID=988 (Events in gray appeared in previous catches; events in black are new or updated listings this month.) Culture Catches is compiled monthly by Allison Abbe: to be added to the distribution list, contact aabbe@mac.com.

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