MERX: Winning Hearts, Minds By Understanding How Stories Affect People

[The Bread Guy]

This from MERX - .pdf of full posting attached if link doesn't work.

.... The Canadian Forces needs to be able to carry out more effective influence operations to win the hearts and minds of its adversary populations to be successful in current and future conflicts .... One of the key axioms of much of social science is that people's behavior (including that of our adversaries) is not random.  Social scientists believe that people's actions are motivated by their goals, beliefs, and desires among other factors. Social psychologists argue that people's beliefs about themselves (their self concept) are especially crucial to explaining their behavior (Tajfel & Turner 1986) .... Even though traditionally influenced researchers have paid more attention to persuasive arguments at the cost of narrative and poetic information, it can be argued that much of the information we receive everyday is in narrative form .... This Letter of Interest (LOI) seeks feedback from researchers and industry in expressing their thoughts and abilities in researching improved models of how narrative and poetic information affects identities of a population ....

 

[54/102 CEF]

Well!

Just proves the rule of read three books write your own book.

Here's a few great links on the idea of a narrative by Michael Vlahos

Terror's Mask - http://www.jhuapl.edu/POW/library/terrormask.htm

Culture's Mask - http://www.jhuapl.edu/POW/library/culture_mask.pdf

Two Enemies - http://www.jhuapl.edu/POW/library/Vlahos_Two_Enemies.pdf


WARNING - my old prof at University of Victoria liked to say - knowledge makes you unhappy - if true - you are about to be VERY unhappy

Enjoy!

 

[The Bread Guy]

Refreshing necrothread with what appears to be the next phase of research.

".... The Canadian Forces need to be able to effectively communicate their messages to win the hearts and minds of adversary populations. Significant scientific and technological breakthroughs in the fields of communication, social psychology, and marketing are needed to achieve a predictive model of social influence that allows decision makers to evaluate consequences of their actions to plan, execute, and measure effectiveness of non-kinetic operations.

The Department of National Defence, Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) Toronto, requires the design and execution of a set of experiments for four hypothesis' outlined in the Statement of Work. The purpose of these studies is to better understand the dynamics between identity beliefs and narrative information that people receive about the world.

The maximum funding available for the Contract resulting from the bid solicitation is $200,000.00. (Goods and Services Tax or Harmonized Sales Tax extra, as appropriate)

The period of the Contract is from date of award to March 31, 2011 ...."
Reference Number  PW-$TOR-007-5166
Solicitation Number W7711-098159/A