What are the root causes of mass violence terrorism? Examining this question led to a novel hypothesis that violent radicalization leading to terrorism operates as a system of social contagion. A terror contagion exploits existing grievances and moral outrage well suited for radicalizing within a high-risk population. After a terrorist incident, media broadcasts of cultural scripts convey both a template violent ideology and a template method for mass violence. Radicalization can result when high-risk people receive these cultural scripts sharing self-similarity and notoriety bias to the perpetrator and their template ideology of grievance and outrage. Following the template method results in subsequent completed terror incidents creating their own media broadcasts, perpetuating the contagion. In this article, we share our methods, findings, and discuss the implications of a terror-contagion hypothesis. We describe experiments and testable predictions to build confidence in the terror-contagion hypothesis and our progress in them. © 2023 System Dynamics Society.

中文翻译：

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激进化的根本原因：恐怖传染假说

大规模暴力恐怖主义的根源是什么？对这个问题的研究得出了一个新的假设：导致恐怖主义的暴力激进化是一种社会传染系统。恐怖蔓延利用了现有的不满和道德愤怒，非常适合在高风险人群中进行激进化。恐怖事件发生后，媒体播放的文化脚本既传达了模板化的暴力意识形态，也传达了模板化的群体暴力方式。当高风险人群收到这些文化脚本时，可能会导致激进化，这些文化脚本与肇事者具有自相似性和恶名偏见，以及他们的不满和愤怒的模板意识形态。遵循模板方法会导致随后发生的恐怖事件创建自己的媒体广播，从而使蔓延持续下去。在本文中，我们分享我们的方法、发现，并讨论恐怖蔓延假说的含义。我们描述了实验和可测试的预测，以建立对恐怖蔓延假说及其进展的信心。© 2023 系统动力学协会。