https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity ... e&_cview=0
Link to PDF of proposal: https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=66c70 ... c45c80acbd
Overview: DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the areas of
(1) quantitative analysis of narratives, (2) understanding the effects narratives have on
human psychology and its affiliated neurobiology, and (3) modeling, simulating, and
sensing—especially in stand-off modalities—these narrative influences. Proposers to this
effort will be expected to revolutionize the study of narratives and narrative influence by
advancing narrative analysis and neuroscience so as to create new narrative influence
sensors, doubling status quo capacity to forecast narrative influence. Proposed research
should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in narrative
science, devices, and/or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results
in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice.
Motivation: Narratives exert a powerful influence on human thoughts and behavior.
They consolidate memory, shape emotions, cue heuristics and biases in judgment,
influence in-group/out-group distinctions, and may affect the fundamental contents of
personal identity. It comes as no surprise that because of these influences stories are
important in security contexts: for example, they change the course of insurgencies,
frame negotiations, play a role in political radicalization, influence the methods and goals
of violent social movements, and likely play a role in clinical conditions important to the
military such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Therefore, understanding the role stories
play in a security context, and the spatial and temporal dimensions of that role is
especially important.