Psychology of Terrorism

Psychology of Terrorism
0




Psychology of
Terrorism
Randy Borum
Director, Psychology of Terrorism Initiative

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Psychology of Terrorism
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© 2004 By Randy Borum
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States
Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or
distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or
retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the authors.


Correspondence regarding this report may be directed to:

Randy Borum, Psy.D.
Department of Mental Health Law & Policy
Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute
University of South Florida
13301 Bruce B. Downs Boulevard
Tampa, Florida 33612-3807

Email: borum@fmhi.usf.edu

The University of South Florida is an affirmative action Equal
Opportunity Employer.

About the Author:

Dr. Randy Borum is Associate Professor in the Department of Mental
Health Law & Policy University of South Florida, where he also holds
faculty appointments in the Department of Criminology and the College
of Public Health. He is a licensed psychologist, and is Board-Certified
(ABPP) in Forensic Psychology. He is author/ co-author of more
than100 professional publications, and currently serves as a consultant
to the US Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security,
US Intelligence Community, Advisory Board Member for the FBI’s
Behavioral Science Unit, and Instructor for the BJA’s State and Local
Antiterrorism Training (SLATT) Program. He was the Principal
Investigator on the "Psychology of Terrorism" initiative for a US
government agency. He is Past-President of the American Academy of
Forensic Psychology, and serves on the United Nations Roster of
Experts in Terrorism.


Suggested Citation:

Borum, R. (2004). Psychology of terrorism. Tampa: University of
South Florida.




Printed in the United States of America

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Psychology of Terrorism
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive
Summary
3

Introduction


4

Aims
&
methodology


6

Psychological approaches
to
understanding
violence
9
Instinct Theories
Drive Theories (Frustration – Aggression)
Social Learning Theory
Cognitive Theory
Biological Factors
Raw Empirical Approaches

First generation psychological
research
on
terrorism

18
Psychoanalytic Theory
Narcissism
Early Typologies

Contemporary psychological research
on
terrorism
22
How and why do people enter, stay in, and leave
terrorist organizations?
To what extent is psychopathology relevant for
understanding or preventing terrorism?

To what extent is individual personality relevant
for understanding or preventing terrorism?
To what extent are an individual’s life experiences
relevant for understanding or preventing terrorism?
What is the role of ideology in terrorist behavior?
What distinguishes extremists who act violently
from those who do not?
What are the vulnerabilities of terrorist groups?
How do terrorist organizations form, function, and fail?

Conclusions on the state of research



64

References
69

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Psychology of Terrorism
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Psychology of Terrorism
Executive Summary
Senior Consultants:
Senior Advisors:
Dr. Martha Crenshaw,

Dr. Robert Fein
Dr. John Horgan, Dr. Andrew Silke,
Mr. Bryan Vossekuil
Randy Borum
Dr. Michael Gelles, & Dr. Scott Shumate

As part of the ongoing effort to better understand the causes, motivations and determinants of
terrorist behavior, based on a comprehensive review of the scientific and professional literature,
this report analyzes key findings on the “psychology of terrorism.”

• Although early writings on the “psychology of terrorism” were based mostly in psychoanalytic
theory (e.g., narcissism, hostility toward parents), most researchers have since moved on to other
approaches.
• People become terrorists in different ways, in different roles, and for different reasons. It may be
helpful to distinguish between reasons for joining, remaining in, and leaving terrorist organizations.
• Perceived injustice, need for identity and need for belonging are common vulnerabilities among
potential terrorists.
• Mental illness is not a critical factor in explaining terrorist behavior. Also, most terrorists are not
“psychopaths.”
• There is no “terrorist personality”, nor is there any accurate profile – psychologically or otherwise –
of the terrorist.
• Histories of childhood abuse and trauma and themes of perceived injustice and humiliation often
are prominent in terrorist biographies, but do not really help to explain terrorism.
• Terrorist ideologies tend to provide a set of beliefs that justify and mandate certain behaviors.
Those beliefs are regarded as absolute, and the behaviors are seen as serving a meaningful
cause.
• Not all extremist ideologies promote violence, nor are all extremists violent. One might ask
whether the ideology is driven more by promotion of the “cause” or destruction of those who
oppose it.
• The powerful, naturally-occurring barriers that inhibit human killing can be eroded either through
outside social/environmental influences or by changing how one perceives the situation.
• Terrorist groups, like all social collectives, have certain internal (e.g., mistrust, competition) and
external (e.g. support, inter-group conflict) vulnerabilities to their existence.
• Surprisingly little research or analysis has been conducted on terrorist recruitment. Recruitment
efforts do appear concentrated in areas where people feel most deprived and dissatisfied.
Relationships are critical. Ef ective recruiters create and exploit a sense of urgency and
imminence.
• Effective leaders of terrorist organizations must be able to: maintain a collective belief system;
establish and maintain organizational routines; control the flow of communication; manipulate
incentives (and purposive goals) for followers; deflect conflict to external targets; and keep action
going.
• Research on the psychology of terrorism largely lacks substance and rigor. Cultural factors are
important, but have not been studied. Future research should be operationally-informed; maintain
a behavior based focus; and derive interpretations from analyses of incident-related behaviors.

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Psychology of Terrorism
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Section
1

Introduction
In the current national security environment, there is little question that
terrorism is among the gravest of threats. Massive resources
throughout the government and private sectors have been allocated and
re-allocated to the task of preventing terrorism. These efforts, however,
often lack a conceptual - let alone empirically-based – foundation for
understanding terrorists and their acts of violence. This void creates a
serious challenge at many levels, from policy-level decisions about how
a state should respond to terrorism, to individual-level decisions about
whether a given person of interest, who espouses extremist ideas, truly
poses a serious threat to U.S. personnel, assets, and interests.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze and synthesize what has been
reported from the scientific and professional literature about the
“psychology of terrorism.” This focus is not intended to suggest that the
scientific discipline of psychology provides the only, or even necessarily
the best, analytic framework for understanding terrorism. Like all
approaches to understanding or explaining human behavior, a
psychological approach has advantages and limitations. Nevertheless,
as psychology is regarded as “the science of human behavior,” it seems
a reasonable, and potentially productive, line of inquiry.
Although the basic question of how best to define terrorism has itself
been a vexing problem, for purposes of this analysis, we are concerned
generally with acts of violence (as opposed to threats or more general
coercion) intentionally perpetrated on civilian non-combatants with the
goal of furthering some ideological, religious or political objective. Our
focus on psychological dimensions, de-emphasizes analysis of
sociologically-based explanations (sometimes referred to as “root
causes”) or macro-level economic and political theories. Moreover, our
focus on terrorist acts de-emphasizes analysis of the psychological
effects, consequences or amelioration of terrorism.
In many ways, our basic aim is rather modest. We do not anticipate
identifying or discovering THE explanation for all terrorism. Rather, we

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Psychology of Terrorism
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hope to identify, describe, and evaluate what contribution – if any –
psychological theory or research may have made to understanding
terrorists and terrorism. In approaching this task, we are mindful of
Walter Laqueur’s incisive conclusion based on more than a quarter
century of personal research on the topic: “Many terrorisms exist, and
their character has changed over time and from country to country. The
endeavor to find a "general theory" of terrorism, one overall explanation
of its roots, is a futile and misguided enterprise. ..Terrorism has
changed over time and so have the terrorists, their motives, and the
causes of terrorism.” (Laqueur, 20031). Psychiatrist Jerrold Post makes
that caveat even more directly applicable to an exploration of the
psychological dimension of terrorism. He cautions that “there is a broad
spectrum of terrorist groups and organizations, each of which has a
different psychology, motivation and decision making structure. Indeed,
one should not speak of terrorist psychology in the singular, but rather
of terrorist psychologies” (Post, 20012). With that cautionary note, we
offer the following review.

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Psychology of Terrorism
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Section
2

Aims & Methodology
We have defined terrorism here as “acts of violence intentionally
perpetrated on civilian non-combatants with the goal of furthering some
ideological, religious or political objective.” Our principal focus is on
non-state actors.
Our task was to identify and analyze the scientific and professional
social science literature pertaining to the psychological and/or
behavioral dimensions of terrorist behavior (not on victimization or
effects). Our objectives were to explore what questions pertaining to
terrorist groups and behavior had been asked by social science
researchers; to identify the main findings from that research; and
attempt to distill and summarize them within a framework of
operationally relevant questions.

Search Strategy
To identify the relevant social science literature, we began by searching
a series of major academic databases using a systematic, iterative
keyword strategy, mapping, where possible onto existing subject
headings. The focus was on locating professional social science
literature published in major books or in peer-reviewed journals. The
following database searches were conducted in October, 2003.
•
Sociofile/Sociological Abstracts
•
Criminal Justice Abstracts (CJ Abstracts)
•
Criminal Justice Periodical Index (CJPI)
•
National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts
(NCJRS)
•
PsychInfo
•
Medline
• Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS)

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Psychology of Terrorism
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The “hit count” from those searches is summarized in the table below.
After the initial list was generated, we cross-checked the citations
against the reference list of several major review works that had been
published in the preceding five years (e.g., Rex Hudson’s “The
Psychology and Sociology of Terrorism”3) and included potentially
relevant references that were not already on the list. Finally, the list was
submitted to the three senior academic consultants on the project: Dr.
Martha Crenshaw (Wesleyan University), Dr. John Horgan (University
College, Cork), and Dr. Andrew Silke (UK Home Office) soliciting
recommendations based only on relevance (not merit) as to whether
any of the citations listed should be removed and whether they knew of
others that met the criteria that should be added. Reviews mainly
suggested additions (rarely recommending removal) to the list.
Revisions were made in response to reviewer comments, and the
remaining comprised our final citation list.
C J
Psych Info M edline
C JP I
N C JR S
A bstracts P AIS S ocioFile
Terrorism


50

Terror* (kw )
844
1353
N /A
N /A
2115
Terror* (kw ) &
M indset
1 (0)
0
4(0)
Boolean 33 (0)

10 (0)
2 (0)
Terror* (kw ) &
Psych* (kw )
N /A 428 141
N /A
N /A
N /A
Terrorism and
M indset
N /A N /A N /A
N /A
1
N /A N /A
Psychology(S ub)
& Terror*(kw )
50 17
(0)
N /A
N /A
N /A N /A N /A
Psychology(S ub)
& Terrorism (S ub) 35 11
(0)
N /A
N /A
N /A N /A N /A
Psychology &
Terrorism
N /A N /A
N /A
Boolean
154
(0) 14 23 28
Political Violence
(kw )
55 764(0)
89
(0)
Boolean
19
50 N /A
N /A
Political Violence
(kw ) &
Psychology
N /A N /A N /A
N /A
N /A 10
(0)
149










Numbers= Total results
N/A= Search Term
unnecessary
(0)=No items were kept from
the results
kw=keyword

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Psychology of Terrorism
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Project Team

•Project Director:
–Dr. Randy Borum – University of South Florida

•Senior Advisors:
–Dr. Robert Fein – National Violence Prevention & Study Center / CIFA
–Mr. Bryan Vossekuil – National Violence Prevention & Study Center /
CIFA

•Senior Consultants:
–Dr. Martha Crenshaw – Wesleyan University
–Dr. John Horgan – University College at Cork
–Dr. Andrew Silke – UK Home Office
–Dr. Michael Gelles – Naval Criminal Investigative Service
–Dr. Scott Shumate – Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA)

•CENTRA
–Lee Zinser – Vice President
–Bonnie Coe – Senior Analyst

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Psychology of Terrorism
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Section
3

Psychological Approaches to

Understanding Violence
Before exploring psychological approaches to the specific problem of
terrorist violence, it may be helpful first to examine whether and how
psychology and other behavioral sciences have sought to explain
violent behavior more generally. Definitions of “violence” in the social
science literature are at least as plentiful as definitions of terrorism.
Most focus on causing harm to others, but some also include suicide
and self-mutilation as forms of “violence to self.” Acts that intentionally
cause physical harm or injury to another person would fit within most
definitions. Yet many would insist that those parameters are much too
narrow and restrictive to provide any meaningful description of violence.
They might argue that threats as well as overt acts be included, that
psychological or emotional harm is as relevant as physical harm, and
that injury is merely an outcome and not a descriptor of the act. On the
other hand, some would contend that “intentional harm” is too restrictive
because it would include legitimate behavior in some contact sports or
consensual infliction of pain.
Of what practical relevance is such an arcane definitional discussion
among pointy-headed academics to someone who has to deal with
understanding violence in the real world? A fair question.
Consider the following incidents:
• A 25-year old man drinks and beats his live-in girlfriend at least
three times a week.

• A 17-year old girl who was thrown out of her parents’ house
when she got pregnant and decided to keep the baby, now has a
9 month old colicky infant who has never slept through the night,
and who screams so loudly and so persistently that the mom has
vigorously shaken the youngster, just to get him to stop.

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