US Air Force: SHORTENED%20DHS%20BOSTON%20TALK%2C%20APRIL%2013

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The Psychology of Terrorism: “Syndrome” versus “Tool” PerspectivesArie W. KruglanskiCo-Director, START (National Center for the Study of Terrorism and the Responses toTerrorism)University of Maryland, College Park Few would disagree that terrorism is the scourge of our times. Though hardly anew phenomenon, its development, and globalization in the later part of the 20

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centuryhave made it a formidable menace to human lives world wide, bent on unraveling theeconomic, social and political orders of contemporary states.Social scientists interest in the problem has been growing steadily, paralleling thegrowth and proliferation of terrorism itself. An unprecedented boost to this research was prompted by the tragic events of 9/11/01. Four years later, a tremendous amount of effortin the U.S. and abroad is being expended on investigating diverse aspects of terrorism, inan attempt to gain empirically based understanding of its workings.As part of this endeavor, the Department of Homeland Security has funded atmajor American Universities Centers of Excellence, devoted to the study of terrorism.One such center, recently inaugurated at the University of Maryland was charged withexploring the social and behavioral aspects of terrorism. The discipline of psychology plays an essentially important part in this endeavor.This shouldn’t be surprising. Terrorism, after all, is a behavioral phenomenonfostered by human agency. Someone decides to carry out a terrorist act, and is motivatedenough to perpetrate the carnage, often to the point of taking her or his own life in the process. The killing of innocent civilians, workers in an office, passengers on planes or 1

trains, or kids in pizzerias or discotheques is macabre and extreme. It simply cries out for a psychological explanation.How can people bring themselves to perpetrate the horrific things that terroristsdo? Why do they hate us so much? Are they mentally disturbed? Do they have a deathwish? Were they driven to their heinous acts by sheer desperation? Is there anything wehave done to incur their wrath? These questions, on many people’s minds, pose a weightychallenge for psychology as a science, with a great deal that matters riding on theanswers.Over the years, two major psychological approaches to terrorism have emerged,treating it as a syndrome, or as a tool respectively. By “syndrome” I mean a conceptionof terrorism as an entity, or a monolith, with a set of identifiable characteristics. This perspective implies, for instance, that “terrorists” will be demarcated from non-terrorists by a specific, somewhat pathological, pattern of personality traits, and motivations. Thata “terrorist group” will show a distinct organizational structure and evolutionarytrajectory. It implies, finally, that “terrorism” will be found to originate from discernible“root causes” (e.g., poverty, or political oppression), which removal will make it goaway. The “tool” approach, by contrast, assumes rather little about the uniform properties of terrorists, or their organizations. Instead, it views it as a means to an end, atactic of dealing with (real or imagined) conflict that any party could use.Terrorism as a SyndromeThe terrorist personality. At this point in time, it seems fair to say that the“syndrome” approach to terrorism yielded limited results. Take terrorists’ personalitytraits and motivations. Early psychological investigations, inquired whether terrorists are2

drawn to extreme violence by some kind of psychological disturbance. It turned out,however, as a category, they are no psychopaths, and they show no systematic signs of mental pathology. Yes, there were indications that Western European terrorists tended tocome from broken homes (Post, 1990), or that the Basque ETA terrorists tended to comefrom mixed Basque and Spanish heritage. No one would contend, however, that havingcome from a broken home, or a mixed family background is either a necessary or asufficient condition for a career in terrorism. Under the same circumstances, one could became a garden-variety criminal, a suffering artist, even a selfless humanitarian.It also became apparent that there is nothing particularly psychologically specialabout terrorists’ personalities. Painstaking empirical research conducted on the GermanRed Army Faction (the Bader Meinhoff Gang), on the Italian Red Army Brigades, theBasque ETA and the various Palestinian organizations, for example came out empty anddidn’t uncover anything particularly striking about the psychological make up of members of terrorist organizations (McCauley, in press).“Root causes” of terrorism? Perhaps then, the root causes of terrorism provide theunifying “glue”, explaining terrorism anywhere? Research seems to have “struck out” inthis domain as well. First, the empirical data yielded no evidence for a relation between poverty and terrorism, both at the level of the individual perpetrator and at the level of theterrorists’ country of origin (Krueger and Maleckova, 2003, Atran, 2003). At theindividual level, not all terrorists or extremists are disadvantaged. In fact, the leadingones often are quite well off (e.g., Osama Bin, the 9/11 terrorists, the Baader Meinhoff gang, the Weather Underground). Several empirical studies have failed to find any directconnection between either education, or poverty on the one hand and the propensity to3

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