Terrorist Psychology: Getting Started

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by John Horgan

We all know the negative stereotypes about terrorism experts. The gripes are nothing if not predictable – terrorism experts are deemed to be self-proclaimed, delivering opinion as expertise, and never shy to offer a view on just about every national security topic imaginable, let alone terrorism. Much of that commentary presents either a simplistic characterization of a broader community of enquirers (Exhibit A) or throws the baby out with the bathwater. Perhaps one challenge is an internal effort within our “industry” to do a better job of distinguishing nat-sec entrepreneurialism and insta-punditry from research expertise. Easier said than done, of course, though at least two of my colleagues are currently working on a project to explore this.

But I do have one recurring gripe. I especially wince when I hear psychological concepts misused in discussions about terrorists.

Setting aside efforts suggesting confusion about psychological and psychiatric concepts (Exhibit B), our collective tendency towards amateur psychology casts a pall over efforts to develop a psychological understanding of terrorism and the terrorist. Rather than exploit insight derived from systematic enquiry, we are often left with what Max Taylor recently characterized as “folk psychology” – a preponderance of commonsense tendencies to explain terrorist behavior in generic jargon that…umm…doesn’t really explain anything. It seems right, sounds plausible, and we don’t question it because it has the veneer of psychology, and thus, the veneer of understanding. We see this in several efforts at understanding radicalization processes where several folk psychology concepts are used in attempts to understand “intentionality”. Instead, they obscure, confuse and invariably disappoint. Longer-term, they result in an unrealized sense of what scientific psychological analysis has to offer an understanding of (and thereby control over) terrorist behavior.

The fight for a Science of Terrorist Behavior is for another day – and that day is coming – but a question I’m regularly asked whenever issues of terrorist psychology arise, is what readings can be recommended for someone who wants to get started in the area?

Here’s a quick, non-scientific list of what I have personally found to be 11 essential readings. It should go without saying that there are dozens of additional quality examples that will feature in any comprehensive effort to understand terrorist psychology. This is the limitation of all lists. But if you are engaged in, or plan to engage in, research on terrorist psychology, you have to track down and devour every one of these texts.

1. W. Reich (Ed.) (1990). Origins of terrorism: Psychologies, ideologies, theologies, states of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Once the singular text in this area, this volume is finally starting to show its age. Despite this, the opening and closing chapters (by Reich himself) still represent some of the most insightful observations about the nature of psychological explanations of terrorism.

2. Borum, R. (2004). Psychology of terrorism. Tampa, FL: University of South Florida. From a pioneer in the area, this book is now just a little dated in terms of the literature count (unsurprisingly given how much has emerged in the past decade). Fortunately, Borum has provided an erstwhile update via three excellent papers in the 2011 vol. 4 edition of the Journal of Strategic Security – namely:

Borum, R. (2011a). Radicalization into violent extremism I: A review of social science theories. Journal of Strategic Security, 4, 7-36.

Borum, R. (2011b). Radicalization into violent extremism II: A review of conceptual models and empirical research. Journal of Strategic Security, 4, 37-62.

Borum, R. (2011c). Rethinking radicalization. Journal of Strategic Security, 4, 1-6.

Best of all, the Journal of Strategic Security is free (disclaimer: I sit on its editorial board) so no excuses.

3. Victoroff, J. (2005). The Mind of a Terrorist: A Review and Critique of Psychological Approaches. Journal of Conflict Resolution. 49:1. 3-42. Jeff Victoroff turned to terrorism research on the morning of 9/11. Four years later, he produced what remains the single best review of the psychological literature. A long, comprehensive and brilliant read. A gold standard.

4. Arena, M.P. and Arrigo, B.A. (2006). The Terrorist Identity: Explaining the Terrorist Threat. NYU Press. A critically acclaimed yet strangely overlooked book. Rich in theory, grounded in the authors’ disciplines, and a solid conceptual framework for future researchers.

5. Bongar, B., Brown, L.M., Beutler, L.E. and Breckenridge, J.N., Zimbardo, P.G. (Eds.) (2006). Psychology of Terrorism. Oxford University Press. A beast of a collection, with contributions from some real heavyweights in psychology. Some technical chapters here that contain blueprints for tough questions about terrorism that are still being asked in 2013.

6. Stout, C.E. (Ed.). (2002). The Psychology of Terrorism Vol 1-4. Westport, CT: Praeger. Probably the most expensive item on this list, this multi-volume set covers a huge range of issues.

7. Merari, A. (2010). Driven to Death: Psychological and Social Aspects of Suicide Terrorism. Oxford University Press. From another giant in the field, this is Merari’s major work. One of the handful of studies not just involving interviews with failed suicide bombers, but a study in which the investigators actually engage in personality assessment.

8. McCauley, C. and Moskalenko, S. (2011). Friction: How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us. Oxford University Press. Despite its newness, a hugely influential book, largely focusing on individual-level processes. Probably the single best effort to date to conceptualize radicalization as something far bigger and broader than just related to terrorism.

9. Ballen, K. (2011). Terrorists in Love: the Real Lives of Islamic Radicals. New York: Free Press. Don’t let the title fool you (no reality show here). I met Ken Ballen in 2008 on a trip to meet with ‘reformed’ Al Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia. This very accessible book offers deep insights into the narratives of leaders and followers alike.

10. Silke, A. (1998). ‘Cheshire-Cat Logic: The Recurring Theme of Terrorist Abnormality in Psychological Resesarch’. Psychology, Crime and Law 4, 51-69. An oldie but a goodie, Silke uses the famous Alice in Wonderland metaphor to frame the persistent effort to psycho-pathologize terrorists.

11. Taylor, M. (1991). The Fanatics: A Behavioral Approach to Political Violence. London: Brassey’s. This is it for me – the pinnacle of psychological analyses of the terrorist. A deeply technical book (intentionally so) explaining via behavioral psychology terrorism, Millenarianism, suicide terrorism and much more besides. Unfortunately almost impossible to find as it’s been out of print for a long time.

Additions, suggestions, recommendations? Feel free to add!

Recent Cybersecurity Resources

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For those studying cybersecurity threats and responses, here are few new recommended resources.

1)   A terrific expose by David Berlind, of Programmable Web, on new API vulnerabilities as demonstrated by the recent hacking of social posting and scheduling service Buffer.
http://blog.programmableweb.com/2013/11/04/why-the-attack-on-buffer-was-a-serious-wake-up-call-for-the-web/

2)   A new Inspector General report revealing that the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, including the National Security Agency, have no way of sharing current alerts about computer breaches with each other or industry.
http://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/2014/OIG_14-02_Oct13.pdf

3)   The US-CERT current activity report
https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/current-activity

 

Perspectives on Terrorism, vol. 7 no. 5

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New issue of our internationally-acclaimed scholarly journal Perspectives on Terrorism is now available here.

Contents include:

Jeffrey M Bale, Denying the Link between Islamist Ideology and Jihadist Terrorism: “Political Correctness” and the Undermining of Counterterrorism

Benjamin S. Eveslage, Clarifying Boko Haram’s Transnational Intentions, Using Content Analysis of Public Statements in 2012

Alexandra Lewis, Unpacking Terrorism, Revolution and Insurgency in Yemen: Real and Imagined Threats to Regional Security

Paul Kamolnick, The Egyptian Islamic Group’s Critique of Al-Qaeda’s Interpretation of Jihad

Ely Karmon, Hamas in Dire Straits

Book Reviews, Literature Search Resources, and much more . . .

 

Video and Book: The Terrorist’s Dilemma

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Here’s a great 90 minute video of Jake Shapiro, Bruce Hoffman and Will McCants speaking at an event announcing the release of Jake’s new book, The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations,

http://www.newamerica.net/events/2013/the_terrorists_dilemma

His book systematically examines the structural differences between terrorist groups, discusses the core managerial challenges these groups face, and illustrates how the organizations are affected by their political goals and operational environments.  Shapiro provides a historically-informed explanation for why some groups have little hierarchy, while others resemble miniature firms.  Looking at groups in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, he highlights how consistent and widespread the terrorist’s dilemma — balancing the desire to maintain control with the need for secrecy — has been since the 1880s. A good read for anyone interested in a higher-level study of terrorist organizations.

 

A Very Short List of Influential Terrorism Readings (or ‘What I did last summer…’)

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by John Horgan

Little wonder summer seems like a distant memory. I spent June and July chained to my desk for 4 hours (almost) every morning between 7 and 11am. My goal? Finish the heavily revised second edition of my Psychology of Terrorism. One of many lessons I learned from that painful experience is that providing “updates” to a book can be a crushingly dull exercise and in some cases (mine) that process should give way to entire re-writes.

We’ll see in March if that strategy pays off – the “Radicalization” chapter was nothing if not an adventure.

Anyway, I’m taking a break today from re-writing the final chapter of that book to simultaneously mark the start of a series of blog posts from me for CTSS.

In case you are interested, we are a new center at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and we officially launched about two weeks ago. Amid the important work, we are pushing out a lot of fun stuff too. Stay tuned.

For now, I wanted to belatedly (only 4 months!) respond to a Tweet by @zivjeli after I said I had a stack of some 90+ PDFs of terrorism-related articles and reports to sift through back in the early days of summer. She asked me if I’d post a list of them, so here is a kind of response.

In one way or another, I drew on about 60-70% of that material in updating the book (amid ongoing research projects that have benefited from that process), but I’ve found myself returning to several pieces in particular, from which I’ve learned a lot.

These should not be considered a ‘top’ or ‘best of…’ (though I’ll admit two top ten lists are on the way) – these all just made an impression on me and my thinking about the area.

Some are new, some not so new, and others I’ve revisited from a long time ago but dug out to help navigate the current landscape.

Inevitably, some of the journal articles listed are ‘gated’ – i.e. you’ll need a journal subscription (or at least your institution will) to access them. Unsurprisingly, a list of only open-access pieces would look different.

In no particular order…

1. Bartlett, J. and Miller, C. (2012). ‘The Edge of Violence: Towards Telling the Difference Between Violent and Non-Violent Radicalization.’ Terrorism and Political Violence, 24 (1) 1-21.

A serious attempt both to conceptually figure out “radicalization” in its own right as well as to understand its relationship with terrorism.

2. Hegghammer, T. (2012). ‘The recruiter’s dilemma: Signalling and rebel recruitment tactics’. Journal of Peace Research, 50 (1) 3-16.

Hegghammer reminds us of our tendency to study the recruits, not the recruiters. He explains why we should turn to the latter to enhance our understanding the process of involvement.

3. Leistedt, S.J. (2013). ‘Behavioural Aspects of Terrorism’. Forensic Science International, 228, 21-27.

New to terrorism research? Drowning in the sea of journal articles, books, book chapters, reports? Then look no further. A terrific starting point, especially if rigor and systematic thinking is your thing (hint: it should be).

4. Randy Borum, Robert Fein, Bryan Vossekuil, Michael Gelles, and Scott Shumate (2004). “The Role of Operational Research in Counterterrorism” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. 
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/randy_borum/8

This deserves a little elaboration. If anything has informed the ‘vision’ of many of my recent research projects (if not broader initiatives, both at Penn State and now at UMass Lowell), it’s probably best captured by some of the sentiments expressed in this thought-provoking paper. I read it when it came out in 2004, revisited it in July through a very different mindset and will likely return to it in the future yet again. As research ‘translation’ becomes the long-overdue new normal for anyone who works in this area, this article captures the essence of its importance. And it’s freely available via the link above so no excuses.

5. Thomas Hegghammer. (2013). ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Variation in Western Jihadists’ Choice between Domestic and Foreign Fighting.’ American Political Science Review, February, 1-15.

A second entry from Hegghammer and I can safely assume this will have been a very widely read piece. Important for many reasons, including a convincing argument for abandoning the term “homegrown terrorism’. However, this paper is far more significant than that. Hegghammer explores what is commonly accepted in studies of terrorists – they are not all alike – but goes far beyond that in asserting the significance of how and why we should differentiate terrorists. My interest in this piece comes from the perspective of a psychologist interested in understanding how terrorist behavior develops. This is not ‘profiling’ revisited. On the contrary, the arguments Hegghammer makes about the need to differentiate both motivation and behavior goes far beyond that. The folk psychology that characterizes a big chunk of thinking about terrorist motivation would do well to anchor itself in better starting points. Hegghammer provides one, and undoubtedly, many more will follow from this.

6. George Orwell (1938; 2010) Homage to Catalonia (Benediction Classics, Oxford).

The first of about a dozen great books I read this year, revisited in light of heightened concerns about the foreign fighter influx into Syria. You can easily find Orwell’s entire text online these days. If you don’t know what this is – it’s Orwell’s autobiographical account of what happened to him as a ‘foreign fighter’ during the Spanish civil war. I first read this, accidentally, as a student in the 1990s, but it has never been more relevant. Read in conjunction with (5) above.

7. Ziad Munson. (2008). The Making of Pro-Life Activists: How Social Mobilization Works (University of Chicago Press).

You probably won’t find this on terrorism courses or syllabi yet it is one of the most important books on the nature of mobilization, activism and radicalism. As a terrorism researcher, in exploring the nature of the relationship between radicalization and violent extremism, this book will help you no end. Completely coincidentally, my 2013 book ‘Divided We Stand’ explores several of the same themes not just addressed in Munson’s book as a whole, but especially in Munson’s chapter 6 “United We Stand?” (!).

8. Porter, L.E. and Kebbell, M.R. (2011). ‘Radicalization in Australia: Examining Australia’s Convicted Terrorists.’ Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 18(2), 212-231.

The title is self-explanatory and you’d be unwise to allow it to serve as a factor in your reading list inclusion/exclusion criteria – everyone who studies terrorist behavior should read this. Their results are important and interesting, but read it through till the very end. Only towards the very end of this piece do the authors introduce how individuals in their sample use “neutralization” techniques to legitimize their activities. Despite its profound importance for understanding terrorist psychology, the work of Sykes and Matza from the 1950s rarely creeps into the literature – Porter and Kebbell rectify this and whether intentional or not, open up an entire range of research questions. In search of a PhD topic? Read this article and think about it.

9. Critcher, C. R., & Ferguson, M. J. (2013, June 24). The Cost of Keeping It Hidden: Decomposing Concealment Reveals What Makes It Depleting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0033468

One of many non-terrorism focused pieces that, upon reading, sets in motion many connections. Put bluntly – if you want to get creative in your thinking about terrorism – you need to read far more broadly. I was sent this piece by a fellow psychologist and have for the past 3 months explored accounts of involvement in terrorism that touch on similar issues. A fascinating article of immense relevance to exploring the (hypothesized) psychological cost of involvement in terrorism and its implications.

Having started my own adventures in terrorism research back in 1995, I’ve seen this field of study mature beyond my hopes. The worst aspects of the ‘terrorism industry’ still thrive, but I’m not talking about that here.

The work presented above is scholarship of the highest order. Not all of it would be easily found via a narrower lens of terrorism studies, but those that do (the majority) are hardly a testament to a field in supposed stagnation.

There are many additional works that have recently emerged and herein lies the limitation of any attempt to provide a list. This is far more an exercise in recalling pieces that have recently influenced and expanded my thinking about terrorism – nothing more.

What articles, books or reports have expanded your thinking about terrorism?

Reflections on Terrorism Studies

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On this anniversary of 9/11 it seems appropriate to reflect on how Terrorism Studies has evolved as a field of interdisciplinary research and education. A recent article raises a number of good points for consideration:

There are still research grants available for scholars in this field, and many publishing opportunities in respected peer-reviewed journals (particularly in our own journal, Perspectives on Terrorism), and there has been a proliferation of research centers (like CTSS) at which you can pursue sophisticated research (for example, see the list of 100 Centers compiled by Benjamin Friedman). UMass Lowell will soon be offering a doctoral-level education in terrorism studies, an option within our PhD program in the School of Criminology and Justice Studies. There are Master’s degree programs throughout the U.S. as well.

Overall, I take a “glass is half full” attitude toward the current state of the field. Surely I’m an optimist, but being an optimist may actually be required for those who study the terrible things that terrorists do to innocent people. The reality is that terrorism has been a part of human history for centuries, and is unlikely to go away anytime soon. With that in mind, academe appears to be slowly, perhaps grudgingly acknowledging the need to study the phenomenon of terrorism, understand the many complexities of it, and hopefully discover new ways to contain, mitigate, and even prevent it in the future.