Commentary: The psychology of terrorists

摘要

The attacks on 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon thrust terrorism into the news again. The worldwide terrorist threats in the 1980s and early 1990s stimulated a wave of research on political violence, the conclusions of which are in danger of being ignored. Terrorist groups are not usually composed of violent people, but people who choose to use violence as a tool to what they see as a reasonable end. Violence can be part of a rational strategy, with calculable costs and benefits, used as part of a moral commitment to a cause. Terrorists may pursue this cause with a sense of loyalty, selflessness, and righteousness that? with other consequences-we might find admirable. The people who choose violence are usually fairly ordinary people in extraordinary groups, and we should look at the psychology of group processes rather than at individual psychopathology to understand their behaviour.