Whilst I have to admit releasing a forensic psychology book about terrorism might seem weird in December but I haven’t thought about it. Yet whenever we see news about a terrorist attack, we always wonder why something would commit such a horrible attack but we wonder what makes a terrorist as well. Is a mental health condition? Is it biological in nature? Are there social or cultural factors at play? And does society make someone a terrorist or not? We need to know the answer. Therefore, in this criminal psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn about the large range of factors that can make someone into a terrorist. If you enjoy learning about the psychology of crime, terrorism and more then this will be a great episode for you.
Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Forensic Psychology Of Terrorism and Hostage-Taking. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
What Makes A Terrorist? (Extract from Forensic Psychology of Terrorism and Hostage-Taking by Connor Whiteley. COPYRIGHT 2024)
The general consensus is that it takes time to convert a vulnerable person into a terrorist (Luckabaugh et al., 1997) because this is a process and different terrorist recruits have different motivations. For example, a need to belong, the development of a satisfactory personal identity, social alienation and boredom leads to dissidence and protests on a small scale, then over time terrorism, as well as histories of child abuse, trauma, humiliation and social injustice are common in a terrorist’s background as well.
Although, Borum (2004) doesn’t feel like this is helpful in explaining terrorism, because these factors are vulnerabilities and they don’t make someone a terrorist on their own. Also, Merari (2007) may be suggesting general vulnerability factors when he suspects susceptibility to indoctrination is key to understanding suicide bombers. Due to most of the suicide bombers Merari studied where young and unattached people which are perfect types for all sorts of violent organisations.
As a result, Merari believed suicide terrorism could be understood as consequences of a terrorist system, with people being recruited through interpersonal connections that then supported the recruit all the way through to becoming a suicide bomber.
This is important to learn about because highly committed members of an organisation will spend hours talking to recruits, promoting the idea of martyrdom as will of the God and they focus on the illustrious past of Islam. Then the recruits become enmeshed in the group contact that is designed to help the recruit prove their allegiance to the organisation. Afterwards this “formal contract” creates a final personal commitment before a suicide bomber attack.
In addition, Merari compared terror groups to suicide bomb production lines using empirical support from Palestinian suicide bombers.
The stages of these production lines according to Merari include indoctrination. This is where members of terror groups with high authority constantly indoctrinate potential bombers to maintain their motivation to engage in the terrorist act and to prevent them changing their mind.
For Palestinian indoctrination, the themes were nationalism. For instance, Israel’s humiliation of the Palestinian state and religious guarantees, by saying things like the suicide bomber will go to paradise after committing this act. As well as getting the recruit to commit to the group is done too at this stage where any doubts about committing to the attack are dealt with and the motivation for the attack is increased to maximum levels, or “maxed out” to use more urban slang terms.
Then the last stage is personal commitment and this can take the form of video recordings were the terrorist describes their intent to do the suicide bombing. This is partly done for their family, but it is also done as a way of getting irreversible commitment. As well as the bomber prepares farewell letters for friends and family too for later giving.
Also, at this point in the production line, Merari points out these would-be bombers are called “Living-Martyr”, and this whole approach is sympathetic with Horgan and Taylor (2001)’s view that terrorists don’t actively choose to become terrorists.
Instead becoming a terrorist is a gradual process where a potential terrorist is socialised with the recruiters having the ultimate goal of making them preform a terrorist act.
Of course, this is a process and not an absolute. People can leave the process at any point and this is to be expected given the high turnover rate in terrorist group membership (Crenshaw, 1986).
Moreover, Taylor and Louis (2004) suggested young people find themselves wanting a hopeful future and they engage in meaningful behaviour that helps them get ahead and will be satisfied with their life. Also, these young people’s objective circumstances include no opportunity for a good future or advancement, and whilst they might find some collective identity in religions, living in a poor state and community makes them feel marginalised and lost without a clear group.
So it’s easy to think how terror acts are result of group processes with Taylor (2010) asking can terrorism truly be understood as a phenomenon of group behaviour. Since Taylor (2010) distinctives between getting involved in a terror group and actually carrying out attacks.
Since group processes could be important as a backdrop in terrorism when cultural, political and social factors have a role to play. But these group processes fail to explain the act or episode of terrorism itself.
Taylor suggests there are two main issues with the “terrorism as group processes” argument. There is a lack of a good definition of what is terrorism besides from what terrorists do, and there isn’t a clear idea of what is meant by group processes in relation to terrorism. Since there are times when group processes seem to play no or little role in a terrorist attack. Lone-wolf attacks spring to mind here.
Another extreme example is the reclusive Theodore John Kaczynski who’s terrorist campaign lasted for 17 years with 12 bombs and 3 deaths for his environmental agenda that he largely made-up alone without a group behind him.
What Are Life Story Studies?
I do enjoy qualitative research and I think given how hard terrorism is to research, qualitative research methodologies might be useful. Of course, you will still have a lot of the same problems as the rest of terrorism research as I wrote about in the first chapter but qualitive research can still be useful.
Especially as Borum (2004) argued that a terrorist’s life experience includes common themes. He suggests that these common themes aren’t sufficient causes of terrorism, but they might be helpful to researchers to identify people susceptibility to being influenced by terrorist groups.
In some ways this argument fits with the narrative studies being done with terrorists because they reveal other factors are needed to understand what turns someone into a terrorist and it helps to show that not all terrorists are made because of their similar circumstances. That notion doesn’t really have research support anymore.
In addition, since 1992, terrorism has been a feature of “Israel’s relationship with Palestine” and Soibelman (2004) subscribes to the group processes idea over individual’s psychology like personality. Due to the researcher rejects the idea that suicide bombers are simply young religious fanatics and instead believes less extreme personality characteristics make up bombers. This was based on his research and interviews with 5 suicide bombers that were arrested before they could carry out the attack or the bombs failed to detonate (something that happens in another 40% of suicide bombings). The results of his interviews show there wasn’t a single explanation for why they became terrorists and instead there was a mixture of factors that were responsible but even this mixture was different for different terrorists.
Yet it seemed that group solidarity and having a shared ideology were two overriding factors in becoming a terrorist because most of the interviewed suicide bombers had at least some shared ideology and solidarity.
Furthermore, political factors were given as reasons for becoming suicide bombers, as well as having bad or secondary experience of dealing with the Israeli defence force. Such as the Israelis shooting one of their friends or beating them.
And this is what I find interesting, most of the suicide bombers had been involved in protests or another form of assembly beforehand they were involved in terrorism. That means these people once wanted change through peaceful means and something changed to make them believe terrorism was the only option.
To explain this, Soibelman (2004) suggested as the situation escalates, a person’s beliefs get more extreme. As well as given the nature of the sample, these suicide bombers were a part of the secular Fatah movement, so religion wasn’t a factor in them becoming terrorists. And despite this terrorist group don’t tend to have criminal histories, a few of them could have.
Another study that offers up a more detailed account of the range of factors impacting someone’s chance of becoming a terrorist can be found in Sarangi and Alison’s (2005) and their study of the left-wing Maoist terrorists in Nepal and India. This terror group believe the state is an instrument of the rich and needs to be violently overthrown.
The researchers interviewed 12 terrorists and 3 men and 3 women that were no longer involved with their average age being 26 years old and they generally lacked a formal education. These interviews were validated by checking court and police records.
In this study, rapport building was a priority and the researches achieved this by having the terrorists talk about their childhood and matters not directly tied to terrorist activities. Then the researchers suggested common rhetorical structures in the interview.
The results of the interviews showed that the terrorists had created a strong sense of “Us” (which included their Self-Image) and they saw themselves as a central character for themselves in their life story as brave, good, simple, logical and so on. Instead of the reality when the terrorist spoke about themselves, their family, friends and other people in their community being poor simple, naive, exploited, short on goods and water and cheated by others.
Also, the interviews showed interpersonal figures were important and included rhetoric about outgroups and others. For example, one rhetoric found was about their beliefs surrounding the government being characteristic of rich, powerful, villain, uncaring and inhuman.
Overall, this study found that terrorists believe themselves to be heroes and very good people that are fighting against an outgroup that is evil and foul and needs to be defeated. This sense of them being heroes helps them maintain their positive self-image and they see their friends and family and local communities as suffering at the hands of the outgroup. Hence, why the outgroup needs to suffer for this perceived injustice.
In conclusion, if these past two chapters have taught you anything, I think we have to conclude that there really is no single factor that causes someone to become a terrorist. It is a mixture of individual, group and political factors that interact together to help make people into a terrorist.
So now we understand how terrorists are made, how do terrorist ideologies and mental processes supporting these extreme ideologies develop?
I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.
If you want to learn more, please check out:
Forensic Psychology Of Terrorism and Hostage-Taking. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Have a great day.
Criminal Psychology Reference
Whiteley, C. (2024) Forensic Psychology of Terrorism And Hostage-Taking. CGD Publishing. England.
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