What makes a terrorist

1
What makes a terrorist?
Dr. ADAM DOLNIK Director of Research
Programs Centre for Transnational Crime
Prevention University of Wollongong
Australia adamd_at_uow.edu.au
2
What motivates terrorists?

• Terrorism is product of strategic choice
• Terrorism is a product of psychological forces

3
Limitations of terrorism research

• Lack of a common definition
• Descriptive / anecdotal
• Event driven
• Fire-fighter approach / Silver bullets
• Western bias
• One sided bias
• Simple answers / vested interests
• Enclosed, circular research system
• Statistics
• Difficulty in accessing subjects
• Limits of retrospective accounts

4
Typology of Approaches

• Psychological
• Physiological
• Political / Socio-economic
• Organizational
• Ideological / Cultural
• Social network analysis
• Multi-disciplinary approach

5
Psychological

• Terrorists as mentally ill (psycho-logic)
• Narcissistic rage (splitting/externalization)
• Airplane hijackers study (expression of illness)
• Psychiatric research has failed identify any
  universal idiosyncrasies
• Terror groups do not desire psychopaths
• Learning from experience
• Differences based on level of support isolation
• the outstanding common characteristic of
  terrorists is their normality

6
Physiological

• Just like all mammals, we are aggressive
• Mechanisms for initiation and regulation of
  aggression
• Nurture or nature?

7
Find the cause of conflict on the map

• Threat
• Increased limbic activity
• Changes in organism
• Aggressive behavior

Limbic system
8
Regulation of aggression

• Affective vs. predatory aggression
• Different source for each type
• In-group vs. Out-group aggression
• Murderer vs. Hero

9
Social / Economic/ Political

• Terrorists are not born, they are made
• Root Causes (i.e. political oppression, lack of
  development, democracy, education, sex etc.)
• (relative) Deprivation-Frustration-Aggression
  hypothesis
• Perception of injustice
• Revenge
• Role of education?
• Social distance
• But why in some contexts and not in others?

10
Process of Ideological Development
Its not right
Its not fair
Its your fault
You are evil
Stereotype
Perception of deprivation
Inequality and resentment
Blame / Attribution
Demonization/ Dehumanization
Context
Comparison
Attribution
Reaction
11
Organizational

• Terrorism is a group phenomenon
• Belonging, value re-enforcement, danger,
  friendships, status
• Group Think
• (central authority, invulnerability, excessive
  risk taking, morality, conformity, ignoring
  options, moral disengagement, semantics, silence,
  pressures to act)
• Brainwashing and exploitation
• With us or against us the heroes, the enemies
  and the insignificant
• Black and white vision of the world

12
Who are the terrorists ?

• Universal profile?
• SOLDIER/POLICEMAN
• Universal attributes?
• FRUSTRATION VICTIMIZATION
• HUMILIATION
• EMPATHY
• ENEMY
• EMPOWERMENT
• CHANGE

13
Home-Grown Terrorism
14
Conclusions

• All approaches have a merit
• All approaches have weaknesses
• Combination of circumstances and personality
• Beware of simplistic generalizations
• Specificity vs. representativeness
• Individuals vs. groups
• Definitional issues
• Motivations and causes may shift over time
• Seeing the world through their eyes