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7 - If they're not crazy, then what? The implications of social psychological approaches to terrorism for conflict management

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2009

By
Winnifred R. Louis
Edited by
Werner G. K. Stritzke ,
Stephan Lewandowsky ,
David Denemark ,
Joseph Clare  and
Frank Morgan
Werner G. K. Stritzke
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia, Perth
Stephan Lewandowsky
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia, Perth
David Denemark
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia, Perth
Joseph Clare
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia, Perth
Frank Morgan
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia, Perth
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Summary

The present chapter reviews existing research concerning the motivations that terrorists have for their attacks and the political and psychological consequences of terror. It analyzes the use of terrorism in terms of current social psychological theories of decision making in conflict. The implications of social psychological models of tactical choices for Western and American attempts to reduce the likelihood of further attacks are delineated, and the prospects for increasing harmony versus escalation in the next few years are reviewed. The take-home message from this chapter is that attempts to deter terrorists from engaging in terrorist actions must adopt a broad focus on: (1) beliefs about the effectiveness of terror in relation to alternatives to terror, and (2) the psychological identities with which these beliefs are associated.

An initial caveat: some terrorists are mentally unbalanced/socially dysfunctional

Some approaches focus on reducing terrorism by promoting the healing of individual terrorists' dysfunction, for example promoting coping strategies to reduce the existential fear of death (see Pyszczynski et al., this volume). There is little doubt that some terrorists are mentally unbalanced and/or socially out of place. For example, among the left-wing German and Italian terrorists of the 1980s, as identified upon capture or infiltration of the network, Post (2005) identified a high prevalence of family and personal dysfunction: early parental loss, family conflict, high-school truancy, juvenile crime, and other evidence of early difficulties and maladjustment.

Type
Chapter
Information
Terrorism and Torture
An Interdisciplinary Perspective
 , pp. 125 - 153
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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