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Weighing dispositional and situational factors in accounting for suicide terrorism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2014

David C. Funder
David C. Funder*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521. [email protected]
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Abstract

Lankford's book makes the important point that analyses of suicide terrorists often commit the error of overestimating the importance of situational causes of behavior and underestimating dispositional causes, such as underlying pathology. Personality and individual differences are important; suicide terrorists are not ordinary people driven by situational pressures. However, citation of empirical evidence is haphazard; the scholarly argument is not well-developed.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , August 2014 , pp. 367 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

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