The Psychology of Terrorism
Clark R. McCauley, Professor of Psychology, Bryn Mawr College
1. Terrorism as a Category of Violence
In a global war on terrorism, it is important to ask what we mean by
terrorism.
The usual definition of terrorism is something like "the use or threat of
violence, by small groups against non-combatants of large groups, for
avowed political goals." The key to this definition is the combination of
small groups killing non-combatants. Terrorism is the warfare of the
weak, the recourse of those desperate for a cause that cannot win by
conventional means. But it is worth noting that state terrorism against a
state's own citizens--as practiced by Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol-Pot, and
many smaller-league tyrants--has killed millions of non-combatants,
whereas the anti-state terrorism we usually focus on has killed
thousands.
The distinction between combatants and non-combatants--between
people in uniform and people not in uniform--has been eroding since
the French Revolution. The Revolution brought a new kind of army, a
"nation in arms" that vanquished the best professional armies of
Europe. Since then, the Western way of war has triumphed, and only a
nation in arms has been able to beat a nation in arms. The implication
of this shift is that the nation behind an army is a legitimate target of
war.
The U.S. has accepted this implication on numerous occasions. In
WWII, the U.S. dropped fire bombs on Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo,
and nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These cities had
relatively few in uniform; most of the dead were old people, women,
and children. When the U.S. bombed Milosovic's Serbia, targets
included transportation, communication, and power centers and the
casualties included many not in uniform. When the U.S. and its allies
embargoed Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the shortages of food and
medicine killed more children than men in uniform.
As terrorism from above is not always called terrorism, so terrorism
from below is not always called terrorism. At least for some Americans,
the Contras were not terrorists and the Irish Republican Army are not
terrorists. It seems unlikely that the U.S. will never again want to
distinguish terrorists from freedom-fighters, in order to support the latter
despite their attacks on civilians. Perhaps we ought to be honest in
seeking to punish and interdict whatever groups are behind the attacks
of 9/11, and go easy on talk about a global war on terrorism.
2. Terrorism as Individual Pathology
A common suggestion is that there must be something wrong with
terrorists. Terrorists must be crazy, or suicidal, or psychopaths without
moral feelings or feelings for others. Thirty years ago this suggestion
was taken very seriously, but thirty years of research has found
psychopathology and personality disorder no more likely among
terrorists than among non-terrorists from the same background.
Interviews with current and former terrorists find few with any disorder
found in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual. Comparisons of terrorists with non-terrorists brought
up in the same neighborhoods find psychopathogy rates similar and
low in both groups.
Another way to think about this issue is to imagine yourself a terrorist,
living an underground existence cut off from all but the few who share
your goals. Your life depends on the others in your group. Would you
want someone in your group suffering from some kind of
psychopathology? Someone who cannot be depended on, someone
out of touch with reality? Of course there are occasional lone bombers
or lone gunmen who kill for political causes, and such individuals may
indeed suffer from some form of psychopathology. But terrorists in
groups, especially groups that can organize attacks that are successful,
are likely to be within the normal range of personality.
Indeed terrorism would be a trivial problem if only those with some kind
of psychopathology could be terrorists. Rather we have to face the fact
that normal people can be terrorists, that we are ourselves capable of
terrorist acts under some circumstances. This fact is already implied in
recognizing that military and police forces are eminently capable of
killing non-combatants in terrorism from above. Few suggest that the
broad range of military and police involved in such killing must all be
abnormal. Since 9/11, there have already been suggestions that the
U.S. security forces may need to use torture to get information from
suspected terrorists. This is the edge of a slippery slope that can lead
to killing non-combatants.
3. Terrorism as Normal Psychology
No one wakes up one morning and decides that today is the day to
become a terrorist. The trajectory by which normal people become
capable of doing terrible things is usually gradual, perhaps
imperceptible to the individual. This is among other things a moral
trajectory, such as Horowitz has described in "The Deadly Ethnic Riot."
In too-simple terms, terrorists kill for the same reasons that groups
have killed other groups for centuries. They kill for cause and
comrades, that is, with a combination of ideology and intense smallgroup dynamics.
The cause that is worth killing for and even dying for is personal, a view
of the world that makes sense of life and death and links the individual
to some form of immortality. Every normal person believes in
something more important than life. We have to, because, unlike other
animals, we know that we are going to die. We need something that
makes sense of our life and our death, something that makes our death
different from the death of a squirrel lying by the side of the road that
we drive to work. The closer and more immediate death is, the more we
need the group values that give meaning to life and death. These
values include the values of family, religion, ethnicity, and nationalitythe values of our culture. Dozens of experiments have shown that
thinking about our own death leads us to embrace more strongly the
values of our culture ("terror management theory").
Click here for a
paper on ethnic
conflict by Donald
Horowitz, preparted
for the World Bank.
There is no special association between religion and violence. Many of
the terrorist groups since WWII have been radical-socialist groups with
no religious roots: the Red Brigade in Italy, the Baader-Meinhof Gang
and the Red Army Faction in Germany, the Shining Path in Peru.
Animal rights and saving the environment can be causes that justify
terrorism. For much of the twentieth century, atheistic communism was
such a cause.
The group values represented in the cause are focused to a personal
intensity in the small group of like-minded people who perpetrate
terrorist violence. Most individuals belong to many groups--family, coworkers, neighborhood, religion, country--and each of these groups has
some influence on the beliefs and behavior of the individual. These
groups tend to have different values and the competition of values
reduces the power of any one group over its members. But members of
an underground terrorist group have put this group first in their lives,
dropping or reducing every other connection. The power of this one
group is now enormous, and extends to every kind of personal and
moral judgment. This is the power that can make violence against the
enemy not just acceptable but necessary.
Every army aims to do what the terrorist group does: to link a larger
group cause with the small group dynamics that can deliver individuals
to sacrifice. Every army cuts trainees off from their previous lives so
that the combat unit can become their family, their fellow-soldiers
become their brothers, and their fear of letting down their comrades
greater than their fear of dying. "Perfect love casts out fear."
The power of an isolating group over its members is not limited to
justifying violence. Many non-violent groups also gain power by
separating individuals from groups that might offer competing values.
Groups using this tactic include religious cults, drug treatment centers,
and residential schools and colleges.
In brief, the psychology behind terrorist violence is normal psychology,
abnormal only in the intensity of the group dynamics that link cause
with comrades.
4. Terrorist Strategy
Psychologists recognize two kinds of aggression, emotional and
instrumental. Emotional aggression is associated with anger and does
not calculate long-term consequences. The reward of emotional
aggression is hurting someone who has hurt you. Instrumental
aggression is more calculating -- the use of aggression as a means to
other ends. Terrorist aggression may involve emotional aggression,
especially for those who do the killing, but those who plan terrorist acts
are usually thinking about what they want to accomplish. They aim to
inflict long-term costs on their enemy and to gain long-term advantage
for themselves.
Terrorism inflicts immediate damage in destroying lives and material,
but terrorists hope that the long-term costs will be much greater. They
want to create fear and uncertainty far beyond the victims and those
close to them. They want the enemy to spend time and money on
security. In effect the terrorists aim to lay an enormous tax on every
aspect of the enemy's society, a tax that transfers resources from
productive purposes to anti-productive security measures. The costs of
increased security are likely to be particularly high for a country like the
U.S., where an open society is the foundation of economic success and
a high-tech military.
Terrorists particularly hope to elicit a violent response that will assist
them in mobilizing their own people. A terrorist group is the apex of a
pyramid of supporters and sympathizers. The base of the pyramid is
composed of all those who sympathize with the terrorist cause even
though they may disagree with the violent means that the terrorist use.
In Northern Ireland, for instance, the base of the pyramid is all who
agree with "Brits Out". In the Islamic world, the base of the pyramid is
all those who agree that the U.S. has been hurting and humiliating
Muslims for fifty years. The pyramid is essential to the terrorists for
cover and for recruits. The terrorists hope that a clumsy and overgeneralized strike against them will hit some of their own side who are
not yet radicalized and mobilized, will enlarge their base of sympathy,
will turn the sympathetic but unmobilized to action and sacrifice, and
will strengthen their own status at the apex of this pyramid.
They have reason to be hopeful. In 1986, for instance, the U.S.
attempted to reply to Libyan-supported terrorism by bombing Libya's
leader, Khaddafi. The bombs missed Khaddafi's residence but hit a
nearby apartment building and killed numbers of women and children.
This mistake was downplayed in the U.S. but a public relations success
for anti-U.S. groups across North Africa. In 1998, the U.S. attempted to
reply to attacks on U.S. embassies by sending cruise missiles against
terrorist camps in Afghanistan and against a supposed bomb factory in
Khartoum. It appears now that the "bomb factory" was in fact producing
only medical supplies.
A violent response to terrorism that is not well aimed is a success for
the terrorists. The Taliban did their best to play up the bombs that killed
civilians in Afghanistan.
Terrorists also hope for a reaction of stereotyping and prejudice in
which the terrorists are seen as typical members of the cause they say
they are fighting for. Usually the terrorists are only a tiny splinter of the
group they aim to lead. Their most dangerous opposition is often from
their own side, from moderates who see alternatives other than
violence. If the response to terrorist attack is to lump together all who
sympathize with the cause the terrorists claim to serve, to see a whole
ethnic or religious group as dangerous and violent, then the moderates
are undermined and the terrorists win.
A reaction of stereotyping and prejudice toward Arabs and Muslims
living in the U.S. will turn them from sources of help against terrorism to
sources of further terrorism. Rudeness, suspicion and hostility directed
toward Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. is good news for the terrorists.
"Profiling" or other infringement of civil rights of Arabs and Muslims by
U.S. agencies of state security can help encourage a sense of
victimization. Some of the thousand of so Arabs and Muslims jailed
since 9/11 on suspicion of terrorist activities are likely to feel aggrieved,
when they are finally released.
In U.S foreign policy, a reaction of threat and hostility toward Arabs and
Muslims might be even more dangerous. "Join our war against
terrorism or else" runs the risk of undermining Western-leaning
governments of states where fundamentalist Muslim forces are
contesting government cooperation with the West: Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Jordan, Pakistan. If the reaction to terrorism is seen as a crusade
against Muslims, the terrorists will be positioned to lead a jihad that
begins at home. Easy talk about moving U.S. forces from Afghanistan
to Iraq can only reinforce Muslim fears that there is a crusade
embarked.
5. From Criminal Justice to War
Since the first bombing attack on the World Trade Center, the U.S.
response to terrorism has shifted from criminal justice -- finding, trying
and punishing perpetrators --to waging war. This shift has
psychological consequences.
Framing terrorism and response to terrorism implies a movement from
individual blame to group blame. This is just what the terrorists want.
They want to be seen as representing all who feel that the U.S. has
since WWII dominated, humiliated, and helped to kill Muslims. They
want responsibility for their actions projected to all who sympathize with
their cause. It should be our business not to accept the terrorists as
leaders of a billion Muslims. Rather we should inquire into the policies
of the U.S. that could create so much anti-American feeling around the
world.
The shift to a rhetoric of war also signals the possibility of more
extreme and expensive measures against terrorism. A more pro-active
policy against terrorism is being called for. There are some unfortunate
models of what this kind of policy might look like. Our pro-active policy
against Viet Cong terrorism included the Phoenix Program, which sent
snipers and Special Forces teams to assassinate people suspected of
Viet Cong activity. This program was unfortunate not only in dispensing
with the process of law but in being ultimately unsuccessful.
Our most recent pro-active war is the war on drugs. We pay or threaten
foreign countries to drop poison on their own farms where farmers are
growing crops Americans want to buy. We put money and training into
the military and security forces of these countries. We support
undercover agents to penetrate drug rings and develop intelligence
against them. See the film "Traffic" for a recent review of what this war
means on the ground -- and for a progress report on its success.
The domestic costs of increased security are the costs of a more
centralized state that can become the enemy of its own people. In the
U.S., the government has already assumed new powers without
consulting Congress. Polls taken in years preceding the terrorist attack
on 11 September indicate that about half of adult Americans saw the
federal government as a threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary
Americans. No doubt fewer would say so in the aftermath of the recent
attacks, a shift consistent with the adage that "war is the health of the
state." But if more security could ensure the safety of the nation, the
Soviet Union would still be with us.
6. Conclusion
The response to terrorism can be more dangerous than the terrorists.
Relaxing into the warmth of anger and war against terrorism will not
honor those who died in the attacks of 9/11. We have to think.