Introduction
Many world leaders acknowledge that terrorism is a threat to respective national security. Perhaps that is the reason why countering it remains one of the biggest challenge. First, it has not been an easy task to establish the causes, motivation and determinants of people masterminding acts of terrorism.
In fact, psychology experts have reviewed the available psychological theories on violence and aggression in order to unravel the motives behind terrorism, but they are yet to find a single theory that gives explanations on the same. Undeniably, terrorism is a discrete form of violence that is not only intentional and premeditated, but also instrumental.
Many people associate and rationalize terrorism to ideological objectives such as politics and religion, and that it engrosses a myriad of cohorts and actors. Consequently, these issues all append intricacy to the edifice of terrorism as one of the forms of aggression and brazen out the manifestation of a coalescing explanatory theory (Atran, 2003, pp. 1534-1535).
Main body
During the early times, researchers applied the psychoanalytic theory to establish whether a “terrorist personality” exists. Their research findings dwelled more on narcissism and antagonism towards parents as the main causes of terrorism. Nevertheless, the most recent explanations on terrorist personalities have moved away from this approach.
This is largely because terrorist profiling centers on racial and ethnic pigeonholes, instead of meticulous sociological and psychological silhouettes rife to fundamentalist or nationalistic terrorists. The question that remains unanswered is why do some people choose to become terrorists? Additionally, it is quite unclear on whether terrorists share some psychological traits.
Well, the truth of the matter is that there is no thing like “terrorist personality”. Either additionally, no researcher has come out to claim the existence of a precise profile, psychologically or otherwise, that associates personality with terrorism (Thio, Calhoun & Conyers, 2008, pp. 4-27)
In fact, many researchers agree that personality traits single-handedly cannot predict personal behaviors. This is perhaps the greatest obstacle for studying terrorist personality traits, as they cannot yield any productive exploration or inquest. Satisfactorily, all terrorists assume normal life and it is not easy to pick them form the crowd through observation. In fact, this is the main reason why there is nothing like a terrorist personality.
Nevertheless, social psychologists and sociologists have gone deep into their research to identify how terrorists operate. Amazingly, they have discovered that terrorist groups have techniques of initiating their attacks for example, cult-like habituation, which alter ordinary individuals into ruthless executioners. Thus, trying to identify terrorists from the crowd will be an exercise in futility due to hidden personality traits. The only way of countering terrorism is through invading places where conditioning takes place and trying to identity the motives behind it (Randy, 2004, pp. 22-24).
So far, research has indicated that there are five phases of conditioning. To start with, terrorists use depluralization to isolate people from their loved ones. Secondly, they apply self-deindividuation and demonization to alter them character traits. Other conditioning techniques used by terrorists include other-deindividuation and dehumanization.
All of these five conditioning phases comprises of potent cluster dynamics whose main aim is to buttress the efficacy of conditioning. Clearly, we now understand the operations of terrorist groups who apply social psychology conditioning to carry out their activities. Criminal researchers agree that most terrorists were never born psychopaths, and that most terrorists are not observably and always mentally ill. This confirms the fact that there is nothing like a terrorist personality.
Otherwise, if people were able to identify such personality patterns, then counterterrorism would be an easy task. In fact, we could be living in a terrorism-free world since law enforcement agencies would be capable of preemptively identifying terrorist personalities whenever they encounter them. Nevertheless, apart from personal traits, most terrorist share some commonalities. For example, most of them come from thwarted families where the father is either dead or not fully in-charge.
Due to the “broken home status”, much chidren resort to terrorist activities to gain recognition. Charismatic leaders who perpetrate extremism attack find it easy to recruits persons ailing from dysfunctional families through seductive and disposed messages. They become like their biological fathers hence gratifying their emotional affiliation needs (Silke, 2003, pp. 29-53).
The conditioning process trains terrorists on how to kill and come out feeling nothing. Although there is nothing like a terrorist personality, most terrorists share a psychological stipulation – antisocial personality disorders – something that confirms the remorselessness of terrorists.
They create a notion in their minds that other people are wrong, and that they are always right. This dissenting views distance themselves form other people thus, making it easier to assassinate people. Some terrorists are quite intelligent, rich, exhibit moral ethicalness and have refined moral development. On the contrary, most terrorists have a closed-minded belief but not a terrorist personality.
Research shows that even though terrorists habitually embrace extremist ideologies, they are never psychotic, psychopathic or even crazy as they are aware of what they are doing or going to do. In fact, psychopathic people kill others just because they do regard them as so. On the contrary, terrorists regard people but can commit murder for the sake of protecting their nationalistic, religious or political reasons.
Conclusion
In conclusion, based on psychological findings and review of psychological theories, there is nothing like a terrorist personality. Both terrorists and non-terrorists have similarities in personality. In most cases, they portray the moral characteristic traits just like other people. It is also important to note that solitary or archetypal mentality does not exist – at least an explicit pathology – of terrorists (Atran, 2003, pp. 1534-1539).
Reference List
Atran, S. (2003). Genesis of suicide terrorism. Science, 299, 1534-1539.
Randy, B. (2004). Psychology of Terrorism. Web.
Silke, A. (2003). Terrorists, victims and society: Psychological perspectives on terrorism and its consequences. New York: Wiley and Sons.
Thio, A., Calhoun, T. & Conyers, A. (2008). Readings in Deviant Behavior. (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson. Education, Inc.