Psychological and Behavioral Characteristics of Individual Terrorists

The Psychological and Behavioral Factors of Individual Terrorists
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The Psychological and Behavioral Factors of Individual Terrorists
Psychologists have demonstrated an enduring interest in describing and understanding the psychology of individual terrorists. Understanding the motives, causes, and determinants of terrorism from psychological and behavioral viewpoints is essential to countering violent extremism and radicalization threats to global security. Recent studies show that there are many paths to violent extremism and radicalization, influenced by various factors grouped into psychological, behavioral, ideological, sociological, and religious (Arciszewski et al., 2019). These factors are linked to perceived injustice and humiliation and are the driving forces of violent behavior. This research analyzes the psychological and behavioral characteristics of individual terrorists, explaining how these factors motivate terrorism among vulnerable populations.
Psychological Factors
Psychological factors are personality characteristics associated with one’s cognitive functioning. Individual terrorists engage in terrorism based on their psychological state of mind. One of the psychological factors that drive them towards extremism and radicalization is emotions. Studies show that people more open to terrorist recruitment and radicalization tend to feel angry, alienated, or disenfranchised (Trip et al., 2019). Some terrorists demonstrate hate for other people. Hate energizes violent action. It facilitates mechanisms of moral disengagements, such as dehumanization, and erodes psychological and social barriers to engaging in violence that extremists believe is justified.
Several terrorist acts have been influenced by hate. For instance, when Augustine Vaillant, a French anarchist, bombed the French Chamber of Deputies in 1893, he explained that his motivation for the attack was hate for the middle class. During that time, social inequalities were rampant in France, with the middle and governing class exploiting vulnerable groups. Vaillant wanted to break the sense of economic and social success with violence. One of the notorious terrorists and Al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, also disliked America for its foreign policy, which he believed oppressed, killed, and harmed Muslims in the Middle East and Somalia. This motivated him to mastermind a series of attacks on America and its embassies in 1998 and 2001.
Another psychological factor is the cognitive opening: - the moment when a catalyst event such as discrimination, political repression, and socioeconomic crisis makes an individual receptive to new ways of thinking, including radicalized ideology (Trip et al., 2019). Exposure to these catalyst events makes individuals accept violence as the best way of solving their problems. For example, people subjected to unfairness and injustices may start thinking that they do not have similar advantages as other groups. This belief makes them demand equality, which marks the beginning of cognitive openness to radicalization. Th...