PSY-Psychology of Terrorism class

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Counter-Terrorism: Disengagement, Prevention and Deterrence

PSY 344: PSYCHOLOGY OF TERRORISM

What Can Be Done?

• What can psychology,

and more generally, as a society do to counter the psychological weapons of the terrorists?

What Can Be Done?

1. Group psychology: inhibit joiners in the first place. Give people a space/ place to voice frustrations.

2. Produce distention within the group. 3. Facilitate exit from the group 4. Discredit group: marginalize people out of it

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Media Messages

The media provides the international, dramatic stage for terrorism. • It becomes a sensational media event. • Thus, it facilitates a triangle between the terrorists, the media and us.The terrorist’s threat is broadcast into our living room. • Terrifying fantasies and “what if” scenarios add to their power.

Media Messages

By participating in the media frenzy, we become part of the triangle. • We become a tool used by the terrorists to promote themselves. • The terrorized as the terrorist: The terrorized paradoxically functions as a terrorist when he/she joins the triangle, propagating fear.

Prevention

• What can be done politically to enhance psychological resistance? – Modeling

– Rhetorical leadership

– Pursue most effective policies instead of the easiest or those enjoying greatest bipartisan support (e.g., profiling, surveillance, etc.)

– Play offense and defense at the same time

– Total involvement of society, reorient sub-structures of society to resist the fear of terrorism

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The overwhelming majority of evidence indicates that responding to violence with violence only provokes further violence (Wagner & Long, 2004, p. 215)

How Psychology Can Help Psychological Understandings

• Psychology of violence

• Understanding Motivation

– Frustration, Solidarity

– Psychopathology often not a factor

• Understanding other Cultures

– Ideology, politics, religion

– Opportunity, education, socioeconomic status (SES)

• Understanding Terrorists

– Individuals

– Cells

How Psychology Can Help Psychological Understandings

• Factors that generate groups striking out:

– Low economic progress

– Controlling government

– No equal opportunity

– Oppression, humiliation

• There are NO mass movements of hatred in prosperity.” -Dr. Post

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Imagine….

• “You are brought up from childhood in a culture where there is total poverty, a medieval set of surroundings with not even a decent toilet, repression of your racial and religious group, and all the adults around you filled with hatred of those whom they are convinced are the oppressors, riots, lack of proper schooling, nothing to do, no hope and observing your older brothers brutalized, beaten, seriously injured, and incarcerated by the police or occupying soldiers. Immersed in that milieu will you not begin viewing the world as consisting of “we” and “they” in which “they” are no longer thought of as human but as monsters who should be destroyed? . . Are you then not ready for a ‘holy war’ even if it costs your life?”

• -Richard Chessick, Archaic Sadism

How Psychology Can Help

Prevent Terrorism

• Analysis of Trends – Means (bombs, planes, firearms) – Targets (citizens, politicians, symbolic landmarks) – Times (holidays, parades, dates of historical significance or symbolic

events)

• How to Infiltrate – How outsiders can best infiltrate a Cell – How to gain trust of Cell members – Vulnerabilities of Terrorists

• Interviewing Captured Terrorists – Understanding reasons behind the attack; why it failed; why they

backed out – How to interview to get valuable information on other plans, cells, etc.

Future Directions

• Suicide Terrorism Research

– Need to share the data with others

– Need to understand the world-wide picture

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Future Directions

It’s not a phenomenon of just individual psychology, it’s an organizational and group phenomenon.” • What we need to understand is not why bombers do it but how they are recruited and trained. • Bottom Line motivation: A meaningful death is better than a pointless life. • “His life is not cheap because he is fearless and brave. He offers the only thing he has.” -Muslim Engineering student