The Psychological Processes of Terrorism

Psychology as a discipline is comprised of an eclectic body of work ranging from psychoanalytic psychology to cognitive psychology, from social psychology to psychometrics (Hergenhahn & Henley, 2014). To evaluate how psychology contributes to our knowledge on terrorism and political violence, we have to consider both research that speaks to the issue of terrorism alongside bespoke psychological research on terrorism— in other words, the psychology of terrorism and a psychology of terrorism. In the case of the former, given that terrorism is composed of a range of observable behavior impacted by interpersonal and intra/ intergroup factors, then one could say that all psychological research is relevant for how we think about terrorism and political violence; however, not all research on terrorism is psychological.