Genesis Of Suicide Terrorism Summary
Genesis of Suicide terrorism
Scott Atran
To cite this version:
Scott Atran. Genesis of Suicide terrorism. Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2003, 299, pp.1534-1539. <ijn 00509568>
HAL Id: ijn 00509568 http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn 00509568
Submitted on 13 Aug 2010
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers.
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´emanant des ´etablissements …show more content…
Social psychologists have investigated the
“fundamental attribution error,” a tendency for people to explain behavior in terms of individual personality traits, even when significant situational factors in the larger society are at work.
U.S. government and media characterizations of Middle East suicide bombers as craven homicidal lunatics may suffer from a fundamental attribution error: No instances of religious or political suicide terrorism stem from lone actions of cowering or unstable bombers.
Psychologist Stanley Milgram found that ordinary Americans also readily obey destructive orders under the right circumstances (18).
When told by a “teacher” to administer potentially life-threatening electric shocks to “learners” who fail to memorize word pairs, most comply. Even when subjects stressfully protest as victims plead and scream, use of extreme violence continues—not because of murderous tendencies but from a sense of obligation in situations of authority, no matter how trite. A legitimate hypothesis is that apparently extreme behaviors may be elicited and rendered commonplace by particular historical, political, social, and ideological …show more content…
All 31 had received secular education. . . . Like many of their counterparts in militant Islamic organizations in the region, they held normal, respectable jobs. . . . As a group, most of the detainees regarded religion as their most important personal value. . . secrecy over the true knowledge of jihad, helped create a sense of sharing and empowerment vis-a`-vis others.” (35).
Such sentiments characterize institutional manipulation of emotionally driven commitments that may have emerged under natural selection’s influence to refine or override short-term rational calculations that would otherwise preclude achieving goals against long odds. Most typically, such emotionally driven commitments serve as survival mechanisms to inspire action in otherwise paralyzing circumstances, as when a weaker person convincingly menaces a stronger person into thinking twice before attempting to take advantage. In religiously inspired suicide terrorism, however, these emotions are purposely manipulated by organizational leaders, recruiters, and trainers to benefit the organization rather than the individual
Scott Atran
To cite this version:
Scott Atran. Genesis of Suicide terrorism. Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2003, 299, pp.1534-1539. <ijn 00509568>
HAL Id: ijn 00509568 http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn 00509568
Submitted on 13 Aug 2010
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers.
L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destin´ee au d´epˆot et `a la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publi´es ou non,
´emanant des ´etablissements …show more content…
Social psychologists have investigated the
“fundamental attribution error,” a tendency for people to explain behavior in terms of individual personality traits, even when significant situational factors in the larger society are at work.
U.S. government and media characterizations of Middle East suicide bombers as craven homicidal lunatics may suffer from a fundamental attribution error: No instances of religious or political suicide terrorism stem from lone actions of cowering or unstable bombers.
Psychologist Stanley Milgram found that ordinary Americans also readily obey destructive orders under the right circumstances (18).
When told by a “teacher” to administer potentially life-threatening electric shocks to “learners” who fail to memorize word pairs, most comply. Even when subjects stressfully protest as victims plead and scream, use of extreme violence continues—not because of murderous tendencies but from a sense of obligation in situations of authority, no matter how trite. A legitimate hypothesis is that apparently extreme behaviors may be elicited and rendered commonplace by particular historical, political, social, and ideological …show more content…
All 31 had received secular education. . . . Like many of their counterparts in militant Islamic organizations in the region, they held normal, respectable jobs. . . . As a group, most of the detainees regarded religion as their most important personal value. . . secrecy over the true knowledge of jihad, helped create a sense of sharing and empowerment vis-a`-vis others.” (35).
Such sentiments characterize institutional manipulation of emotionally driven commitments that may have emerged under natural selection’s influence to refine or override short-term rational calculations that would otherwise preclude achieving goals against long odds. Most typically, such emotionally driven commitments serve as survival mechanisms to inspire action in otherwise paralyzing circumstances, as when a weaker person convincingly menaces a stronger person into thinking twice before attempting to take advantage. In religiously inspired suicide terrorism, however, these emotions are purposely manipulated by organizational leaders, recruiters, and trainers to benefit the organization rather than the individual