Terrorist Groups Show Strong Affiliations with Insiders, Hostility to Outsiders

In recent years, social scientists who want to understand the causes of terrorism have explored the role of group dynamics. That is, rather than exploring the psychology and circumstances of each individual group member, they study how individuals function in relation to each other, and the role of group identity in motivating members to commit terrorist violence.

A recent study by Allison G. Smith published in Political Psychology (vol. 29, no. 1) explores this dynamic by comparing the documents issued by terrorist groups to those issued by non-violent groups with the same belief system. In "The Implicit Motives of Terrorist Groups: How Needs for Affiliation and Power Translate in to Death and Destruction," she compared them by using 'content analysis,' a systematic form of reading in which words and phrases are coded so that they can be quantified, and so that documents can be compared in a systematic way. read more ...