Terrorist Leaders : The Psychological Approach

Fear a powerful emotion, once it is born it is merely impossible for it to perish. Fear corrupts, tortures, and haunts all. Humans have a horror encrypted into their core. With the power of holding one's fear forms the feeling of paranoia leading to the most holiest power of all, control. Throughout history paranoia has been used to control mass populations and indoctrinate their mind. A common example of this, is the reign of Joseph Stalin; dictator of the Soviet Union who used the paranoia of death and being sent to concentration camp to control his citizens and sustain power. George Orwell, a man who recognized this demoralizing form of dictatorship and was terrified, of what might come if no one rebelled against this. Furthermore he

In our world fear roams everywhere. In our streets, businesses, schools, and homes. Fear has caused wars, and treaties. Fear can cause people to start something amazing or horrific. People can change because of fear of a thing.

    Fear is intimidating. Fear can be used to persuade you, which is exactly what the Nazi Party and the Salem Witch trials did. Fear is controlling and will overcome your life unless you put a stop to it. “The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but it is

We are all individuals. As individuals, we do not all live the same lives and share the same interests. It is greatly because of this, there are many psychological and behavioral factors that can impact the radicalization of an individual. Not everyone is going to be as receptive to certain things as other people may be. We must understand what the factors are that can increase the likelihood of someone turning to a life of terror in order to have a more significant chance at countering them. It is important to know why someone joins an organization such as al Qaeda or a white supremacist group in order to know which

First off, feared leaders have a tendency to cause wars. An example of a feared leader was Hitler and everyone can probably acede upon that. Hitler being

Regarding the behavioral explaination, Post (1998) “stated that if terrorism was strategic and rational, such groups should be more likely to disband after they achieve victories.” (…)  Instead, they want to remain in the group for them the sense of belonging to a group is very important (…) it helps them to fulfil their need to belong as well as their need to engage in risky endeavours.” (Post (1998) in Moss, 2016)

Terrorist organizations from the past did not have much exposure compare to terrorist organizations now who have diverse media outlets. The different types of media coverage's include the internet , social media, news, and YouTube videos. Terrorist have an advantage with these media outlets, they can recruit members to join the fight against those who are against Islam. These individual can receive training from these terrorist organization. Training can include how to make a bomb, fight tactics, or planning terrorist attack. They play to and for an audience, and solicit audience participation (Hoffman 2006, 173). These terrorist organization want as much media exposure as to bring terror to those who oppose them. By these terrorist attack

There is a correlation between fear and the amount of power people seek. Fear is instilled in us at an early age and infects our perceptions throughout our lives. Society has taught us to be afraid of crime, losing our jobs, immigrants, failure, and many other things . All these apprehensions are seized on and blown up by the media, the government, corporations and the Church, whipping us into a frenzy of fear. Robert Evans Wilson a writer for Psychology Today talks about the connection between fear and power and how people with power use that to their advantage. He says that, “An individual’s motivation for power is to acquire control over his environment. A certain amount of controlling behavior is a healthy natural survival instinct, but

Terrorism is a difficult issue to understand and grasp for many people. What is even more difficult to understand is what drives an individual to become radicalized to the point of joining a terrorist organization and committing terrorist acts. While there is not specific criteria or a “cookie cutter” approach to understanding what motivates and radicalizes an individual to participate in such atrocities, there are however, several psychological and behavioral factors that have been common among these individuals. The following paper will outline some of the psychological and behavioral factors that attribute to an individual’s radicalization and eventual willingness and even perhaps

Source: CNN
Synopsis: According to the online article, The psychology and neuroscience of terrorism, director of forensic psychiatry at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences stated that, “Fear is the primary psychological weapon underlying acts of terrorism. It is this fear, or the anticipation of future acts of terror, that can have serious effects on our behavior and minds,” such as the way we think, change the production level of hormones with our body, as well as alter the decisions we make. As a result, chronic stress begins to affect our ability to reason, problem solve, as well as how to respond to a fight-or-flight moment; therefore, human beings become desensitized

There are many things can be seen in the psychology of terrorism. Unfortunately there is not good science on psychological factors of terrorism; there are theories and educated opinions (DeAngelis, 2009). The one overarching factor is the fear with which terrorism is based. By definition, terrorism is acts that cause terror by one group on to another, usually for political goals (“Terrorism”, n.d.). Why people suffer from these fears is related to their psychological behavior. Terrorist activity can be described as “fostering a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, in demonstrating the incompetence of the authorities, destroying a sense of security and safety, and in provoking inappropriate reactions from individuals and authorities.” (Alexander & Klein, 2005). Terrorists themselves are affected by psychological behavior; their own and that of others around them. They may even be affected by the behavior of victims and potential victims. Osama Bin Laden has even been known to admit that in the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, his

Additionally, to understand terrorism, we must understand the motivations. In the 21st century, it is fair to say that many organisations are religiously and politically motivated. Which are primary observations from the film as well, however what is also manifested in the storyline is the idea of personal vendettas or struggles, honour and the need for recognition. What I have learnt this semester is that along with the interpretations of Islam, there are many diverse people, who are then motivated differently. In week 3 for example one of the readings discussed child radicalisation, and most definitely these children are

One of the significant learning points from the course material can be found in Section II, Brief 12 Think Like a Terrorist which points out “Terrorists are ordinary people. The first step in understanding the mind of the terrorist is to understand that terrorists are ordinary people with ordinary needs and ordinary limitations. They make decisions about their missions just as we make decisions about the tasks we carry out each day in our work and home environments (p.40).” The average person might think of a terrorist as an insane monster who has no morals or the ability to feel. This concept is farthest from the truth, terrorists just feel strongly about their cause and in many cases are willing to die for a chance to further that cause. With religious terrorists they sacrifice themselves in the hope of being transported to a special heaven reserved for those who die for the

This is a peer-reviewed article that will be one of the primary foundation source for the research paper. As indicated in the week four outline, it is incredibly important to understand that in order to effectively combat extreme radicalization and terrorism in general, you need to understand what creates a terrorist. After all, not all terrorists are just born that way. This article supports that point effectively. It is important to realize that profiling is a terroist is near impossible because according to Leistedt (2013), “research has not found a ‘pattern’ of psychologically among terrorists.” (p. 22)

In both examples mentioned above, there are exact motivating factors. In both cases the motivating factors are ideology and religion. But there are also many other factors which make people become terrorists and take guns in their hands or blow themselves