by Scott Atran
http://www.interdisciplines.org/terrorism/papers/1
Ian Pitchford
Jul 4, 2003 21:45 UT
In his target article Scott Atran argues that the fundamental attribution error is one of the barriers to our understanding of suicide terrorism:
'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...'
'Social psychologists have long documented what they call “the fundamental attribution error". This interpretation bias seems to be especially prevalent in “individualistic” cultures, such as those of the United States and Western Europe.'
There is evidence suggesting the covariation of three attitudinal clusters in a person, the clusters being: authoritarian submission - submission to the *perceived* legitimate authorities in the society; authoritarian aggression - the willingness to to assist those authorities in the persecution of undesirables without inducement, and conventionalism - a high degree of adherence to the social conventions endorsed by those authorities. This is Altemeyer's (1996) right wing authoritarian (RWA) personality.
Altemeyer has found that such authoritarians tend to be fundamentalist, to prefer a literal interpretation of religious texts, to have a particular indifference to government injustices and to lying by the elite, to have little interest in human rights, and to have little guilt owing to their belief in God's forgiveness of their transgressions.
Their cognitive traits include an impaired ability to make correct inferences, agreement with contradictory ideas and, interestingly, a special vulnerability to the fundamental attribution error. Altemeyer concludes:
'Why do authoritarians so often ignore situational factors when a communicator tells them what they want to hear? I think it basically goes back authoritarian submission and those "tight circles" we considered earlier. High RWAs generally have not determined for themselves what is true and false, to the extent that others have. Instead they are more likely to absorb the teachings of the authorities in their lives. They subsequently maintain their beliefs against challenges by limiting their experiences, and surrounding themselves with sources of information that will tell them they are right - including like-minded people. Compared with others, Highs rely a lot on consensual validation to maintain their views. They develop a noticeable "us-them" outlook on information sources that springs automatically from their general ethnocentrism. Who are "us"? They are people who believe what we, "the good people" believe. So people who say what authoritarians want to hear are welcomed, rather uncritically, because they bring a treasured gift to Highs: confirmation. But this easy access to the in-group - which I think betrays how uncertain High RWAs sometimes really are of their beliefs - makes them vulnerable to deceivers who know what song to sing' (Altemeyer, 1996, pp. 111-112).
I'll leave it to participants to decide whether this description fits any of the key protagonists in terrorist groups or their adversaries. Clearly, situational factors do generally trump personality, but personality does matter. It would be difficult to make sense of Soviet history, for example, without an appreciation of Stalin's paranoia and vindictiveness.
Reference
Altemeyer, R. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gene Hammel
Jul 5, 2003 0:43 UT
These are excellent points. Of course there are many RWAs who do not become suicide bombers. Many just beat their wives. It is the presence of RWAs in particular social/political/economic/cultural contexts that allows them to emerge as suicide bombers, and it may well be that these contexts actually raise the number of RWAs who might emerge. That, it seems to me, is a really deep question. Is the proportion of RWAs about the same across cultural, social, economic contexts, or do some contexts produce more than others? Intuition (for what it's worth) would lead me to guess that the worse socioeconomic conditions were and the higher the degree of anomie, the higher would be the proportion of RWAs in a society and the more likely that that pool would engage in the most violent acts.
Scott Atran
Jul 5, 2003 10:44 UT
The Federal Government's interagency report (used by the CIA, DIA, State Dept. and others) to assess personality factors among terrorists find that there is no evidence of any particular personality type, much less RWAs [1]. Moreover, Raphael Ezekiel shows that RWAs, at least among hate groups in the USA, are associated with family problem histories (e.g., fatherless, psyhical or psychological abuse, etc.)[2] - aspects that are uncorrelated with suicide terrorists (as far as the available evidence goes). Although both personal and contextual factors affect action, studies of individual behavior in group contexts show situation to be a much better predictor than personality.[3] In any event, we can't do much about personality traits, whether biologically influenced or not. We presumably can think of ways to make terrorist groups less attractive and to undermine their effectiveness with recruit.
1. . “The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism” (Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, September 1999, p. 40); released 14 December 2001 at www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Sociology-Psychology%20of%20Terrorism.htm. DIA interrogators of Guantanamo detainees concur with these findings (at least the Chief Warrant Officers I've talked to).
2.R. Ezekiel, The Racist Mind (Viking, New York, 1995).
3. L. Ross, R. Nisbett. The Person and the Situation (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1991).
Ian Pitchford
Jul 5, 2003 15:07 UT
I think Scott's assessment of the literature on the "terrorist personality" is absolutely correct. There is no terrorist personality type. As Horgan (2003) puts it "the rigor of research pointing to either explicit or implicit abnormality, or to the existence of a 'terrorist personality', is such that its propositions are built on unsteady empirical, theoretical and conceptual foundations." I also think that the emphasis on situational factors is the right approach overall, as I've tried to indicate by advocacy of a theoretical context in which such factors cannot be omitted.
On the other hand, however, the right wing authoritarian personality type is emprically quite well established, and these individuals do seem particularly prone to the fundamental attribution error. If, therefore, any key individuals do have this personality type this should make them particularly difficult to deal with.
Thi is a distinct question from that concerning whether or not terrorists, or suicide terrorists, in general tend towards a particular personality type. The following is from the report on 'The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism' to which Scott refers:
"Two related processes, Taylor points out, are prejudice and authoritarianism, with which fanaticism has a number of cognitive processes in common, such as an unwillingness to compromise, a disdain for other alternative views, the tendency to see things in black-and-white, a rigidity of belief, and a perception of the world that reflects a closed mind. Understanding the nature of fanaticism, he explains, requires recognizing the role of the cultural (religious and social) context. Fanaticism, in Taylor's view, may indeed "...be part of the cluster of attributes of the terrorist." However, Taylor emphasizes that the particular cultural context in which the terrorist is operating needs to be taken into account in understanding whether the term might be appropriate."
I think there are implications for anti- and counter-terrorism. In particular simple armed retaliation against such high RWA people could well be strongly counter-productive. I remember that the British colonial administration in Malaya had an approach to psychological operations which might be more effective in this context. They encouraged members of the communist insurgency forces to defect, and then distributed leaflets showing pictures of these people enjoying the fruits of capitalism to the "resistance forces" who were living somewhat less luxurious lifestyles in the jungle. This had a very strong effect when a number of high profile figures defected and were then shown betraying all of the values for which they had previously been fighting.
References
Horgan, J. (2003). The search for a terrorist personality. In A. Silke (Ed.), Terrorists, victims and society: Psychological perspectives on terrorism and its consequences (pp. 3-27). Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.
The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism” Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, September 1999); released 14 December 2001 at www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Sociology-Psychology%20of%20Terrorism.htm.