What science can reveal about the psychological profiles of terrorists
May 29, 2017 by Coral Dando, The Conversation
What went though the mind of the suicide bomber Salman Abedi just before he blew himself up in Manchester this week, killing 22 people? We often dismiss terrorists as non-humans, monsters, at first. But when we learn that they were seemingly normal individuals with families and jobs, it's hard not to wonder about how their minds really work.
The search for a terrorist "personality" or "mindset" dominated psychological research in the 1970s and 1980s and remains a significant area for research today. A new study published in Nature Human Behaviour, which assessed the cognitive and psychological profiles of 66 Colombian paramilitaries imprisoned for committing terrorist acts, now argues that poor moral reasoning is what defines terrorists.
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-science-reveal-psychological-profiles-terrorists.html#jCp
