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Good evening to you all and welcome to the lsc. I am Sandra Djofcelovic and it is my pleasure this evening to introduce and welcome Professor Ari Kruglansky who will deliver tonight the first lecture of the Psychology of Social Science Public Lecture series in this academic session. Before I introduce Professor Kurglinski, let me just say a few words about the series. Psychology and Social Science is a program of public lectures on the relations between psychology and the social sciences hosted by the Institute of Social Psychology and generously launched by the LSE Pro Directors Discretionary Fund. The lectures aim to draw attention to the potential and the necessity of integrating psychology in the larger intellectual program of the social sciences. It brings together psychologists, philosophers and social scientists to reflect on how the disciplinary traditions of psychology have engaged with the social sciences and address topics that are central to both. The lectures also seek to emphasize the past, the present and the future of psychology in the school where from the mid 20th century onwards the project and the vision of a societal psychology took shape. Over the years we had wonderful speakers ranging from Michael Tomasello, Ed Hutchins, Axel Honuth, Steve Pinker and Michael Bilig, amongst others. It is a great pleasure to open the academic session with Professor Eric Kraglinski. Now let me say a few words about our speaker tonight. Eric Krugliski is Distinguished University professor of Psychology at University of Maryland and a co director and Principal investigator at stock, the American National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a Center of Excellence of the U.S. department of Homeland Security. Professor Kukunsky is widely known and respected for his work on the psychology of terrorism and his contribution to our understanding of lay epistemics and the motivational basis of cognition. He is recipient of the National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Award, a career award, the Senior Lifetime Achievement Award from the Von Humboldt foundation, the Donald Campbell Award for Outstanding Contributions to Social Psychology from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award for the Society of Experimental Psychology and the list continues. He has published more than 200 articles, chapters and books, including the Social Psychology of Knowledge with Dani Bartow and the Psychology of Closed Mindedness. His lecture tonight on the Psychology of Terrorism explores questions that resonate deeply to all of us who seek to sustain the presence of psychology in a social science context. We're delighted that he's contributing to the series and delivering tonight's lecture on Terrorism, A Self Love Story. Please join me in giving him a very warm welcome.
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Thank you very much, Sandra. I'm delighted to be here at this renowned Institution, this great university, and delighted to share with you some ideas and research findings from a topic that has occupied myself and my colleagues for the better part of the last decade, Psychology of terrorism. You will note in the title that I am putting together terrorism and love. And you might immediately wonder what on earth possessed me to link this, one of the most despicable manifestations of human nature, one of the lowest phenomena that humans are capable of, with one of the most sublime. And indeed, it seems bizarre to say that what terrorists are doing, they're doing out of love. Bizarre, yet in a sense, true. In a strange sense, true. Not in the love for their victims, mind you. Them they hate, just as you might have surmised. The kind of love I'm talking about is what Jean Jacques Rousseau, the Enlightenment philosopher, called self love, or in French, amour propre. What is amour propre? Amour propre is self love in the eyes of others. It is dependent on the opinion of others, of oneself. Basically, it's the need to count, to be someone, to be recognized, to matter. And in our terminology, we refer to this motivational force as the quest for personal significance. Now, though it is hugely important, the motivation for self love is not the only thing there is in addition to self love. Rousseau distinguished between love of self and you may be asking yourself, self love, love of self, what's the difference? Though they sound similar, they differ profoundly. A more proper self love is the need to count, to matter, to be somebody in accordance with the criteria of one's society, in accordance with the norms of the shared reality in which one is embedded. In counter distinction. The love of self is concerned with self preservation, comfort, security and survival. In other words, it's concerned with number one, taking care of number, and sometimes a means that serves one of those motivations, a means that serves the self love motivation may be detrimental to the love of self motivation. As a surgeon general has proclaimed, terrorism can be detrimental to your health. But this is getting ahead of my story. And the story is a tale of two opposite processes. Radicalization, the process of becoming a terrorist, and deradicalization, the process of winning oneself from terrorism, leaving terrorism behind. To hell and back, if you wish. Now, psychological research on terrorism, on modern terrorism goes back to the late 60s and the early 70s, a time during which a wave of bombing, hijackings, kidnappings has swept the globe and catapulted the topic of terrorism to the forefront of the world's awareness. Since then, time the research in terrorism received a spike with the tragic events of 911 subsequent bombing in Bali where over 200 people lost their lives. Bombing in Madrid in 2004, bombing in London in 2005, and innumerable instances of suicide bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan, and so forth. By now, the study of terrorism is a kind of cottage industry. Many institutes and centers around the world are devoting their attention to the study of terrorism. And sometimes one gets the impression that there is more conferences on terrorism than there is terrorists, which is not a bad thing because our findings are much less explosive. Now, it is fair to say, I think, that the research on terrorism thus far has discovered more about what terrorism is not than what it is, what it is not. It is not a psychopathology. The original impulse was to explain terrorism as a kind of psychopathology. What they do is so bizarre, so outside the realm of civilized behavior, that the first idea was to attribute it to the personality, to some kind of psychology that takes over. But the cumulative research suggests that it is not a psychology. No, terrorists aren't crazy, even if their behavior appears to be deviant or extreme. It's also clear that there is no personality profile that characterizes a terrorist. Terrorists come in all forms, shapes and sizes, psychologically speaking, as well as physically. Of course, if not a person, maybe it's the situation that makes terrorists. Unfortunately, here too, the research struck out. There were hypotheses that it's poverty that makes individuals terrorists, or it's political oppression that makes individual terrorists, or it's poor education that makes individual terrorists. And in all those cases, research has indicated that neither oppression nor poverty, nor poor education as such are the root causes of terrorism. They can be contributing factors, yes, but they are not necessary and sufficient conditions to produce a terrorist. There is much less agreement as to what terrorism is. Some people have suggested it's personal state, it's the emotional upheaval, the rage, the anger, the insult that produces terrorists. Other people said no, no. It's not the emotional state, it's the ideologies. Other people disagreed and said no, it's neither of those. It's the social networks whereby people of a common mind come together and they become terrorists. My own approach has been like of this sage who, when confronting two combative disputants, told them they are both right. I would like to say that all of these are right, though not exclusively right. All of these capture a part of the truth, a part of the elephant, but not the entire elephant. And what is needed at this point, I think, is a comprehensive theory that shows how all these pieces fit together. And I'd like to describe to you such theory now and provide some initial evidence for its postulates and the hypotheses that it affords. The theory departs from a very simple assumption that terrorist behavior is goal driven. So far I haven't said much. The goal driven ness of behavior isn't unique to terrorists. It isn't even uniquely human. Every cat, dog and guinea pig behaves in according to some goals that she or he has. What makes us somewhat unique is that we are social beings. What makes us particularly unique is that we are cognitively social. The realm of social cognition is important. Ants, bees, wasps are also social, but they are not cognitively social. They do not think much, last I checked, and humans do. What it means is that human goals and means have meaning. And this meaning is anchored in cultural value of society to which these individuals belong. And these meanings are applied to concrete situations. These ideological meanings that provide goals to individuals and identify means to pursue those goals are applied in concrete situations through the social process of persuasion, influence, charismatic leadership and the rest of it, group dynamics. This very simple framework of goal drivenness that is cognitively anchored, cognitively embedded, allows us to pose a variety of pointed questions about terrorism. If it's goal driven, the first question that begs for an answer is what is the goal? What motivates the terrorists? And it's a one million, nobody talks of millions anymore. One trillion dollar question. What is the goal? Researchers in the field have identified a whole list of laundry list of motivations. People talked about honor, trauma, humiliation, heaven, devotion to leader vengeance, group pressure, even feminism. And these are all true descriptions of motivations in specific cases. But I'd like to submit to you that underlying all these is a deeper goal that we call the quest for significance. And that echoes very precisely Rousseau's notion of amour, proper love of self, self love. Sorry. Now, this quest for significance is a major human motivation beyond mere survival. And it has been recognized by major motivational theorists in psychology under various labels. Theorists talked about the motivation for effectiveness, to be effective, to be competent, to have mastery, to be achieving, to have control. All of these to me echo this general underlying notions of having meaning, being somebody, being recognized, having some kind of significance. The important thing about this is that this significance is culturally and socially embedded. To be competent, you don't want to be competent just on any dimension. You want to be competent, masterful, achieving, all on dimension that the culture tells you is worth being competent on. So it's extremely culturally dependent, extremely socially embedded. It's the attainment of what the culture says is worth attaining. Now as with any motivational force, the quest for significance isn't active at all times. Sometimes we just take care of ourselves. We sleep, we eat, we rest, not at all times, we seek significance. So the question arises, under what conditions is this quest for significance awakened? Inflamed. And we identify three basic conditions for awakening. The quest for significance. One is significance of loss. The other one is a threat of loss. And yet another one is an opportunity for a tremendous gain of significance. What do I mean? Significance loss occurs when there is a humiliation, disempowerment. The Chechen widows who lost their loved ones, who were wrested from them in three by force by their Russian enemy, they feel humiliated. Somebody has just disempowered them, took away the dearest thing that they possessed. The Muslims in Europe who feel the victims of Islamophobia and prejudice, they feel humiliated. And Rousseau, who himself was very aware of this loss of significance, vividly and poetically described, what does it feel? How does it feel to have one's significance lost, to be humiliated like that? In his words, anger and indignation take possession of my senses. Flashing eyes, an inflamed face, trembling limbs, throbbing heart, reasoning can do nothing about it. The Al Qaeda tapes, the propaganda tapes used by Al Qaeda that we have been analyzing at our START Institute offer numerous instances in which the speakers, the propagandist, uses group grievance in order to enrage the Muslims and imply that the humiliation is not only of the actual victims of the violence, but also of any Muslim around the world. And here is one quote from a major propaganda figure in Al Qaeda, Abu Yahya Al Libi. And that's what he says. Jihad in Algeria today is your hope, with permission from Allah, in redemption from hell, of the unjust ruling regimes whose prisons are congested with your youth and children, if not with your women. We trust its armies, police and intelligence to oppress you, for which they open the doors to punish you. So join your efforts to theirs, add your energy to theirs, and know that their victory is your victory, their salvation is your salvation. Personalizing the suffering of Muslims in Kosovo, Bosnia, Palestine, to make every individual Muslim feeling humiliated. And it's been very effective. Interestingly, the significance loss can come due to conflict unrelated reason. It could be a stigma that arises from one's personal life circumstances. The political scientist Amy Pedasur describes cases of Palestinian suicide bombers who decided to embark on the mission in light of their own personal humiliation. So there is a case of a woman who was divorced, and in Palestinian traditional society, divorce is a stigma and she volunteered and became a suicide attacker. A woman who was infertile. Against a stigma in traditional Palestinian society, she volunteered for a suicide squad. A woman accused of extramarital relations became a suicide bomber. A boy diagnosed with HIV positive became a suicide bomber. So far we talked about actual significance loss. And these people who lose their significance, whether to reasons related to the conflict, related to humiliation by the enemy or or due to their personal circumstances, seek a way to restore their significance. But losing significance in the past is not the only factor that affects arouses this quest for significance. Another one is the possibility in the future of severe significance loss should one not comply with the dictates of one's group's requirements. So onuki Tierney in 2006 published a very important book about the Japanese kamikaze the suicidal pilots of World War II. And it turns out that many of them, majority of them really didn't want to die. They didn't expect heavenly rewards. They didn't expect to be rewarded by some wonderful life in the afterworld. Yet should they have refused the mission, they would have been so humiliated that this threat of potential humiliation in the past, this threat of loss of significance was enough to impel them to volunteer. And here is one quote from Hayashi Ichizo who was suicidal. Toko Thai pilot who died in Mission on February 22, 1945 a letter to his mother I find it so hard to leave you behind. I want to be held in your arms and sleep. Yet all men born in Japan are destined to die fighting for the country. You have done a splendid job raising me to become an honorable man. Finally, the third factor. Even if you do not lose your self significance and you're not threatened by an imminent loss of significance, in some circumstances there is a potential for a tremendous significance gain, tremendous opportunity to become a hero, a martyr, somebody who would be celebrated for centuries by your culture and your group. Ewuch Prinzak, political scientist, talks about these megalomaniacal hyper terrorists that he described as self anointed individuals with larger than life callings and with unsatiable urge to use catastrophic attacks to write a new chapter in history. Ramzi Yusuf, the man behind the 1993 Twin Towers bombing in New York. Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Ayum Shinrikyo in Japan who spread the sarin gas in Tokyo Metro. Thousands were injured, many died. Osama Bin Laden of course, Timothy McVay. All of these are these megalomaniacal hyper terrorists. And Sprintzak discusses them as ones who write the great men Story of terrorism. But the quest for significance, the opportunity for significance gain need not be so lofty and high blown. It can be inculcated during the socialization process and bred in the bone for young children. So an Egyptian newspaper, Rus Al Yusuf, wrote some time ago about the Hezbollah Imam Al Mahdi. Scouts ranging in Age from 8 to 16 Number in the tens of thousands and they are indoctrinated with the ideology of radical Shia Iranian Islam. According to this newspaper, the objective is to train high caliber Islamic generation of children who would be willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of Allah. They were not humiliated in particular, but they see this great opportunity and they dream of becoming heroes and martyrs. That's the way they look quite fierce. Now in basic research in psychology research, we often find that increasing a commitment to one goal often tends to suppress alternative goals. You become a person with a single track mind. We know for example, that when security concerns loomed large in the United States, other concerns for individual rights, other moral standards tended to be reduced in saliency. And this is a very, very normal process. And it also is apparent in our terrorism research. So the increased commitment to the self love goal, the amour propre, the commitment to being important and significant in the eyes of your community can sometimes banish goals in the love of self taking care of number one category. Recently we have interviewed a black Tamil Tiger in Sri Lanka. Black Tamil Tiger is a member of the elite suicidal squads. These are the cream of the crop of the Tamil Tiger movement. And we interviewed him in Sri Lanka. And that's what he has to say. Family and relationship are forgotten. In that place there was no place for love. That means a passion and loyalty to that group, to those in charge, to those who sacrificed their life for the group. Then I came to a stage where I had no love for myself. Almost as if he had read Rousseau. No love for myself. He says I had no value for my life. I was ready to give myself fully, even to destroy myself in order to destroy another person. Now when a goal is aroused, this is not enough to inspire, to drive behavior. You need to have a means to pursue that goal. And that means by and large is provided by the terrorism justifying ideology. Now this kind of ideology doesn't come out of thin air. It's deeply embedded in the cultural values of one's society and of one's group. And when the group is under threat from a real or imagined enemy, a major task that is defined by theology is defense of the group for which ample rewards of status and recognition are given. This doesn't have to be any particular ideology. It doesn't have to be a religious ideology. It can be an ethno nationalist ideology. It can be a socialist ideology. All that this ideology does is provide a means. It justifies violence as a means to pursue one's goals of significance. Basically, the bare elements of terrorism justifying ideology of whatever kind are three. One is that there is a grievance. Some injustice was done to your group, your religious group, your social group, your family. Secondly, there is a culprit. Somebody is identified as the enemy who is responsible for the grievance. Somebody has done wrong to you or to your group. And finally, and probably most importantly, there is a method. Terrorism is a method. And terrorism is justified on grounds of its instrumentality. It's effective. If you engage in terrorism, you're going to attain the goal of significance. Your group will respect and recognize you and celebrate you. And it's also justified not only on grounds of instrumentality, but also on moral grounds. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay to kill others in defense of your group. The in group morality here justifies killing and violence and mayhem in order to defend the group. The ideology doesn't have to contain very fancy and intricate arguments. It has to include these three elements. But ideology is essential. Without ideology, the quest of significance would not result in violence because the ideology provides justification of violence as means to attain the goal. Now, this framework, this goal systemic framework, allows one to describe the trajectory that leads people to terrorism. So very schematically, the goal is awakened. That's the first part. Then there is a search for means. And the search for means directs the individual to the group. There is a kind of collectivistic switch. You feel weakened and disempowered and humiliated. You turn to your group as a kind of automatic response. We call it collectivistic shift. Once you become, in your own mind, a group member rather than an individual, it has two effects. One is you feel empowered, you feel stronger. There is strength in number. There is strength in the eternity of a group. You feel empowered, you feel unafraid, but it also carries obligations. Noblesse oblige. If you're a member of a group, you have to abide by the group dictates. And if the group requires that you commit suicide, commit violence, you have to do it. Noblesse oblige, group membership, oblige. So you can see schematically that the loss of significance leads to collectivistic ideology, which is a means of significance restoration. This leads to empowerment. Arrow number two, which Is manifest among other things in reduced fear of death. Because if you're empowered, death is the threat of the ultimate insignificance of non existence. Therefore, fear of death has been used by psychologists to measure the degree to which they feel significant. And we'll talk about some findings about that. The collectivistic ideology at the same time produces support for struggle, sacrifice, violence and martyrdom in cases where the ideology requires it. And if you short circuit all this trajectory, you have a direct path from loss of significance to support for struggle, sacrifice, violence and martyrdom. This is basically the theoretical model. Do we have any evidence for that? We do have some. So let's look at the first link between loss of significance and collectivistic ideology. This is a survey that we did with representative samples from Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan. Participants in this survey rated the extent to which they were successful or unsuccessful in their personal lives. And then they select whether they identify primarily as members of their nation or their religion, which are collectivistic social identities, or as individuals, which is a non collectivistic individualistic self identity. And as you can see, those who are successful, the tall bar to the left, identify primarily as individuals. Those who are less successful identify primarily with religion and nationality collectivistic identifications. Now, as social psychologists, these are real world data, real surveys. But as social psychologists, we never are convinced by real world data unless we replicate them in a completely artificial experimental setting in the laboratory using college students. I'm saying it in jest, but I think our theory, if it's universal enough, implies that these findings should also replicate in the laboratory. So that's what we did. Participants here completed a language test that we tell them is a good predictor of future academic and career success. They receive success or failure feedback and then they complete a self report measure of interdependent self construal self perception, perception of themselves as social interdependent being or individualistic independent being. And what we find is that those in the failure condition where we expose them to failure, tend to self construe their personality in interdependent collectivistic terms, more so than those who were in the success condition. This is a replication of the study. Here we included both independent scale and interdependent scale. And as you can see, in the failure condition, they are higher on interdependence, lower on dependence or on independence than in the success condition. When they are higher on independence and lower on interdependence, We assume that the collectivistic ideology is empowering and one maybe extreme measure of Empowerment is reduced. Fear of death. Can it be so that if you construe yourself in collectivistic terms, your fear of death is lessened? Our findings suggest, and not our finding. Other laboratories have replicated these findings as well, that it may be so. So in this study, participants randomly as are assigned to two conditions and asked to circle pronouns in an essay. Participants in the independent condition circle personal pronouns I, me, my, thinking of themselves, number one, I, me, my. Participants in the interdependent condition circle personal pronouns we as ours. And this manipulation, it may appear to you as social psychological hocus pocus. The truth is that it's been replicated widely that this subtle manipulation introduces an individualistic versus a collectivistic mindset. Marilyn Brewer and others have used it widely. And then participants complete a self report scale of death anxiety. And as you can see, death anxiety is higher for individuals who self construe themselves independently individualistically, the I, me, my pronouns as opposed to the interdependent I, we, ours pronouns. Another study. Well, yeah, here. Here is another study that may appear even more esoteric to you, but we stand by it. Again, it's a procedure that's widely used in social psychology. It's a joystick situation. Participants are presented with words or non words on a screen. And whenever they see a word, they are supposed to either in one condition pull the joystick toward them or push it away from them. What is found is that when a person has a positive attitude toward the world, they push the joystick more quickly. They pull the joystick more quickly toward them and push it away, more slowly away from them. Again, it makes much of psychology relies these days on these unconscious implicit measures. And what we find is that when we manipulate the self construal as independent versus interdependent, along the lines that I described before, the pronouns, you can see that they push death related. Now the critical words are death related, death, funeral, corpse, and so on and so forth. They pull these words toward them more quickly. That means they avoid them less and push them away more slowly if they are in the interdependent condition versus the independent condition. So they approach, so to speak, death related words more quickly if you wish and avoid them more slowly than those in the independent condition. Let's move now to the next part of the model. Collectivistic ideology would lead to support for struggle, sacrifice, violence and martyrdom on part of the group. Back to the real world Internet survey. In 12 Arab countries, Pakistan and Indonesia, participants are asked if they identify primarily as members of their nation. Religion or as individuals as in the previous survey. And this time the question is, the dependent variable is to what extent they support violence against civilians from the United States and Europe. And as you can see, significantly, those who identify primarily with their religion and, and their nation tend to support violence against civilians and military to a greater extent. Those who identify primarily as individuals. Here is another study, this one face to face survey. The previous one was Internet survey and it was limited to those people who are computer literate. So of course it's not a representative sample. Here we have a representative sample of Egypt, Morocco and Indonesia and you find the very same thing. Those who identify with religion and nation tend to support violence against civilians or military targets to a greater extent than those who identify as individuals. Finally, the last leg of the model, that loss of significance would lead to support for struggle, sacrifice, violence and martyrdom. You know, many of those who engage in suicide attacks and other attacks are young men of religious background. So we reason that it could be that religious men who are young and, and full of testosterone, when they entertain forbidden sexual thoughts, they may feel guilty about it. And as a way of expiating and regaining their lost significance due to their sinful thoughts, they are more prepared to support group causes and volunteer for suicidal missions. So we of course carried out an experiment. In this experiment, we had 96 male participants. They were recruited for studying religion and modern issues. They completed an extrinsic and intrinsic religion scale. And then these participants were assigned randomly to one of two what we told them are perceptual tasks. In one condition they looked at neutral images, and in the other condition they looked at sexual images. The sexual images are the ones on the left. Although these toasters are very cute, I must. What we measured was their sexual guilt. There is a, a scale to measure sexual guilt. And what you find is that those who are high on intrinsic religious motivation feel more guilty with the sexual images versus the neutral images. And what's more important, that these people also. We have a martyrdom scale. We have a scale for everything, martyrdom included. And they support martyrdom significantly more in the sexual images versus the neutral images condition. And what is even more impressive for us is that the intrinsic religious motivation leads to sexual guilt. And this mediates statistically those of you who are statistically inclined. There's a mediation here. The support for martyrdom is instigated by sexual guilt. At least that's a possible interpretation of these findings. Now, we have seen that when the quest for significance is aroused, people are willing to support violence, sacrifice, martyrdom but this all is driven by a violence justifying ideology that these individuals may have bought into. And of course not all ideologies are violence enhancing or violence justifying. Some ideologies are downright tolerant, benevolent and pro social. And so these ideologies suggest that to attain personal significance, not only that you should not be violent, but you should be tolerant, you should be empathic, you should be supportive of others, you should be a good person. So in other words, it's not the quest for significance per se that promotes violence, but it's the conjunction of the quest for significance with an ideology, a destructive terrorism justifying ideology, that suggests that terrorism is the way to gain significance. And Rousseau, as he is wont to do, has anticipated this as well. And in his words, the particular ways individual seek to satisfy their amour propre would depend on what opportunities for recognition, their social institutions, their ideology encourage and permit. There is a theory in social psychology called the terror management theory. And experiments done by researchers of that ilk usually involve reminding people of their own mortality. Think of yourself as if you were dead, think of your body lying in a coffin, all kinds of very pleasant thoughts like that. And they then measure how this affects responses on a variety of different measures. And in many cases they find that if the ideology is conflictual, the greater the mortality salience, the greater the support for militancy, for oppression, for toughness against terrorism, and so forth. But in some conditions of their research, they primed a pro social ideology. So for example, in a sample of American Christians, fundamentalists who tended to support habitually under mortality silence condition, toughness against terrorists, toughness against Muslims, if the ideology primed is the Christian tolerance and love, love your neighbor as thyself, this reverses the tendency. So now people who are primed with the mortality salience, who think of their own death, their own way to insignificance, are now more benevolent rather than more militant. And the same findings obtained with Muslims, Muslims in Iran who are supporting toughness against against America and admired suicide bombers, admired martyrs. If they are reminded of benevolent verses in the Quran, do goodness to others because Allah loves those who do good, they tend to reverse the tendency under mortality salience conditions. So the quest for significance, loss of significance doesn't automatically promote violence. It does so when the ideology justifies violence as a way of attaining significance. Which brings us to the other and the other side of the story. The radicalization and turning the significance quest around. Basically, the same factors in reverse that promote radicalization would promote de radicalization. If they are reduced in Significance reduced in magnitude. So, for example, this can have to do with reduction in the goal of significance or reduction in the perception that the means of violence is an effective and justifiably morally way of gaining significance. For example, morally based relinquishment. We have already seen that terror management researchers, when they prime an ideology that suggests violence is bad, tolerance is good, they relinquish violence and are willing to support a benevolent attitude toward the erstwhile enemy. Here is a testimony from an erstwhile ETA member. Eta, the Basque Tasuna member were very violent. They recently renounced violence. Finally. But this is a person who in prison saw the light. So that violence is unjustifiable morally. It lacks moral justification. Here's what he says. During the first month after I was incarcerated, I spent all my time systematically reading up on the Gospels. I gradually began to realize I was hearing and responding to the actual words of Jesus of Nazareth. Thanks to his grace, I underwent a profound and sincere conversion. It required my sincere repentance for past behavior, especially activities related to my prior militancy in eta. So this is a case where all of a sudden, based on religious exposure to religious ideology, this person feels that morally violence is unjustifiable and that's why he abandons it. The issue of the moral. The moral opprobrium of violence is utilized in the radicalization programs that have sprung out in several Muslim countries. These programs that exist in Saudi Arabia, a program existed in Yemen, there is a program in Singapore. Programs are being planned in the Philippines, in Bangladesh, in Thailand, in other places. A basic element of these programs is undermining the religious legitimacy of violence. So imams, experts on the Quran enter into the detention facilities and engage the detainees in theological dialogue, attempting to convince them that that the Quran actually prohibits violence. And what they thought was religiously acceptable and desirable actually is an anathema. And do these de radicalization programs work? There is a controversy about them, but we know that the radicalization can work. And for example, in Egypt, in Algeria, major terrorist movements have de radicalized. In Egypt, the Islamic group, the Jama al Islamiya radicalized in 97. Their leaders relinquished violence. Did they do it authentically? I believe so, because they made a tour of the prisons and spoke to their followers. And they published no less than 25 volumes of preachings against violence. This would probably. Earn tenure at a major university in Algeria. Exactly the same happens. Movement relinquished violence. What happened in those cases? I think I recently interviewed a major Egyptian. Columnist who was involved in the radicalization of these movements, Akram Muhammad Ahmad and he told me that in Egypt what happened was that first these movements were defeated on the ground. People turned against them, they informed the authorities, their weapons caches were confiscated, they were put in jail. So there was a huge loss of significance under those conditions. They engage in prisons in dialogue with people who were religious clerics and who engaged them in discussion of the justifiability of what they were doing. And under those conditions, they actually de radicalized. And they de radicalized. Since that time, there hasn't been a major attack in Egypt by these organizations. This was one case, another case in 2007, the Al Jihad movement, the movement that assassinated President Sadat. Dr. Fadel, that is one of the leaders of that movement, by the way, Ayman Al Zawahiri was also one of the founding members. Dr. Fadel published a manifesto calling to the end of violence. And this movement again de radicalize. So the radicalization can happen in the same way that people can radicalize, they can de radicalize. Human nature is malleable. The question is whether the programs that are being instituted are effective. And there is very little research. We are now with our START center carrying out research in the Philippines. We have some initial data research in Sri Lanka, and the initial data, at least in Sri Lanka, are promising. Occasionally it's not only the moral opprobrium, the theological religious unacceptability of violence that leads to relinquishment of violence. Sometimes the means of violence is simply felt to be ineffective. Here is a testimony of an ETA member who abandoned violence after it turned out in 79 where the Spanish parliament ratified the Basque autonomy and allowed free election to the Basque parliament. So that's what he says. Some will insist that the primary goal is, ever since we first decided to take up the armed struggle, was total independence. Anyway, no matter how you look at it, independence is not something that was ever going to be achieved by a handful of kill happy morons. And believe me, because I got to know them well, you're not going to get very far at all, not far at all down that path. Means of violence is not going to get you there, is not going to attain the significance for the group that you were hoping for. Can the radicalization occur via a shift of one's goal of significance? There are three conditions under which it can occur. One is to prevent the arousal of this quest. The second is inducing a sense that this goal has already been attained, significance has already been attained. And the third one is awakening of alternative goals in the love of self. Category that may under some conditions suppress and crowd out the self love goals. Can you prevent the significance quest arousal? Can you prevent the loss of significance? You can't if the loss of significance arises from your personal circumstances. You cannot prevent a woman from being infertile, a boy to be diagnosed with HIV positive. But there are some cases where you can do something about preventing this major collective arousal of the significance quest by avoiding collateral damage, by avoiding media insults, by avoiding the kind of prisoner abuse that we know from the Abu Ghraibe and other situations. So there are ways in which things can be done to allow to minimize the inflammation. The awakening of this huge quest for significance around the world. Sometimes relinquishment of violence can follow from the notion that significance has already been attained. One is collective success. Our group has already attained independence. Many countries that use terrorism, Kenya, Algeria, Israel, attained their independence through the use of sometimes a terroristic means. And then there is no more need to engage in terrorism because success has been attained. And this is again from the basc. We have very interesting data from the Basque ETA members collected by our friend and colleague Fernando Raynares from Madrid. And here is a case where autonomy has been reached and there is no more need for violence. According to this one ETA member, we reached this point where we had the autonomy statues, elections are held and you said to yourself, okay, we got what we wanted, so what sense is here in going on shooting people and planting bombs? Sometimes, whereas maybe the collective attainment has not happened, a person may feel that they have done their share, they have already done enough, they've attained enough significance to allow themselves to turn to other issues. Look, though my way of thinking about the armed struggle hasn't changed. So others can do it, but I have done my fair share. I've given three years of my life to them as a militant, always at the expense of my personal life. And sometimes, and typically this idea that I've done enough is coupled with the emergence of these alternative goals from the love of self, categorization, love relations, marriage, family, taking care of oneself, comfort, peace, the idea of got to live a bit, not only be on the run as a terrorist be pursued. You say to yourself, shit man, I better get myself alive because time is running out. It's a matter of being that much older, in my case specifically of wanting to get married. You're going on 40 years old, you're going to get married next year. And you say to yourself, well, shit man, I mean, at this stage of the game to go packing a piece that would Be a bit, because you just got too shit. Well, we've all got to live a bit. And this is of course not unique to one thing that is really impressive, that the same dynamic cuts across terrorist movements around the world. Provisional ira, very similar evidence. Sri Lankan terrorists, very similar evidence. This is an evidence from Noor al Hamdi, a major lieutenant of the Abu Sayyaf organization in the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines. We have interviewed him in Manila and what he says is it became awful hard to be separated from my wife and the children. Always on the run. I missed being there for them, taking care of them, watching them grow up. I also missed my work as a teacher. My life was hectic and stressful. I had enough. Now he's de radicalizing his colleagues. He's working with the government. Very often, you know, life is dynamic and our goals and means change as our life circumstances change. And we have looked at this happening to erstwhile Sri Lanka. Tamil Tigers. As you know, the Tamil Tiger movement was one of the most powerful terrorist movements in the history of terrorism. They still hold the world record in suicide bombings for a single organization. They had their air force and their navy. They assassinated presidents, heads of state, an Indian prime minister, Sri Lankan president, generals, academicians, journalists. But in 2009, they were defeated by many thousands were killed. Others were incarcerated in rehabilitation camps. And in these camps, the emphasis is on affording them vocational aid, Yoga and art. So they are taught carpentry, electronics, mechanics, construction work. The women are taught cosmetics and the garment industry, fashion. And we had the good fortune to gain access to these participants and look at their attitudes both initially at the beginning of the program and six to nine months later. And what we find here is a picture of these are Tamil Tigers. In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that one of these men is not a Tamil Tiger. He's not even a Tamil pussycat. This is the sample we interviewed. By now several thousands of them. What you find is that the greater the attitude change, the positive attitude change toward the guard, the greater the decrease in support for armed struggle from time one to time two, the more they come to like and develop personal relations. And I think Sagitt found the same in Israeli prisons. The greater their change, and this is a highly significant finding. The greater their attitude change toward these vocational ed, vocational rehabilitation programs, the greater the positive change away from violence. So the removal of the notion through these personal relations with the guards, with the prisoner personnel that the Sinhalese undermine, they are the enemy, undermine their significance. And then that fighting them is needed means to significance restoration. Relinquishment of this idea allowed them to adopt alternative long term means to significance through learning a profession and reintegrating into society. And such means. It's multifinal, it serves both ends. It allows you to attain significance without the need to give up the love of self, your comfort, your self preservation, family, your career, your professional development and so forth. Gratification of Rousseau's self, love and love of self all at once. So in conclusion, the quest for significance, Rousseau's amour proper is, as Rousseau pointed out, is a thoroughly human passion. In fact, Rousseau insisted that this love of self love is what distinguishes us from the Beast. This is what makes us human. But it makes us human both for better and for worse. If it is coupled with a destructive ideology that is in addition fanned and inflamed by a sweeping social movement, it can plunge us into the lowest point, into the nadir of human potentialities and promote mayhem and violence and murder. However, if it's coupled with an enlightened thought, it can result in the greatest science, greatest art and harmonious and inspiring human relations. And the role of psychology, I think is to guide society toward the later outcome and away from the former. Thank you.
- [65:05]
A
Thank you very much for a very interesting lecture. We have some time for questions. Perhaps I'll give people just a few minutes. Those of you who need to go can go now and then we're going to take questions. Question there, please.
- [65:25]
C
Hi professor, thank you very much for your talk. I have a very basic question. Could you give us your definition of terrorism? Because sometimes what you were talking about made me think about what's being called in South America, state terrorism, which is when the state commits violent acts to the citizens. So I'm not sure of the extent, extent of the concept that you're using. Thank you.
- [66:04]
B
The question of defining terrorism is at once a very simple question and an impossible question. Several years ago, Alex Schmidt and Youngman wrote a book on terrorism and they counted 108 definitions of terrorism. And since then there have been many other definitions of terrorism. Why is it so difficult to agree on a definition not intellectually? Because terrorism intellectually could be very easily defined as the use of fear in order to make political gains. But, but, but in the United nations, many nations would object to that kind of definition because that would implicate them as terrorists. And state terrorism, according to this definition, is a real possibility. It is included because nations have used and are using fear, bombing of populations, kidnapping of individuals and so forth. In order to advance political gains. So. So the question of definition is a very difficult one. We are not going to resolve it here. And that's the issue that it's a very charged political issue. And I was just talking to the legal United nations expert yesterday about this very topic, and he informed me that in the United nations there will never be a definition because of the political repertoire. So what I am talking about is the use of violence as a way of motivating individuals to volunteer. And what is the psychology of that? And it could be a violence for any kind of cause. It could be a national cause, it could be volunteering for an army. You may call it however you want, but that's what I was talking about.
- [68:08]
A
There is a question here and then I think that will be.
- [68:16]
D
Thank you. Thank you very much for a very interesting talk. My name is Tinker Feltuys. I'm a research fellow at the International center for Counterterrorism in the Hague in the Netherlands. And I do a lot of research on de radicalization of terrorist prisoners. So in that sense, I'm very happy with your talk here. I have a question about your concept of that quest for significance, because I would be worried that your theory might be too all encompassing to be falsifiable. I could imagine that a lot of the terrorist behaviors would somehow. That we could argue that it all contributes somehow to this personal quest of significance in one way or the other. And also that this personal quest of significance would also explain other kinds of, for example, racial violence or prison gang violence or things like that. And if that will be the case, then we are still left with the question, why would some people engage in terrorism, for example, in relation to other kinds of group violence? So if you would elaborate a little.
- [69:20]
B
Bit, first of all, the issue of falsifiability, to the extent that you have empirical evidence that is consistent with the theory and could have turned otherwise, then the theory could have been falsified. If we found that personal failure is totally unrelated to support for violence, if personal failure is totally unrelated to a sense of empowerment, that would falsify the theory. But the second part of the question is whether terrorism is unique or special. And clearly it is not. The quest for significance motivates a variety of different behaviors. It can motivate volunteering for an elite army unit, it can motivate, but it also motivates terrorism. So it's the same dynamic that applies wildly. It can also, the quest of significance can motivate very positive behavior. I just learned recently that there is A super hero movement in the United States where people are wearing superhero costumes and they're doing all kinds of good works for the community as superheroes. They are kind of Superman, Spiderman, and they're actually engaging in a very positive act because their beliefs suggest that, you know, this is going to lend them significance. So it's not unique to terrorism, but I think terrorism is explicable in these terms because terrorism is a risky behavior. It can be detrimental to your health, you can die. And for that you need a very powerful justification. And this motivation affords that.
- [71:10]
E
Thank you. Thank you for a very interesting talk. I really like the idea of the quest for significance, but maybe following on from this earlier question, we all have a quest for significance. And so it manifests in different ways. Just like you were saying, people could work extra hard or they could have more grandchildren or whatever. So why manifesting in terrorism? And to pursue that a bit. They don't terrorize anyone. They selectively terrorize. And I was wondering, in all the research you've done, have you found any commonalities in the way in which they represent the other so that the target of their aggressive acts, how do they understand that other who deserves to die? Or are there any commonalities in that?
- [72:02]
B
There are indeed. I think the ideology identifies a specific enemy. This is the target. This enemy is the culprit responsible for the injustice and the grievance. And therefore this enemy is condemned to death. He or it is worthy of terrorism. Combined with this ideology is dehumanization, delegitimation of the enemy. And we have seen examples of that throughout history. That one way of morally justifying violence is not only on moral grounds, but on grounds of dehumanizing the enemy. The enemy is really subhuman. There are rats and dogs and monkeys and. And all kinds of cockroaches that really when in killing them, you're not even killing humans. So this is again a very common dynamic that has been used by groups throughout history, by the Nazis, of course, in many types of inter group violence, propaganda. But it's the ideology that occurs within a specific intergroup conflict. And it targets, identifies a specific enemy that has to be punished.
- [73:26]
A
We'll take a question from the top, please. And then there are some.
- [73:32]
F
Okay, okay, my question is Here, up there, up here. Oh yeah, there are also people here.
- [73:45]
B
Yes, we recognize their humanity.
- [73:51]
F
We are about you. Okay, my question is, the rock part states that individualism is a collective representation. That collective representation can inform some kind of terrorism.
- [74:11]
B
Do you think whether collective representation of Oneself can promote terrorism. We find that identifying as member of a group can promote violence and can promote risky behavior. Because one feels empowered, one feels more invulnerable, and also because one becomes part of a group whose existence is transcendental. Whereas an individual has a limited time on earth, the group can exist forever. And I think there is a way of measuring it, the kind of transcendentality of groups. And we find that people who view the groups as eternal are more likely to engage in risky behavior on behalf of the group. So in a kind of ironic sense, you achieve immortality by committing an act of martyrdom. You're becoming immortal through your belonging to the group that is eternal. Whereas an individualistic existence is circumscribed in. In time and space. Sorry, you're the boss.
- [75:39]
G
I'm not a psychologist, I'm just a simple scientist. So my question may be very simple for you. What you seem to be describing is in some ways an essential human condition. And a. In evolutionary biology, for example, there is tremendous number of examples from animal kingdom where group think within animals can have effect on the weaker. And then what I was slight, I was more interested in trying to learn is what is. We know, for example, armies, soldiers, they're all taught into this group think otherwise. Their existence and how they have to do what they have to do becomes very difficult for them psychologically. So the issue is, what is it that allows some people to commit suicidal terrorism rather than with all these elements that you described, which have to exist for them to commit to a group and then go on and commit not only violence against others in the name of whatever ideology or religion or whatever, but what is it that allows them to actually commit themselves, their lives to it?
- [76:59]
B
This is a very, very interesting question because, you know, in terrorism research we have this idea of a pyramid. There is a basis of a pyramid of people. Sorry, in terrorism research and theory, there is this idea of a pyramid. The basis of the pyramid are those who support terrorism and the goals of terrorism in principle, but they themselves do not do anything about it. And as you go up, people tend to exhibit higher and higher degrees of radicalization to the point that at the very apex of the pyramid, the. These are the active terrorists who actually are willing to commit suicide. So the question is, if I can rephrase your question, is what makes some people float up to the apex of the pyramid as opposed to staying at lower points? And I think there could be many different possibilities within this theory. People who suffered a loss of significance more than others are willing to commit to the restoration of significance is such a burning issue for them that they are willing to commit to whatever means is suggested for accomplishing that purpose to the exclusion of other concerns. So they exclude their comfort, they exclude their family. They are willing to relinquish everything in order for that one burning desire to be accomplished. So that's one possibility. People vary on their degree of conformity. So some people, once they are in that situation, will be more conformist and obedient to the group ideology. In other words, there are individual differences. Terrorism research suggested that there is no one personality of a terrorist. But that doesn't mean that personalities you relevant to terrorists to the engagement in terrorism. There are many different personality factors that prompt people more or less to commit to this one goal to the exclusion of all the others.
- [79:16]
A
Right, I'll take one more question and we'll come. Yes, sorry, but there are many hands going out, but we have a limit of time, so. Yes, one more question.
- [79:31]
H
I have read some research about terrorists and groups such as Hamas which postulated that some Hamas terrorists were actually motivated by an extreme and maybe mistaken altruism, so that their families were offered quite large rewards if they became suicide bombers. And their desire to achieve that good for their family and to take revenge on those who they considered to be their sort of worst enemies was such that it outweighed their sense of self preservation. So in that case, it didn't seem like that there was a quest for significance going on at all. It was just they had this goal and it was such a, you know, it was so important to them that they didn't mind dying for it. And the goal was maybe the well being of their family or the well being of their nation, not necessarily personal significance.
- [80:33]
B
Well, I would beg to disagree that sacrificing yourself for your family and being so altruistic as to do that doesn't bestow upon you a sense of great heroism and great significance. I think that's precisely what it does. There are many rewards that are used by the terrorist organizations to show how this respect and recognition is translated into specifics. So great rewards for your family is one sign of recognition that you have done something very important. The 72 virgins in heaven have a symbolic meaning, not only the concrete meaning, but also the fact that you have done something extremely important. And it's by virtue of your being a hero of monumental proportions that you are reaping these rewards. So these are all part of concretizations of this great sense of significance that your deed has accomplished.
- [81:39]
A
Well, thank you very much for your questions. It's 8:00, clock now, so we're going to stop here. And thank you again, Professor Iraqnowski, for a fascinating lecture in answering our questions. Thank you.