Psychological Motives for Joining Terrorist Groups and Conducting Terrorist Behavior

Abstract

The current research aims to identify the psychological motivations and personal emotional and behavioral characteristics, to join terrorist groups and conduct terrorist behavior. And because of the lack of terrorists to be the research case study, the researcher used analytical method for a wide range of studies and researches published in Arabic and international literature related to the subject of terrorism. The main research findings concluded are:

1- People involved in terrorism do not make their decision to join a terrorist group or carry out a terrorist act suddenly. Such decision has reasons and motives that are not superficial in most cases. These motives are so complex that those who carry out the terrorist act may often not realize it clearly.

2- The psychological dynamics applied to some people push them to engage in terrorism and violence, without adopting an extremist agenda or even sympathizing with a particular extremist ideology.

3- It is wrong to classify the terrorists as psychopaths.

4- Joining terrorist groups leaves some of them out of a sense of futility and worthlessness. Others may be motivated by the need for intimacy, emotional warmth, and the need for power, adventure and the missing challenge.