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Martyrdom is defined as the psychological readiness to suffer and sacrifice one's life for a cause. An integrative set of 8 studies investigated the concept of martyrdom by creating a new tool to quantitatively assess individuals' propensity toward self-sacrifice. Studies 1A-1C consisted of psychometric work attesting to the scale's unidimensionality, internal consistency, and temporal stability while examining its nomological network. Studies 2A-2B focused on the scale's predictive validity, especially as it relates to extreme behaviors and suicidal terrorism. Studies 3-5 focused on the influence of self-sacrifice on automatic decision making, costly and altruistic behaviors, and morality judgments. Results involving more than 2,900 participants from different populations, including a terrorist sample, supported the proposed conceptualization of martyrdom and demonstrated its importance for a vast repertoire of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral phenomena. Implications and future directions for the psychology of terrorism are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors describe procedures used in the development of a new scale of militant extremist mindset. A 2-step approach consisted of (a) linguistic analysis of the texts produced by known terrorist organizations and selection of statements from these texts that reflect the mindset of those belonging to these organizations and (b) analyses of the structural properties of the scales based on 132 selected statements. Factor analysis of militant extremist statements with participants (N = 452) from Australia, Serbia, and the United States produced 3 dimensions: (a) justification and advocacy of violence (War factor), (b) violence in the name of God (God factor), and (c) blaming Western nations for the problems in the world today (West factor). We also report the distributions of scores for the 3 subscales, mean differences among the 3 national samples, and correlations with a measure of dogmatism (M. Rokeach, 1956). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature is weak in explaining strategic change among terrorist movements, especially regarding the question of why these organizations often switch between contesting the external enemy, usually the government or the occupying power, and the internal arena in which they compete against fellow rebel groups. A rebel force facing diminishing returns from a formerly successful tactic with no equally effective tactical substitute in sight is likely to switch from conflict against a government to achieve dominance in the rebel camp. The terrorist movement will switch from the external to the internal arena even if such substitution compromises the overall goals of the rebel camp. The following article explores these dynamics in Hamas's strategy in the latest round of conflict between the movement and Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article responds to a research paper that examined the motivation behind the actions of suicide terrorists. The author explores how the quest for personal significance, used in the paper as a unifying concept that explains the motivation of suicide terrorists, is exploited by terrorist organizations in order to fulfill this motivation. The author examines how martyrdom fits into Islamic tradition, scripture and literature as well as how it has been used by non-Muslim groups. The author also discusses how the concept of jihad has developed and how martyrdom now falls within what Islamic theologians considered effective means of conducting jihad.

The article responds to a research paper that examined the motivation behind the actions of suicide terrorists. The author discusses the weakness related to conducting a mainstream psychological examination of terrorism. The two fundamental problems are; firstly, the lack of powerful conceptual frameworks to drive the research and secondly, the tendency for researchers to break into competing camps based on differing opinions shaped by individual differences and contextual factors. The author explores how cultural contextual factors exist in varying degrees of influence across Islamic communities and how the macro global and evolutionary context impact Islamic terrorism.

The article responds to a research paper that examined the motivation behind the actions of suicide terrorists. The author discusses some of the problems that have been associated with previous psychological studies that have examined terrorism and the terrorists that carry out these acts. The author believes that this paper has committed several errors in terms of the case they present and how it has been constructed. The author explores the evidence that is presented and questions how effectively it supports the argument set forth. The paper also discusses the contextual nature of psychological studies of motivation.