Viewing Terrorism through Social Psychology Essay -- Psychology

Acts of terrorism are becoming increasingly common in todays society. From the patronize suicide bombings in Israel, the recent violence in the Russian small town of Beslan, to the attacks on the world trade centers on September the eleventh of 2001 that so violently shook the world terrorism is rarely far from our minds. Terrorist conclaves pay a variety of aims, acts of revenge, politics, but by far the most common, and arguably most disturbing reason for these actions is religion.It is exceptionally important that we scum bag gain to understand the forces that drive people to commit such wanton acts of destruction, and complaisant psychological science can help us to do that. mixer psychology is a diverse field of say, it is the scientific field that seeks to understand the temperament and causes of individual behavior in complaisant situations (Social Psychology, Baron and Byrne). In social psychology we study the social factors which influence the individual to verbalise divulge certain actions, thus it is invaluable in studying terrorism. Social psychologists study both the immediate social context (the influence of whatever group we are in the immediate company of) and the wider social context (the do of family, culture etc) both of which have great effect on mortalality, depression and behavior. An example of the effect of the immediate social context are the experiments carried erupt by Stanley Milgram. Milgram carried out a series of social psychology experiments into proximity and willingness of humans to cause pain to others using an electrocution device. The test in any case involved however the use of an authority figure to issue orders to carry out the electric shock. Milgram put volunteers in pairs and assigned one the social occasion of teache... ...e understanding, to change an attitude so vastly of a devout person into a vicious killer it takes a depth of belief that no experimentation can understand, it goes be yond measurement and scale. Social psychology can indeed help us to understand terrorism, but I does non tell the full story, in the words of David Hume (A treatise of human nature) this difficulty is to great(p) for my understanding.ReferencesDavid Hume A treatise of human nature (Penguin Classics, 1969)L.B.Brown Psychology and Religion (Penguin Education,1973)Baron and Byrne Social Psychology (Mark Juergensmeyer Terror in the mind of God (University of calcium press, 2000)Roy F Baumeister Evil, inside human violence and cruelty (W.H. Freeman and company, 1997)The consecrate Bible Mt 1034John Radford and Ernest Govier A casebook of Psychology (Sheldon press, 1980)