R1. Introduction
One of the most common reactions I get to my findings is disbelief. Not disbelief that suicide terrorists are suicidal, but that so many experts would insist otherwise. Some people assume that I must have created straw men to argue against. But as I outline in the Précis (target article), in retrospect, it is easy to understand why most scholars initially believed that suicide terrorists are psychologically normal, not suicidal, and that they are driven by self-sacrifice. For years, it seemed as if the best scientific evidence really pointed in that direction. I initially believed it as well.
Fortunately, more information about suicide terrorists is available than ever before, in part due to the brave fieldwork of scholars such as Atran. Unfortunately, some commentators have clung to their previous assumptions, but overall, I am thrilled with the response to my book (Lankford Reference Maris, Berman and Silverman2013c). I very much appreciate the other scholars reading it and offering a wide range of thoughtful reactions. My fiercest critics have answered the call, proving they are not filled with straw, but with intelligence and skill.
At the same time, there are equally strong scholars who agree with my argument and made valuable extensions of their own. They include Beit-Hallahmi, Bobadilla, Funder, Gibbs, Lester, and Mandel. I list them here in hopes that they will forgive me, because I am going to focus more on the critics. I hope this will not serve to discourage future supporters, lest they receive second billing! But for now, it seems better to first address the question of whether or not suicide terrorists are suicidal, before we move on to applications of this knowledge.
In the forthcoming discussion, I will not dedicate much space to correcting mischaracterizations of my arguments or to quibbles about a few specific cases. There were thoughtful rationales behind virtually all of my decisions, and if readers wish to contact me with inquiries, they are welcome to do so.
Instead, I will focus on the behavioral issues at hand, which are a matter of objective reality. Are suicide terrorists similar to other people who commit suicide, in terms of their behavior and psychology? If my harshest critics are right and the answer is no, then my book is a work of fiction, and we can go back to embracing the conventional wisdom. If we are each somewhat right and somewhat wrong, then I have documented something important, but other explanations are needed as well. If I am right and the answer is yes, then the book stands at the forefront of a paradigm shift in the way suicide terrorists are understood, and may have major implications for even larger behavioral issues, such as the evolved nature of self-sacrifice and survival instincts among human beings. It is important to bring this objective reality into clearer focus, sooner, rather than later.
R2. What does it mean to refer to someone as “suicidal”?
Before we get to the behavioral issues, we should touch upon confusions about language. Atran, Gray & Dickins, and Güss & Tuason all imply that I have committed the fundamental attribution error – ignoring the role of social, situational, and organizational factors – perhaps because of their assumptions about what is meant by the word “suicidal.” This is a curious critique, because I discussed the risks of the fundamental attribution error in the Précis. It would be unusual for someone to point out a hole, then fall in it anyway. In turn, Weiss & Weiss suggest that labeling suicide terrorists “suicidal” implies that their behavior is “irrational” or “cognitively deficient.” And Hardcastle questions labeling people “suicidal” if they commit suicide to escape painful or frightening situations, because their decisions may be rational, given the circumstances.
When I refer to suicide terrorists as “suicidal,” I am simply arguing that, once all of the relevant variables are considered, the psychology and motives of these attackers are similar to those of people who intentionally kill themselves by pills, poison, razor blade, rope, bullets, jumping from high elevation, provoking suicide by cop, and several other methods. Many people who commit suicide are greatly influenced by social and situational factors, and many of them clearly demonstrate rationality while conceiving, planning, and executing their suicides. We should expect the same of suicide terrorists.
The better we understand variations of suicide, the better we will understand variations of suicide terrorism. Do highly educated people commit suicide? Of course. Cornell University recently experienced a rash of six suicides in 6 months. Do small towns sometimes experience statistically improbable suicide clusters? Yes. Despite a population of less than 800, Robbinsville, North Carolina saw five suicides within a year. Do small groups of friends sometimes create suicide pacts? Yes. A few years ago, seven Chinese teenagers agreed to jump off a building together. For each of these suicidal examples, there may be corollaries for suicide terrorism. And in some cases, suicide terrorists may be suicidal but behave in virtually unprecedented ways, given the virtually unprecedented levels of social approval for their particular form of suicide (Lankford Reference Lankford2010). Ultimately, if suicidal people and suicide terrorists kill themselves for similar underlying reasons, we should use similar labels to describe them.
R3. How many individuals must be studied to make accurate generalizations?
There have been thousands of suicide attacks over the past several decades – between 3,000 and 3,500, depending on the source (see McCauley; Tobeña & Vilarroya) – but only 136 individuals appear on the “partial list of suicide terrorists with risk factors for suicide” that I present in my book's Appendix A. The list has continued to grow since the book was published, but it remains a relatively small percentage of the total. And several commentators have suggested that some of those on my list should not be counted. Atran dismisses 53 because their names were not identified, and questions others. McCauley goes even further, reducing the overall list to 40 because only those individuals were featured in case studies within the book. Having divided 40 by 3,500, he then concludes that a “reasonable estimate might be that one percent of suicide terrorists are suicidal.”
I respect healthy skepticism, for which there is a long tradition in the sciences. But too much skepticism can create unrealistic demands for evidence and keep us from the truth. Approximately one million people commit conventional suicide each year (World Health Organization 2013). If we ignored these individuals' behavior in orchestrating their own deaths, for how many cases could researchers accurately document suicidal motives? Suicidal people are often very effective at convincing those around them that nothing is wrong. So if the result was just ten thousand, would that mean that only one percent of all people who commit conventional suicide are actually suicidal? Or would it simply highlight the challenges when seeking this type of evidence?
Given so many unknowns, a very reasonable question emerges: How many suicide terrorists must one study in order to make accurate statements about suicide terrorists in general? I am not sure an exact answer exists. Atran, McCauley, and Tobeña & Vilarroya believe that I have not studied nearly enough cases. They want to see more data, and as far as that goes, who doesn't? I salivate for new evidence, no matter what it will show. But in the meantime, informed assessments of my argument cannot be based solely on the total number of individual cases studied; they must also account for the nature of the sample, the presence of other supporting evidence, the confirmation or rejection of empirical predictions, and the presence of contradictory evidence.
My sample was not random, but as I explain in the Précis, I tried hard to make it representative. McCauley claims that I failed to include any attackers from Iraq; he is simply mistaken. But even more important than geography is behavior. If a specific type of suicide terrorist exists who is behaviorally different from those I have analyzed, I would encourage my critics to waste no time in identifying them, so that they can be included as well.
R4. What other supporting evidence suggests that suicide terrorists are suicidal?
Beyond the individuals I studied, I also found many independent corroborations of my findings. Security officials in Iraq have reported that in recent years, a significant percentage of suicide bombers in their country have been “mentally challenged” or “suffering from psychological disorders,” and that in some cases, arrested terrorist dispatchers have openly admitted it (Qaisi Reference Qaisi2012). As an Iraqi terrorist expert declared, “It is common knowledge that suicide operations are often conducted by individuals who have lost interest in life” (Qaisi Reference Qaisi2012, para. 14). Similarly, Berko (Reference Berko2012) recently interviewed a Palestinian journalist who suggests that the myth of martyrdom is widely recognized, at least behind closed doors. “After a suicide bombing attack they say she was a heroine, but in secret or over coffee in a cafe they say ‘She was a bad woman and had problems.’ Everyone knows and no one says anything; it's a conspiracy of silence. It's amazing” (p. 7).
Weiss & Weiss propose that if suicide terrorists are suicidal, terrorist recruiters would be sure to know. In some cases, this may be true – although getting them to admit it could prove difficult. However, as referenced in the Précis, previous accounts from both a Palestinian suicide bomber dispatcher and a Palestinian Authority General indicate that recruiters seek people who are depressed, desperate, sad, and who feel like “Life has no meaning but pain” (Berko Reference Berko2007; Stern Reference Stern2003). And a female Palestinian terrorist who was imprisoned for escorting suicide attackers to their deaths summarized that many “think death is better than living the way they do” (Berko Reference Berko2012, p. 25). Similarly, in Iraq, arrested terrorist dispatcher Samira Ahmed Jassim admitted to authorities that she was part of a plot in which male terrorists would rape local women, and then send the “broken women” to her for deployment. She apparently did this successfully with more than 28 attackers – perhaps as many as 80 (Siemaszko Reference Siemaszko2009).
In Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, security officials report that terrorist organizations use heroin addicts for suicide attacks and that forensic tests of some attackers' bodies have confirmed the presence of the drug (Fair Reference Fair2007; Yusufzai Reference Yusufzai2011). Of course, drug use is a well-established risk factor for suicide (Maris et al. Reference Maris, Berman and Silverman2000). And in other cases, the Taliban has deliberately prepared teenagers for suicide bombings with beatings and malnutrition. As Obaid-Chinoy (Reference Obaid-Chinoy2010) reports, based on her interviews of terrorist recruiters and would-be suicide bombers, “The Taliban want these children to hate the world that they currently live in.”
These assessments directly support my findings, but they were made independently and would exist whether I wrote my book or not.
R5. Empirical predictions for determining if suicide terrorists are suicidal
In the book, I use case studies to illustrate conceptual points. But as Funder suggests, a sophisticated reader who just wants the important ideas might prefer a “more boring” but direct approach. Sela & Shackelford similarly advocate for a more traditionally framed argument. Fortunately, as Gibbs points out, the book contains many implicit empirical predictions that can be made explicit.
R5.1. When would volunteering for a suicide attack make strategic sense?
Many suicide terrorists genuinely volunteer to blow themselves up without being coerced. If they are primarily motivated by the desire to serve the cause, we would expect their decision to be based on at least some gut-level cost/benefit analysis of the value of their potential sacrifice. Subscribing to a radical ideology does not eliminate one's ability to reason, and committed terrorists would not want to harm their cause by needlessly wasting their lives (Atran Reference Atran2010b; Merari Reference Merari2010; Uyayri Reference Uyayri2000). You do not need advanced knowledge of statistics to realize that it would be counterproductive to spend a thousand dollars on an overpriced weapon, or to spend your life on an overpriced attack.
The individual truly committed to maximizing his or her utility for the cause would only volunteer to die based on the belief that the expected value of the suicide attack would outweigh the expected value of all future contributions. A suicide attack only makes strategic sense if you can accomplish more by dying tomorrow than you could during the rest of your life, plus your future death. So, if suicide terrorists are indeed primarily motivated by their desire to serve the cause, we would expect a few things. (1) Suicide attacks would be launched only when the expected value (probability of success multiplied by impact of attack) is very high. (2) Suicide attacks would be launched only when a non-suicide attack method, such as a remotely detonated bomb or time bomb, would not be similarly effective. On the other hand, if suicide attacks are often launched (a) when the expected damage to the enemy is relatively uncertain or relatively small, or (b) when another attack method could be similarly effective, that would strongly suggest that suicide terrorists are suicidal.Footnote 1
So which empirical prediction is more reflective of reality? If all suicide terrorists attempted high-impact strikes on the scale of September 11, 2001, which would leave thousands dead and have a tremendous effect on geopolitics, it might be easier to believe their strategic logic for volunteering. But that is hardly the case. As Atran rightly points out, the average suicide attack is significantly more destructive than the average non-suicide attack. However, reports indicate that between 40% and 50% of suicide bombers in Afghanistan end up killing only themselves (Byman & Fair Reference Byman and Fair2010; Robinson Reference Robinson2007). And as Atran (Reference Atran2010b) acknowledges, research shows that in Israel “up to mid-2004, some 527 suicide attacks were attempted; 132 of them were successful, killing [just] 859 noncombatant civilians” (p. 361). That calculates to a 75% failure rate, and fewer than two enemy fatalities per attempted suicide attack. Other statistics indicate that globally, even when only accounting for suicide attacks that were successful, nearly 70% of them from 1981 to 2011 resulted in ten or fewer fatalities (CPOST 2011).
To put these figures in perspective, consider that most suicide attacks are against vulnerable civilians. Do we really believe that many psychologically normal people, having dedicated their lives to an ideological cause, would rationally calculate that they need to sacrifice their lives tomorrow for an attack that will probably fail, and even if it were successful, would likely kill ten or fewer civilians?
The vast majority of suicide terrorists are not dying for some terrific tactical opportunity to change the outcome of their war. I would argue that virtually any committed terrorist with combat training and a semiautomatic firearm could kill ten or more civilians at some later date – with much lower likelihood of failure, plus the chance to escape, survive, and attack again – if it were really worth it to the cause. For comparison's sake, mass shooter Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old with severe mental health problems and no military training or organizational support, was able to kill 27 people. That made him a more effective killer than 88% of successful suicide terrorists (CPOST 2011). And similar attacks are possible anywhere. In 1994, a mass shooter named Baruch Goldstein, acting alone, killed 29 and wounded 125 on the West Bank.
Fink & Trivers wisely suggest that terrorists' calculations of expected benefits could be warped by self-deception. They could genuinely believe that every proposed attack will be far more successful or impactful than is actually realistic. But the key is that if suicide terrorists were psychologically normal, their self-deception and exaggerated expectations would seem unlikely to be more pronounced when they assessed the benefits of a suicide attack tomorrow than when they assessed the benefits of their alternative contributions, future conventional attacks, or future options for a suicide attack. This form of self-deception seems likely to function as a constant.
It must also be emphasized that many suicide attackers, such as the July 7, 2005, London transportation system bombers, blow themselves up when they potentially could have just dropped off remotely detonated bombs or time bombs in a backpack and walked away. And then they could have better served the cause by attacking again on the next day, and then again the day after that.
For psychologically normal people, these decisions defy basic common sense, which is one reason why the vast majority of terrorists never volunteer for suicide attacks, despite their powerful commitment to the cause.
R5.2. How would organizations transform ordinary people into volunteer suicide terrorists?
Decades of research have shown that with the proper application of social psychological techniques, it is possible to get relatively ordinary people to carry out acts of torture, mass killing, and genocide (Browning Reference Browning1998; Johnson Reference Johnson, Campbell and Gibbs1986; Milgram Reference Milgram1963; Waller Reference Waller2002; Westermann Reference Westermann2005; Zimbardo Reference Zimbardo1972). By now, we have a good understanding of how it is typically accomplished.
Two principles seem quite clear. First, although some degree of social influence may be possible over outsiders, organizations exert far more powerful influence over people once they have entered the organization (Grossman Reference Grossman1995; Johnson Reference Johnson, Campbell and Gibbs1986; Waller Reference Waller2002). It is at this point that the transformation of ordinary people into violent agents of the system really begins. Second, psychological influence is a gradual process that evolves over time. Individuals who end up fully committed usually get there after a series of incremental and escalating commitments (Burger Reference Burger1999; Freedman & Fraser Reference Freedman and Fraser1966). They rarely jump in the deep end right away.
These same strategies are employed by terrorist leaders during their recruitment, training, and indoctrination of many future members (Burton & Stewart Reference Burton and Stewart2008; Gunaratna Reference Gunaratna2002; Stern Reference Stern2003; Warius & Fishman Reference Warius and Fishman2009). These principles are also consistent with both Moghaddam's (Reference Moghaddam2005) notion of “the staircase to terrorism,” and McCauley and Moskalenko's (Reference McCauley and Moskalenko2008) “pyramid of radicalization.” As McCauley and Moskalenko (Reference McCauley and Moskalenko2008) accurately describe for non-suicide terrorists, “Typically an individual's progress into a terrorist group is slow and gradual, with many smaller tests before being trusted in more important missions, and with many non-violent tasks before being asked to use a gun or bomb” (p. 419). Again, this is how organizational commitment is typically forged.
Therefore, if suicide terrorists are psychologically normal people who become willing to sacrifice their lives because of their powerful commitment to the cause, we would expect the following: (1) Individuals would not decide to volunteer for a suicide attack until after organizational entry. (2) Individuals who ultimately became suicide terrorists would have a history of steadily increasing involvement in other terrorist activities and attacks. Their final service to the organization would be the culmination of their fully forged commitment; something that started small and gradually grew stronger and stronger over time. By contrast, if many suicide terrorists (a) decide to volunteer for a suicide attack prior to organizational entry, or (b) have limited or nonexistent histories of prior involvement in terrorist activities and attacks, that would strongly suggest that they are suicidal.Footnote 2
There is little doubt about where the evidence falls. It appears that the vast majority of volunteer suicide terrorists decide to die on their own, and then partner up with a terrorist organization to obtain the explosive device. They are “self-selected,” as I emphasize in Chapter 2, or “self-seekers” as Atran phrases it.
For many or most of them, the suicide attack is their first and only participation in a terrorist attack. Their commitment to the cause does not evolve as genuine psychological commitment usually does: gradually and incrementally. Instead, they only demonstrate an interest in one aspect of terrorist participation: carrying out an attack that will end in their own death.
Skeptics might argue that terrorist organizations are different from the vast majority of organizations in human history, and they do not need to wait for organizational entry before transforming ordinary people into volunteer suicide attackers. After all, widespread terrorist propaganda leads hundreds of millions of people to sympathize with terrorist causes, so it could also prompt individuals or small groups of friends to essentially self-radicalize and decide to become suicide terrorists, then seek out organizational support.
But this possibility would provide even more reason to doubt the conventional wisdom about those who volunteer for suicide attacks. As Funder wisely observes, “analyses of suicide terrorists often commit the error of overestimating the importance of situational causes of behavior and underestimating dispositional causes, such as underlying pathology.” By what rationale could we primarily attribute the behavior of suicide terrorists to social and situational psychology, if – when exposed to a certain stimulus, along with hundreds of millions of other people – fewer than 300 blow themselves up each year? In this scenario, would the stimulus be the best primary explanation for the behavior, or would it be the traits of the individual or small group?
R5.3. How would organizations maximize the publicity benefits of having psychologically normal suicide attackers?
Gibbs, Güss & Tuason, and Weiss & Weiss accurately point out that terrorist organizations can potentially benefit from the publicity generated by their suicide attackers, which can be used to rally popular support. But this greatly depends on the public reputations and motives of these so-called “martyrs.” As former terrorist leader Sheikh Yusuf ibn Salih al-‘Uyayri declared in his influential essay, “The Islamic Ruling on the Permissibility of Self-Sacrificial Operations: Suicide or Martyrdom,” the attacker's intention must be “sincere and pure – to raise the Word of Allāh, and benefit the Jihād” (p. 56). Otherwise, he warned, “the deed is worthless” (Uyayri Reference Uyayri2000, p. 57).
If suicide terrorists are psychologically normal and solely influenced to volunteer by social psychological factors, terrorist organizations should have no more trouble finding high-quality recruits who would eventually blow themselves up than Milgram (Reference Milgram1963) had finding successful businessmen who would deliver electric shocks, or Adolf Hitler had finding straight-A students who would become Nazis. So we would expect terrorist organizations to attempt to maximize the publicity benefits by only sponsoring individuals whose reputations are above reproach. After all, these individuals would become the literal “poster boys” for the organization: their faces would be on the murals, calendars, key chains, posters, postcards, pennants, and websites used for recruiting purposes.
As Atran (Reference Atran2010b) details, terrorist leaders recognize this logic and claim to operate in this manner. He was personally told by a senior Hamas organizer that “our youth are running to martyrdom. With so many, we must carefully select, case by case, who has courage and purity of heart” (p. 353). Atran (Reference Atran2010b) was also told that they screen out anyone who fails to meet the highest of standards: “If a youth knocks saying he wants to be a martyr to get sex in paradise or money for his family, we slam the door” (p. 364).
And when he personally interviewed Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Hamed al-Betawi, Atran (Reference Atran2010b) was told “Those who undertake martyrdom actions are not hopeless or poor, but are the best of our people, educated, successful” (p. 362). Poster boys. “Who wants to be a martyr?” Atran (Reference Atran2010b) asked him. “Our martyrs are the purest of the pure,” Betawi replied. “Learned often in mathematics or engineering, even the arts, they are not hopeless. They are full of personal possibilities. But they have even greater hope for their people. Yehia Ayash was an engineer when he led the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades [Hamas military wing]. Qais Adwan was president of the Student Council at Al-Najah University, which has twelve thousand students. Mohamed Al-Hanbali was a student at the College of Engineering, and his father is a millionaire. His father said to him, ‘I will marry you to the most beautiful girls in Nablus.’ And his son replied, ‘No Father, I will marry in heaven, my mission is to defend my people and my religion’” (pp. 363–64).
At first, this sounds like possible evidence that some suicide terrorists are psychologically normal. But on a whim, I googled Ayash, Adwan, and Hanbali – and I did not discover that they were suicidal. I discovered that they never became suicide terrorists at all! They each made the same common-sense decision that other relatively normal people make when they want to fight for the cause: Instead of volunteering to blow themselves up for an attack typified by uncertainty of success and minimal impact, they realized they could accomplish more by continuing to live. So they became bomb makers and suicide attack dispatchers.
It is unclear whether Betawi intentionally mislead Atran (Reference Atran2010b) or not. But it seems crystal clear that Atran was asking about who wants to become a suicide bomber, and it is precisely in this context – a chapter about suicide terrorism titled “Martyrdom 101” – that he presents this information in his book.
More broadly, it is apparent that terrorist organizations do not only sponsor suicide attackers whose reputations are above reproach, as would be expected if these attackers were psychologically normal and solely volunteering due to social psychological techniques. If that were true, it would have been impossible for me to find the 136 individuals listed in my book's Appendix A – especially given the limited information available. Instead, these organizations have often relied on volunteers who have admitted to being suicidal or who were struggling with widely known mental health problems, personal crises, or trauma – along with raped women, beaten teenagers, heroin addicts, and other coerced souls – despite the public relations risks. Why? Because they had to. They did not have some long line of newly minted poster boys waiting to blow themselves up.
R6. What contradictory evidence exists?
In the past, many scholars have argued that suicide terrorists are not suicidal, and some of the commentators have cited them quite liberally. I believe that in the book, I have already shown that the previous scholarship on this subject is greatly limited by misunderstandings about suicide terrorists and the nature of suicidal behavior. If there is something persuasive that I have missed, I encourage my critics to point it out. For, in the meantime, even the evidence from my challengers increasingly seems to support my position.
For instance, Brym (Reference Brym2007) once declared that “virtually all suicide bombers are psychologically stable” (p. 40). More recently, Brym and Araj (Reference Brym and Araj2012) have acknowledged that despite the inevitable limitations of what symptoms family members may recognize, those they interviewed provided evidence that 24% of the suicide bombers in their recent study “manifested outward signs of depression or experienced personal crises that could have led to depression” (p. 437).
Similarly, a decade ago, Atran (Reference Atran2003) insisted that “Overall, suicide terrorists exhibit no socially dysfunctional attributes (fatherless, friendless, or jobless) or suicidal symptoms. They do not vent fear of enemies or express ‘hopelessness’ or a sense of ‘nothing to lose’ for lack of life alternatives” (p. 1537). Now, however, Atran acknowledges that after 9/11, suicide terrorists were largely drawn from people whom I could easily imagine becoming suicidal after experiencing crises or coercion: “children, wayward women, petty criminals,” “‘lost’ youth,” “funneled schoolboys from poor rural madrassas,” “unmarried, marginal, less-educated young men,” and “young adults in transitional stages in life: students, immigrants, between jobs or girlfriends, away from family seeking a new home.” To me, this last description – “between jobs or girlfriends, away from family seeking a new home” – sounds like just another way of saying jobless, loveless, or homeless.
Atran's fieldwork has also helped expose the suicidality of some suicide terrorists. I had no idea, for instance, that Mohammed Herbawi's mother personally told Atran (Reference Atran2010b) that she thought overwhelming stress may have led to her son's suicide attack: “Maybe it was too hard on him, all of it” (p. 408). Nor did I know that well before Jamal Ahmidan died in a suicidal explosion in Madrid, he regularly abused alcohol and hard drugs, sometimes broke down in tears lamenting his guilt over past crimes, and would tell friends in reference to a likely drug overdose, that “If I die, I deserve it” (Atran Reference Atran2010b, p. 185).
Again, there are more than 90 million people who believe that suicide attacks are justified, and tens of thousands of rank-and-file terrorists, but in recent years, fewer than 300 suicide attackers have blown themselves up annually. Something makes that tiny minority behaviorally different.
I have offered an explanation and supported it in a multitude of ways. If the skeptics believe the difference is courage or willpower, they must provide evidence that suicide attackers are braver or stronger-willed than other terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. If they believe the difference is altruism, as Tobeña & Vilarroya suggest, they must provide evidence that suicide attackers tend to be more altruistic than other terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. If they believe the difference is strength of ideology, as Sela & Shackelford claim, they must provide evidence that suicide attackers believe more powerfully in God or paradise or the political cause than their counterparts. And if they believe the difference is exclusively social or situational factors, as Atran and McCauley contend, they must provide evidence that suicide terrorists are influenced by social or situational factors that do not lead to voluntary, coerced, or escapist suicides, and then also show that other terrorists and terrorist sympathizers are not similarly exposed to these factors. We share a common desire for the truth, so if a better explanation than mine exists, I encourage someone to go and find it.
R7. Why do the potential evolutionary benefits of self-sacrifice for kin fail to explain suicide terrorists' behavior?
Gray & Dickins, Fink & Trivers, and Qirko each raise the possibility that kin selection could explain suicide terrorists' behavior. It could also potentially explain the behavior of kamikaze pilots and others who claim to sacrifice their lives for a greater good. This notion is based on the seminal work of Hamilton (Reference Hamilton1964), who proposed that a gene producing the behavioral tendency to sacrifice one's life to save close kin could prosper in the gene pool because the death of the sacrificer would be offset by the survival of multiple relatives who carry copies of that same gene.
There are a few problems with extending this to suicide terrorists. The first is that it is inconsistent with the rest of their behavior. If they were genuinely attempting to sacrifice their lives to save their family members, we would expect them to say so. We would expect there to be widespread stories of heartfelt goodbyes between suicide attackers and their families, where the rationale for the necessary sacrifice was explained, and hugs and tears exchanged. This would be similar to what happens when soldiers go off to war, only more so. In cases where personal goodbyes would be too painful, we would expect suicide terrorists to leave behind letters expressing similar reasoning and sentiments.
But the reality appears to be quite different. Suicide terrorists rarely tell their families what they are planning; more often, they just disappear one day, never to return. Most of the time, their parents are left devastated and struggle with overwhelming pain and regret (Atran Reference Atran2010b). In some cases, the families never get answers about what happened to their loved one, and suffer years of uncertainty. When letters are occasionally left behind, they tend to be filled with generic terrorist propaganda or pleas for forgiveness, rather than explanations of how the sacrifice would directly benefit the family.
Sacrificing your life to help your family only makes sense if you believe that your family would be better off with you dead. You would have to believe that the pain and anguish they would suffer from your death, perhaps for years, plus all future contributions you could make to help them in the coming decades, would be outweighed by the benefits of your death. Empirical research suggests that people who come to this type of conclusion are generally struggling with perceived burdensomeness and are at high risk of committing conventional suicide (Joiner et al. Reference Joiner, Pettit, Walker, Voelz, Cruz, Rudd and Lester2002; Joiner Reference Joiner2005). Along these lines, Lester has documented evidence of perceived burdensomeness among female suicide bombers.
Qirko suggests an additional possibility: that suicide terrorists sacrifice their lives to save fictive kin, such as their brotherhood of fellow terrorists. However, as discussed earlier, many suicide attackers are not even part of a terrorist organization when they first decide that they want to blow themselves up. To them, members of the organization are essentially strangers, not some close-knit surrogate family. Furthermore, in cases where small groups of friends all decide to carry out suicide attacks, the notion that they are committing self-sacrifice for fictive kin makes even less evolutionary sense, because no one is saved; they all end up dead. As Mandel rightly suggests, these suicide pacts among small groups of fictive “brothers” are likely characterized by increased coercive peer pressure to die and increased fear of shame and dishonor for anyone who objects.
Although theories of kin selection and inclusive fitness might seem more applicable to the kamikaze pilots of Japan, I argue that as with certain suicide terrorists, coercive pressures led to their suicides. Atran is skeptical, and seems to believe that I attribute their coercion exclusively to physical punishment. That would be a significant oversimplification; at its core, coercion is a psychological strategy for which physical pain is just one potential tool. Ultimately, people commit coerced suicides because they feel pressure to do so and fear the anticipated consequences of resistance or refusal. These consequences can certainly include things like shame and dishonor.
Fully exposing the sacrificial myths of the kamikaze might require a book-length treatment. But if scholars continue to believe the kamikaze pilots were voluntarily sacrificing their lives for the cause, then let us briefly put that position in perspective. Japan is the culture of seppuku – suicide by self-disembowelment – which for hundreds of years was practiced by men and women who would kill themselves to supposedly die with honor rather than live with shame. It is also a culture with a notorious tradition of mass suicide.
Advocates of the conventional wisdom about the kamikaze would have us believe that Japan is arguably the most suicide-prone culture in human history, and also the culture most famous for heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that these two facts are a complete coincidence – unrelated to one another. The polite way to label that view would be “highly statistically improbable.” In addition, they would presumably have us believe that in Okinawa in 1945, the Japanese military handed out grenades to their own citizens and ordered them to kill themselves, because suicide was considered better than surrender – but that the same military during the same time period would not coerce its own members to commit suicide, even when direct military benefits were possible.
The evidence I have uncovered (to be published at a future date) increasingly suggests that much like suicide terrorists and kamikaze pilots, many self-immolators are suicidal, due to a combination of individual, social, and situational factors. As Lester rightly points out, most people who self-immolate are not actually monks, despite common depictions to the contrary. And of course, even monks can become suicidal. Beit-Hallahmi insists that we should be not restrained by fear of criticism when tracking down the truth about these socially defined heroes, and that accurate psychological assessments should be our primarily goal. I fully agree. As he explains, there is a great deal of psychological research that suggests that many behaviors commonly perceived as self-sacrifice are actually driven by hopelessness, devaluation of the self, devaluation of the world, and suicidal desires.
Along these lines, in the Précis, I propose that mentally healthy human beings with time and options may have a “hardwired survival instinct” that keeps them from committing intentionally fatal self-sacrifice. Qirko suggests that this phrase is an oversimplification, and he is correct. It would have been more precise to use the plural, “hardwired survival instincts,” because we have so many different genetic tendencies that have evolved to keep us alive. It is for this reason that in The Selfish Gene, Dawkins (Reference Dawkins1976) refers to organisms as “survival machines.”
Nevertheless, intentional self-sacrifice sometimes does occur in nature, and in these cases it is indeed because of kin selection and the benefits for one's genes, as Hamilton (Reference Hamilton1964) explained. My favorite example comes from worker honeybees, which essentially commit suicide attacks when they sting nearby threats to the hive. This is self-sacrifice by nature's design. The sacrificial venom injection process that costs the worker bees their lives also makes their stings more effective, and thus increases their ability to protect their kin.
It would be easy to make the logical leap that if suicide attacks are normal for honeybees, they could be normal for human beings as well. However, there are many important differences between honeybees and other self-sacrificing insects, on the one hand, and mammals, on the other. As I will detail in a future paper (currently in progress), evidence from biologists increasingly suggests that although many mammals take significant risks to protect their kin, protect their territory, and pursue other goals, very few mammals, if any, have evolved to commit intentional self-sacrifice. In the most extreme circumstances, they actually appear to have a behavioral tendency to let their offspring die, if necessary, in order to prioritize their own survival – which then allows for future reproductive opportunities and future contributions to more kin.
And so we come full circle. The broader explanation for why most or all mammals do not seem to commit intentional self-sacrifice appears similar to the explanation for why most terrorists do not carry out suicide attacks. Intentional self-sacrifice comes at too much of a cost to be worthwhile. Even for those who are “fully committed” to their genetic prospects or the cause, such acts would eliminate all opportunities for future contributions. For the non-pathological mouse, monkey, lion, gorilla, or human, there may be too much uncertainty that the benefit of intentionally dying to help your genes or ideological cause tomorrow would outweigh the benefits of helping your genes or ideological cause in all of your remaining days. Even if skeptics question these contentions, I believe they would have to acknowledge that it is primarily among insects, not mammals, that we see an evolved tendency for fatal self-sacrifice.
Ultimately, it is undisputed that human beings behave in the manner I contend: killing themselves and others for personal reasons, while claiming to be motivated by some higher purpose. It is unclear whether any human beings actually behave in the manner that the conventional wisdom presumes: planning in advance to intentionally die for an ideological cause, despite being mentally healthy and having the time and opportunity to seek alternatives.
R8. How can this knowledge be applied to counterterrorism strategies?
A new psychological understanding of suicide terrorists should prompt new ways of stopping these attackers. In the book, I suggest that we should be able to predict and prevent suicide attacks more effectively than ever before. It would have been easier just to stop there, and to leave the burden of applied psychology to someone else; but that would have seemed like intellectual dereliction of duty.
That is why, in Appendix C, I tried to apply my research on conventional, coerced, escapist, and indirect suicide terrorists to counterterrorism strategies. For each type, I outline warning signs, level of training and combat experience, attack style, strategies for on-site negotiation of surrender and arrest, and strategies for interrogation. Egan observes that overall, my approach is “creative, broad, and refreshing,” but notes that some suicide terrorists may defy simple categorization, and suggests that these recommendations have not been sufficiently tested. I agree on all points – especially the first! But joking aside, Appendix C is labeled “behavioral expectations and security countermeasures” specifically because I wanted to call attention to its largely untested nature.
If my son or daughter was on the front lines and at risk of contact with a suicide bomber, I would recommend this typology as an absolute “must-read.” I believe it is based on a more accurate understanding of suicide terrorists' psychology than security officials have ever had before. At the same time, rigorous testing and future refinement of its recommendations are definitely warranted – I would never dispute that for a second. Along these lines, Bobadilla suggests that vulnerable narcissism may be particularly common among the indirectly suicidal types who are likely to commit the most risky and dangerous attacks, so that could certainly be another important warning sign. And as Thomsen, Obaidi, Sheehy-Skeffington, Kteily, & Sidanius (Thomsen et al.) outline, social dominance orientation or counter-dominance could help explain some of these types of suicide terrorists' behavior as well.
In the book, I also offer recommendations for identifying suicide attackers before they strike. Atran and Qirko each suggest that recognizing at-risk individuals may be too challenging to be worthwhile. Instead, Qirko argues that targeting terrorist organizations for destruction should be a higher priority; it seems like a more efficient way to stop large numbers of suicide attackers who depend on organizational support. I completely agree with this prioritization and would simply add that we should do both. The benefits of defeating violent terrorist organizations have always been self-evident. Developing new counterterrorism strategies does not require that we discard the old ones.
More broadly, I propose that by exposing the myth of martyrdom and widely publicizing that suicide terrorists are suicidal, we could potentially leverage existing stigmas against suicide to deter future volunteers. This recommendation is explained in detail in Chapter 8 of the book and elsewhere (see Lankford Reference Lankford2013b). Rottman & Kelemen agree that this may be effective – social stigma often functions as a powerful deterrent, as demonstrated by widespread prohibitions against behaviors like cannibalism and pedophilia, and the relative scarcity of those practices. But Rottman & Kelemen also raise a very important concern: emphasizing this stigma could potentially exacerbate the shame felt by people struggling with suicidal thoughts. I fully agree that this is a difficult challenge, and think the goal should be to support useful stigmas against suicide and suicide terrorism, while also reducing counterproductive stigmas against mental health treatment. Asking for help should be considered a sign of strength and no reason for shame; struggling with adversity day after day should be considered brave and admirable perseverance. But giving up on life altogether should be considered socially unforgiveable – especially if you masquerade as a holy martyr.
Ultimately, as Gibbs and Rottman & Kelemen suggest, improving the psychological treatment available to the populations from which most suicide terrorists come seems like something we can all agree upon. It could potentially lead to a reduction in the number of volunteers for suicide attacks. And even skeptics who doubt this benefit could find little fault with a more mentally healthy world.
