Several of the major theoretical perspectives within psychology
can contribute to
our understanding of the September 11 attacks and their aftermath.
An argument
derived from the psychodynamic approach suggests that terrorism
may be a prod-
uct of ambivalence rather than anger. From an evolutionary standpoint,
the
resentment that breeds terrorism, and the altruism that has arisen
in its wake, may be seen as two sides of the same coin. The decision
theoretic approach suggests that in the attempt to prevent future
terrorist attacks, we face a seeming tradeoff between civil rights
and civil liberties. Finally, the personality development
approach suggests that difficult times can help forge new moral
leaders.
Traditional personality theories have been ambitious in scope,
simultaneously
aspiring to understand individual differences, cultural comparisons,
and universals
of human nature--the ways in which we are "like all other men, like
some other
men, and like no other man" (Kluckhohn, Murray, & Schneider,
1953). These three
levels of analysis are a convenient framework to begin considering
the role of psy-
chology in the tragic events of September 11.
At the level of the individual, we might strive to understand the
personality of
Mohammed Atta, alleged to have piloted the first plane to slam into
the World
Trade Center, or that of New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose
leadership in
the wake of the crisis was widely hailed. But while biography is
compelling, it is
easy to overestimate the role of the individual in shaping history
(Boring, 1950),
just as it is easy to neglect situational factors in understanding
behavior (Ross,
Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977).
The author would like to thank Tim Steigenga and Julie Earles for
the comments on an earlier draft of this essay.
Similarly, at the level of culture, we might strive to understand
the strain of
Islamic fundamentalism of the al-Qaida group, as well as the preoccupations
that
were the stuff of American lives prior to the tragedy. There is
no doubt that many of
us in the West have little understanding of the many variants of
Islam. But while
the psychological study of culture can illuminate, it risks, particularly
in the current
mood, a reification of seeming differences, and can too readily
lead to a deper-
sonalization of the other.
It is the third level of analysis that seems most compelling in
the wake of Sep-
tember 11. The traditional personality theories of the last century
were, in large
part, a response to world wars and economic struggles.
In the face of today's challenges, it seems appropriate to again
consider the nature of human nature. In the following paragraphs,
I introduce a few ways in which four psychological theories or perspectives
can shed light on the attacks and their aftermath.
From Psychodynamics: The Importance of Ambivalence and Anxiety
What are the roots of the hatred against America? Though Osama bin
Laden has not accepted responsibility for the events of September
11, he remains the prime suspect as the instigator of the attack,
and several years prior to the attack, he issued a declaration of
war against America. The rationale behind his fatwa was ostensibly
the continued U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, which has
been characterized as an occupation of holy land by infidels. But
the phenomenon to be understood is not the fatwa itself, but the
willingness of his followers to adhere to it.
The key lesson of the psychodynamic perspective is that we may not
be aware of the motives governing our behavior, a lesson that has
been reinforced by innumerable studies in experimental psychology
(e.g., Erdelyi, 1985; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). So while the
fatwa and, behind it, the presence of American troops on sacred
soil may be the conscious motive in the minds of the followers of
Osama bin Laden, other motives may also be salient in energizing
anti-American sentiment.
Even the strongest critic of American foreign policy must acknowledge
that there
is no necessary causal link between the actions of our government
and the willing-
ness of terrorists to give their own lives while taking the lives
of others. There must
be deeper motives at play. The present conflict can be usefully
understood as a conflict within individual minds as well as a conflict
between cultures. The psychodynamic approach and
For example, Freud's (1920/1975) death instinct was a response to
the carnage of the Great War.
Allport's (1937) radical individualism can be seen as the antithesis
of the deindividuating fascism then ascendant in Germany and elsewhere.
Fromm (1941) suggested that human distress was attributable, in
part, to imperfections in society.
It should be noted that Prince Sultan Air Base, which houses the
majority of American, British, and French air troops in Saudi Arabia,
is at least 500 miles away from the holy sites of Mecca and Medina.
Islam are largely in agreement here. Mohammed spoke of a
greater and lesser
jihad; the greater is the struggle against one's own temptation,
the lesser is the
protection of Islam against perceived enemies. The greater jihad
is infinitely more
difficult, so our attackers turn away from it; rather than acknowledge
the strength
of their own temptation, they struggle instead against what they
see as a land of
unveiled women and unabashed greed. The ostensive moralism and righteousness
of the terrorists appears, like much moralism and righteousness,
to be a reaction
formation against an inner battle.
The psychodynamic approach can potentially shed light on the victims
as
well as the instigators of terrorism. Terror management theory (Pyszczynski,
Greenberg, & Solomon, 1997) suggests that a primary human motive
is to reduce
the anxiety that accompanies awareness of our mortality. An exposure
to death and
an increase in the salience of mortality weakens the cultural anxiety
buffer and
leads to a range of actions to protect self-esteem. These include
"more favorable
evaluations of those who exemplify cultural values . . . behavioral
avoidance of
outgroup members . . . increased conformity to cultural standards
. . . and increased
difficulties and emotional distress when behaving counter to cultural
norms . . ."
(Pyszczynski et al., 1997, p. 3). These effects anticipated by terror
management
theory appear to parallel those observed in American attitudes in
the weeks since
September 11.
When the psychodynamic approach moves from conjectures about human
nature to distal attempts to portray unique individuals, it is on
shakier ground. Dur-
ing World War II, official reports by the OSS ascribed a number
of pathologies to
Hitler that were later found not to exist (Hastie & Dawes, 2001).
Today, the limited
work on terrorism and personality suggests that "most terrorists
do not demonstrate
serious psychopathology" (Post, 1990, p. 31). Certainly the functionaries
of terror,
whose deadly contributions consisted of the analysis of airline
schedules or the
clinical refinement of anthrax, are probably disturbingly unremarkable
(Arendt,
1963). It seems that if the psychodynamic approach is to help us
understand the
psychology of terror, it will do so not by showing how terrorists
are different from
us, but how they are the same.
According to a number of news reports, several men who knew of the
impending attacks are alleged to have spent hundreds of dollars
on drinks and lap dances at a Florida strip club just prior to the
attacks, all the while ranting about the evils of America (Miniter,
2001). Further, the unusual amount of short selling of airline stocks
on September 10 suggests that individuals with knowledge of the
attacks were, at the very least, comfortable in the ways of the
Wall Street they sought to destroy (Radlauer, 2001). These allegations,
if true, are consistent with the argument that ambivalence, not
anger, was at the root of the attacks.
From Evolutionary Psychology: Envy and Altruism
The September 11 attack was an attack against the world's only superpower,
whose cultural might extends to or threatens every corner of the
globe. For much of
the Third World, the lesson of September 11 is that there must be
". . . more global
reflection on the multiple inequalities and injustices that feed
impotence and
desperation . . . the battle that must be waged is the battle against
the silent bomb
of hunger, poverty, and social exclusion, a bomb that is produced
by the structural
injustice, both economic and political, that is suffered by the
majority of the
world's peoples" (Menchú Tum et al, 2001).
One implication of this analysis is that America is vulnerable to
attack because
of its relative wealth. Yet why should relative wealth lead to terrorism?
One answer
draws on evolutionary psychology: A predisposition to resentment
may have been
effectively selected during our ancestral history. If we faced profound
scarcity
during significant and lasting portions of our history, then there
may have been sur-
vival advantage to parents who channeled their limited resources
to a single child,
while letting other children wither or fend for themselves (Scheper-Hughes,
1985). If
early humans faced Sophie's Choice not once, but repeatedly,
over many genera-
tions, the children who survived would have been not merely the
strongest, but also
the most vigilant against potential sibling advantage. The children
who survived are
our ancestors, and those of our attackers, and we are all equipped
with a sensitivity to
unequal treatment. If it is human nature to be sensitive to the
distribution of
resources, then perhaps the seeds of terrorism lie in the resentment
bred from
inequality.
The argument that inequality breeds resentment does not require
evolutionary
metatheory. For example, Lewin, in his Principles of Topological
Psychology
(1936), recognized that inequalities lead to unstable boundaries,
and Feather
(1999) has described the human tendency to resent "tall poppies"
(high achievers),
particularly when these individuals are seen as undeserving of their
high status.
When considered in this light, an evolutionary explanation of resentment
may
appear to be superfluous. The real strength of the evolutionary
approach may lie in
its ability to illuminate an additional part of the story of September
11, and that is
the altruism we observed in the wake of the tragedy.
A number of evolutionary explanations of altruism have been advanced
(Krebs, 1998). If we are equipped to be vigilant against unequal
treatment, it seems
that we should be similarly equipped to perceive and respond to
the needs of others.
Where resources are not scarce, it is in our genetic interest for
our siblings to sur-
vive and prosper. If our ancestors faced competition, they also
faced innumerable
problems whose successful resolution demanded thoughtfulness and
cooperation.
An evolutionary basis for altruism, if it exists, would not imply
that heroism is reducible to mere reflex. The firefighter who climbed
the stairs of the World Trade Center as hundreds descended, seeking
The human proclivity to be simultaneously vigilant
against unfairness yet
ready to cooperate are two sides of the same coin, as both are products
of a social
history shaped by the need for reciprocity (Tooby & Cosmides,
1992). This same
need for reciprocity has been voiced repeatedly by the leaders of
America and its
allies in the weeks since the tragedy. In the language of iterative
prisoner's dilemma
games, reciprocity is a sound strategy, as a failure to reciprocate
allows further
victimization. But from another perspective, retribution for the
sake of retribution
alone is ultimately irrational, as it is an attempt to recapture
a sunk cost (Hastie &
Dawes, 2001). We cannot recapture the lives that have been lost;
we must focus
only on the prevention of future deaths.
From Decision Theory: The Tension between Civil Rights
and Civil Liberties
The game-theoretic or economic analysis of the last paragraph can
be
extended to a consideration of the costs and benefits of different
cultural responses
to the challenge before us. In a five-week period after the initial
attacks, there were
more than 170 reports of hate crimes against individuals perceived
to be Arabs and
Muslims within the United States. This statistic is surely only
the tip of the iceberg:
For every hate crime that has been reported, there have been a hundred
slights,
and more than slights, levied against women, men, and children because
of their
foreign appearance, their foreign names, or their religious beliefs.
The story is not
a new one, but it remains important, for these individuals are also
casualties of
the war against terrorism. Decision theory, in particular Signal
Detection Theory
(SDT; Swets, Tanner & Birdsall, 1961) can be used to shed some
light on the civil
liberties and civil rights issues at hand.
In SDT, the problem is to detect a signal of varying strength against
a back-
ground of noise, whose strength may also vary. The two distributions
(signal +
noise and noise alone) are overlapping. Above a given threshold,
a stimulus is
identified, rightly or wrongly, as a "signal." Below this threshold,
the stimulus is
treated as noise. This can be represented schematically, as in Figure
1.
A decision threshold (ß, represented by the vertical line) divides
each of the
two curves. Moving from left to right across the diagram, the threshold
divides the
"noise" curve into areas of Correct Rejection and False
Positive. Similarly, the
threshold divides the rightmost "signal + noise" curve into areas
of Miss and Hit.
As the curves become distant, the proportion of the curves in the
areas of False
Positive and Miss become reduced. If the curves are
not overlapping, one could
perfectly distinguish the two distributions. Conversely, as the
curves approach
in vain to save other lives, did not act because of a biological
imperative. Behavior is not inherited, but predispositions may be,
and the predisposition to help, though too rarely acted upon, is
nonetheless part of human nature.
each other, the number of errors increases. The distance
between the two curves,
symbolized as d
, can be understood as the amount of information available
for
distinguishing the two groups.
For any given d', there is a direct tradeoff between the two types
of errors. As
the decision threshold moves to the left, the proportion of Misses
will decline,
but the proportion of False Positives will increase. Similarly,
as the threshold
moves to the right, a reduction in False Positives obtains,
but only at the cost of an
increase in Misses. The optimal threshold will be a function
of both the perceived
relative frequency of the two distributions and the relative costs
of the two types
of errors. If the signal is common, or if the cost of a Miss
is perceived to be particu-
larly great, the decision threshold should move in a more conservative
direction.
Moving to the present problem, the two distributions represent "nonterrorists"
(noise) and "terrorists" (signal + noise). A Miss represents
the failure to recognize a
terrorist and the potential for cataclysm. A False Positive represents
the mis-
identification of a nonterrorist, the mistaken detainment of an
individual. But
because terrorists are, presumably, rare, the number of nonterrorists
dwarfs that
of terrorists, and any decision threshold will lead to more False
Positives than Hits.
For every terrorist correctly identified, many innocent individuals
will be detained
and suffer the slights of social mistrust. Because the cost of a
Miss is now prohibi-
tively high, many in our culture appear willing to pay this price--particularly
since
the cost will be disproportionately borne by others.
It is crucial for psychologists to remind the broader culture of
the cost of False
Positives--the cost of mistrust and social stigma and all
that they engender. But we
should keep in mind the cost of Misses as well, and ask ourselves
if an elevated
decision threshold is in the social interest.
The tradeoff between Misses and False
Positives occurs only for a particular level of information;
with more information,
fewer False Positives will be detected for a given proportion
of Hits. But informa-
tion itself has a cost: Americans value their privacy, and may be
unwilling to sur-
render the types of information--such as records of credit card
purchases, library
books borrowed, and Internet sites visited--which could conceivably
increase the
ability of security personnel to identify terrorists. In the absence
of such informa-
tion, security personnel will continue to work from the weak and
debilitating cues
of surname and apparent race, and Islamic Americans will bear a
disproportionate
price for the terrorism we fear. A Signal Detection analysis suggests
that, if our
society is to respond at all to the risk of terrorism, we face a
tradeoff between civil
liberties, such as the right to privacy, and civil rights, such
as freedom from racial
profiling and other forms of prejudgment from superficial cues.
From Studies of the Self and Development: Trauma Can Spur Maturation
The self-concept is defined in part by the groups to which we belong
(Tajfel,
1982). Terrorism is not about conflicting world views, but conflicting
self-views.
Among the men who instigated this terror, there is the belief that
America seeks the
destruction of their androcentric culture, their religion and, in
a sense, their identi-
ties. Among the women, men, and children who are victims of terror,
there is now a
reexamination of who we are and, in many of us, a reaffirmation
or reexamination
of that part of the self that is identified with country.
Psychology is more than the study of psychopathology, and while
we may suf-
fer more from depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders
now than we did
before September 11, other personality changes may be equally profound
and con-
sequential. Dramatic events leave our quotidian scripts ineffective;
they strip away
our overlearned and automatic responses, and lead us to a reexamination
of our
priorities.
There is some evidence that environmental trauma can magnify preexisting
differences in personality (Caspi & Moffitt, 1993), possibly
including preexisting
differences in moral or ego development (Hy & Loevinger, 1996).
If trauma can
accelerate or retard maturation, then the horror that we have begun
to witness
should cause some to regress to self-protection while others progress
towards
greater thoughtfulness and compassion (Lanning, Edwards, Colucci,
Holm, Kane
& Rosenberg, 2001). The great nonviolent leaders of the 20th
century, Gandhi
and King, were galvanized by the struggles they faced. We can only
hope that
tomorrow, new leaders will be forged to help lead the peace effort,
and that they
will help us to understand and overcome human weakness through insight
and
understanding.
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KEVIN LANNING (lanning@fau.edu.) is book review
editor of ASAP and founder of http://Florida2002.org., a grassroots
political action group aimed at electorial reform. His primary interests
are in personality measurement and development.
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