From aggressiveness to terrorist violence: history of a foreseeable psychosocial pathology (Part II)

This work aims at analyzing the grounds and the ways in which terrorist behavior develops and settles. More specifically, this paper aims to answer the following questions: How does culture and ideology affect violent behavior? What distinguishes extremists who act violently from those who do not? How do terrorist organizations form and function? And which mechanisms and series of psychological processes lay behind these phenomena? Then, from a theoretical perspective, we tackle the sequential progression of the elements and variables which define the concept of terrorist violence. Decisive factors or factors which help lose inhibition towards terrorist violence are also included in the study. Furthermore, the role of ideology and culture is reviewed by studying the socialization processes which take part in the development and settlement of terrorists’ violent behavior. In addition, we deal with the question of whether socialization in combination with certain arguments which tend to justify and legitimate aggression actually favors the perpetration of violent terrorist actions.