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Psychological Process That Leads To Terrorism. The Research Paper

¶ … psychological process that leads to terrorism. The author achieves this through using a metaphor that narrows down a staircase that leads to the act of terrorism at the top of a building. This staircase usually leads to higher and higher floors, one remaining on a particular floor is dependent on doors, and spaces, which the person imagines, are going to open to them on that particular floor. This staircase of terrorism has a ground floor and five higher floors. A particular psychological process characterizes the behavior in each of the floor. The ground floor is occupied by majority of the people here what matters most are fairness and just treatment perceptions. People then climb to the first floor and they try out different floors in search of solutions to their perceived unjust treatment. The second floor is where the individuals have misplaced aggressions that influence their terrorist acts. Those who develop readiness to the physically displaced aggression and actively seek out opportunities then climb more steps. The third floor is all about moral engagement. Terrorist organizations come up due to parallel world that has parallel morality, which justifies this struggle to achieve the ideal society they have in mind through all means. After climbing to the fourth floor and one has entered the secret world there is minimal opportunity to leave the terrorist organization. The fifth step is whereby terrorists act and sidestep inhibitory mechanisms. In the final section of the article, the author highlights four policy recommendations that come from this staircase metaphor. These are prevention has to come first, there should be support contextualized democracy through procedural justice, there should be education against categorical us-Versus them thinking and finally the promotion of interobjectivity and justice ( Fathali, 2009). In...

Therefore, the article helps us understand the psychological process that leads to terrorism. Having gone through each steps of the staircase one is able to understand the mind of an individual at each of the stages. This assists in assessing a suspected terrorist when caught and finding out what level they are in. With this knowledge, it is possible to prevent the person from climbing further into the staircase. At the same time it also helps in coming up with policies with understanding of how terrorists think hence prevent more people from being recruited.
The United States government has a classification system where information the government considers as sensitive and requires protection is placed away from the public. This includes terrorism information. However, there is the Freedom of Information act is a law giving one the right to access information from federal government. This Act has made it possible for the government to exempt some classified, terrorism related information from release to the public. The government uses several methods to exempt this classified information such as issuing alerts on a probable terrorist attack plan, giving out information on a suspected terrorist or terrorist group for anyone that might have information to present to the government to assist in their apprehension.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is a federal law in the United States that prescribes procedures for the electronic and physical surveillance as well as the collection of foreign intelligence information between foreign powers and agents of those foreign powers, which includes both American citizens and…

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Fathali, M.(2009).The staircase to terrorism. A psychological exploration.
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