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Psychology Professor Studies Motivations for Terrorism

Anthony Lemieux, PhD, is a social psychologist whose research on terrorism is used to guide American government policy decisions.

If you've ever wondered what would motivate someone to become a terrorist, Purchase College psychology professor Anthony Lemieux is the guy to ask.

This semester, Lemieux is teaching an upper-level course on the psychology of terrorism. The class analyzes acts of terrorism throughout history, as well as the use of propaganda and social media by contemporary terrorist organizations.

The course is attended not only by students at Purchase, but through a web-based Internet learning system called Moodle, a group of students in Ireland are also able to attend the class virtually.

"We've got a neat paradigm where we're using technology and engaging in topics that are crossing cultures," he said. "There's definitely cross-cultural differences, but what this course allows us to do is look at the topics from the different perspectives of the students."

Lemieux, who has been teaching at Purchase since 2004, explained that students are interested in the use of media for recruitment and have "a deep curiosity about suicide terrorism because it's increasingly prevalent and really hard to wrap our heads around."

"These topics really engage students because they're current, timely and very interesting," he said.

Lemieux's recent research, which is supported by the Department of Homeland Security through the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism, focuses on understanding what motivates a person to commit a terrorist act.

In one study, he used online surveys to assess how people from the United States, Turkey and Malaysia would hypothetically respond to political grievances under different circumstances.

The participants were to answer the questions from the perspective of a fictional oppressed minority group and answer the likelihood that they'd engage in peaceful or violent political action based on four vignettes.

Lemieux found that the participants had a relatively low likelihood of choosing terrorism, but those who were subject to high-grievance situations were more likely to choose some sort of political action than those in low-grievance scenarios.

What do these findings show? According to Lemieux, they indicate that "grievances matter."

He noted that the Egyptian protests that were successful in ousting Hosni Mubarak from his presidency are an example of the power of grievances as a motivator for political change.

"If you're watching the current news about how these protests have led to Mubarak's resignation, these grievances really do have the potential to cause action," he said. "So the question now is, what types of grievances have the most effect?"

Lemieux said that the type of science-based research he conducts can have a significant effect on government policy.

"The goal of the research is to help inform the fundamental knowledge base that the people who are making policy decisions have to work with," he explained. "The Department of Homeland Security has a particular mission to protect the homeland. To do that requires an understanding of the phenomena and what we're trying to address, so that their work always has an applied focus.

"At the end of the day, it's important for us to figure out how to make this research relevant and applicable in the policy and intelligence communities."

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