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Sanity in individuals vs groups...
Oct. 9th, 2004 02:26 am"In study after study, social psychologists have shown that it is the group with which a person identifies, not individual personality, that often determines behavior, says Robert Cialdini of Arizona State University....
Superficially, this is just peer pressure writ large. But as scientists are learning, the groups with which people identify are fungible.... To understand why people do as they do, you need to look at the group with which they identify at the time.
That realization is shaping scientists' understanding of suicide bombers, whose numbers have soared. Who are they? Not the cowardly psychopaths or sociopaths you might expect. "There is little to no evidence that they are mentally unbalanced," says Todd Stewart, a retired Air Force general who now directs the Program for International and Homeland Security at Ohio State University. From the Sept. 11 attackers to Palestinian suicide bombers to al Qaeda terrorists, they are educated, fairly well off and "not necessarily from fanatically religious families," he says."
( Full article )
Superficially, this is just peer pressure writ large. But as scientists are learning, the groups with which people identify are fungible.... To understand why people do as they do, you need to look at the group with which they identify at the time.
That realization is shaping scientists' understanding of suicide bombers, whose numbers have soared. Who are they? Not the cowardly psychopaths or sociopaths you might expect. "There is little to no evidence that they are mentally unbalanced," says Todd Stewart, a retired Air Force general who now directs the Program for International and Homeland Security at Ohio State University. From the Sept. 11 attackers to Palestinian suicide bombers to al Qaeda terrorists, they are educated, fairly well off and "not necessarily from fanatically religious families," he says."
( Full article )
