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these labels are consistently applied to the enemy group, cult members are conditioned
over time to think of the enemy group members as nonhuman.
The dehumanization phase separates extremist hate groups and terrorist groups from non-
violent cults, which do not dehumanize out groups. This phase also separates terrorist
groups from the organized militaries of democracies. Although democratic militaries use
depluralization, both forms of deindividuation, and dehumanization, their conditioning
applies to armed combatants only. Democratic militaries have strict rules of engagement
that preclude killing innocent noncombatants.24,25 Terrorist groups have no such restrictions
therefore their dehumanization conditioning applies to all members of the enemy group,
regardless of their combat status.
Although dehumanization rationalizes the mass killing of innocents by terrorist group
members, an additional phase of conditioning helps prevent the occurrence of after-action
killing remorse. Demonization, the fifth phase of the social psychological conditioning
process, occurs when cult members become convinced that the enemy is in league with the
devil and cosmic evil. Since most cultures define ―good‖ in comparison to ―evil,‖
demonization is a widely available conditioning strategy. Referring to the United States as
the ―Great Satan‖ is an example of cultural demonization. Since most cultures also
exonerate those who fight against and eradicate evil, demonization is simply channeled and
intensified by terrorist groups. If a terrorist group member is truly convinced that enemy old
people, women, and children are evil creatures, then killing them is not just easy it is
necessary, honorable, and rewarded by those the member respects.
In summary, it is worth reiterating that the five phases of social psychological conditioning
are reinforced by obedience pressure,26 which would not exist without the presence of the
charismatic leader. In fact, studies of cults demonstrate that many cults cease to exist once
the original founder or leader has been somehow removed from the group.27 Furthermore,
additional powerful group dynamics reinforce the five-phase conditioning process. As a
cohort of joiners simultaneously undergoes the phases of the conditioning process, they
become a highly cohesive group. They endure the hardships of training and indoctrination
together, and this shared experience enhances the perception that the group is now all and
everything in each joiner‘s life. As the group cohesion grows, the level of conformity
pressure that each joiner imposes on the others increases.28 Increasing cohesion and
increasing conformity pressure, along with the leader‘s initial extreme position, help make
each joiner‘s views more extreme than they were initially.29
In nonviolent cults, the ultimate threat underlying both obedience and conformity pressure
is rejection from the group. No one who joins a group voluntarily wants to be rejected from
it. Cult joiners especially do not want to be rejected from the cult group. They have usually
sacrificed greatly (giving up family and friends, a career, personal wealth) to join the group,
which increases their dependence on the group and therefore makes the possibility of
rejection by the group even more psychologically devastating.30 In violent cults and terrorist
groups, there is an additional and greater fear present: The fear of being killed or of having
family members killed by the group is a strong possibility if joiners are too deviant or
seriously consider leaving the group. Both of these fears have the effect of increasing joiner
obedience and conformity.
In essence, each joiner confronts powerful social dynamics that make the conditioning
almost impossible to resist. First, the seductive power of the charismatic leader entices the
joiner into the cult and helps the joiner develop cult values while the conditioning takes
effect. Second, the growing conformity power of the increasingly cohesive group reinforces
the power of the leader. Then consider that many joiners are often culturally preconditioned
in favor of the leader‘s vision, that the conditioning frequently occurs in isolated
environments, that there is an underlying fear of the consequences of deviance, and the

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2005, Page 24
power of the conditioning itself, and what becomes surprising is not that most terrorist
group joiners become conditioned to actually become terrorists, but that apparently some
do not.31
What have we learned that will help responsible authorities eradicate terrorism? The first
and most important conclusion to draw is the importance of leaders to terrorist groups. The
conditioning process centers on and builds from the power of the charismatic leader. If the
leader is eliminated, the group is greatly weakened. Considering terrorist groups as cults
supports strategies that focus on ―cutting the head off the snake.‖ Second, the more
isolated the environment in which the conditioning process occurs, the deeper and longer
lasting the results on group members. Aggressively disrupting the training camps wherever
we find them not only hurts terrorist groups operationally, it should greatly diminish the
effects of the conditioning. A third conclusion is specifically directed at the Fundamentalist
Islamic groups. These groups take advantage of the fact that Fundamentalist religious
schools (madrasas) have preconditioned a significant portion of Islamic male youths of
recent generations. Products of these schools are more malleable to terrorist group values
and missions. The results here support the idea of aggressively pursuing and eliminating the
funding sources for these schools.
These recommendations could be put into effect quickly. This is important because the
circumstances that create individuals susceptible to joining terrorist groups are not going to
change quickly for a long time there will be plenty of potential terrorist group recruits. I
hope that this article has demonstrated how easily some of these cult-susceptible recruits
can be conditioned into remorseless, on-demand killers of innocents. If the conditioning is
this powerful, then it might be worthwhile to focus our limited counterterrorism resources
on disrupting and possibly eliminating terrorist-creating conditioning processes.
Notes
1. Andrew Silke, ―Cheshire-Cat Logic: The Recurring Theme of Terrorist Abnormality in Psychological
Research,‖ Psychology, Crime and Law, vol. 4, 1998, pp. 51–59.
2. Martha Crenshaw, ―The Psychology of Terrorism: An Agenda for the 21st Century,‖ Political
Psychology, vol. 21, no. 2, June 2000, pp. 405–420.
3. Jerrold M. Post, ―Terrorist Psycho-Logic: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Psychological Forces,‖ in
Walter Reich (ed.), Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 25–40.
4. Walter Reich, ―Understanding Terrorist Behavior: The Limits and Opportunities of Psychological
Inquiry,‖ in Origins of Terrorism (1998).
5. Herbert Jäger, Gerhard Schmidtchen, and Liselotte Süllwold, Analysen zum Terrorismus 2:
Lebenlaufanalysen (Darmstadt, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981).
6. Franco Ferracuti, ―Psychiatric Aspects of Italian Left Wing and Right Wing Terrorism,‖ presented at
the VII World Congress of Psychiatry, Vienna, Austria, 1983.
7. Stephen J. Morgan, The Mind of a Terrorist Fundamentalist: The Psychology of Terror Cults (Awe-
Struck E-Books, 2001).
8. Salman Akhtar, ―The Psychodynamic Dimension of Terrorism,‖ Psychiatric Annals, vol. 29, no. 6,
June 1999, pp. 350–355.
9. Margaret Thaler Singer and Janja Lalich, Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday
Lives (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995).
10. Stephen J. Morgan.
11. Thomas Robbins, Cults, Converts, and Charisma: The Sociology of New Religious Movements
(Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1988).
12. Donelson R. Forsyth, Group Dynamics, 3rd edition (Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1999).
13. Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, and Robin M. Akert, Social Psychology: The Heart and the Mind
(New York: HarperCollins, 2002).
14. Margaret Thaler Singer and Janja Lalich.
15. Stephen J. Morgan.
16. Salman Akhtar.
17. Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, and Robin M. Akert.