Dangerous Terrorists as Devoted Actors

Abstract

Recent cross-cultural experiments and fieldwork related to violent extremism in hotspots around the world suggest that the most dangerous and effective terrorists today are “devoted actors.” Devoted actors are chiefly motivated by “sacred values” (SVs), which are operationally identified in terms of immunity or resistance to material trade-offs, to normative social influence, and to exit strategies. Devoted actors are particularly likely to make costly and extreme sacrifices in defense of SVs when their personal identities are “fused” with the collective identity of a primary reference group, such as a tight-knit religious “brotherhood” of imagined kin. There is an evolutionary rationale for the willingness to make costly sacrifices (e.g., death) for the group. When a perceived outside threat to one’s primary reference group is very high, and survival prospects very low, then only if sufficiently many members of a group are endowed with such a willingness to extreme sacrifice can the group hope to parry stronger but less devoted enemies. SVs mobilized for collective action by devoted actors enable outsize commitment in low-power groups to resist and often prevail against materially more powerful foes who depend on standard material incentives, such as armies and police that rely on pay and promotion. Recent changes in the composition of some terrorist groups from fairly well-educated and well-off founders to increasingly marginalized youth in transitional stages of life follow this evolutionary rationale.