Speaking of terrorist behaviour

AbstractUsing prospect theory as our core descriptive model of the decision-making process, we explore how behavioural economics can be used to expand what can be said about terrorist behaviour and align the inferences about terrorist behaviour that have been drawn from a diverse collection of disciplines. Prospect theory played a key role in the emergence of behavioural economics and provided many leads that were followed up by subsequent generations of researchers to reveal and explain various interesting quirks and anomalies in human decision-making, especially under conditions of risk and uncertainty. The decision-maker that emerges from behavioural economics is one who makes decisions shaped by a mixture of rationality, emotions, aspirations, reference-dependent choices, loss aversion and habits. When we speak of terrorist decision-making and draw inferences about it from different analytical perspectives, behavioural economics can help us to ensure that our inferences are in accordance with each other and, furthermore, help us to deepen our ‘thinking about terrorists’ thinking’.

Source: Crime, Law and Social Change - July 1, 2022 Category: Criminology Source Type: research