Mental Disorders, Personality Traits, and Grievance-Fueled Targeted Violence: The Evidence Base and Implications for Research and Practice.

This article aims to move away from intuitive appeals that link mental disorder with violence such as terrorism, mass murder, and other targeted violence. The article synthesizes the existing evidence base regarding the relationship between mental disorders and personality traits and (a) attitudinal affinities with violent causes, and (b) a number of violent behaviors (including mass murder and terrorism). The evidence base is mixed and the research focus changed across time: from simple and unempirical assertions of causation to an almost complete rejection of their presence to a finer grained and disaggregated understanding. Empirical research examining mental disorder in crime and violence highlights that the commission of such events is a complex synthesis of psychopathology, personal circumstance, and environment. The article concludes with several suggestions regarding future research and practice.

Lone-Actor Terrorist Target Choice.

Lone-actor terrorist attacks have risen to the forefront of the public's consciousness in the past few years. Some of these attacks were conducted against public officials. The rise of hard-to-detect, low-tech attacks may lead to more public officials being targeted. This paper explores whether different behavioral traits are apparent within a sample of lone-actor terrorists who plotted against high-value targets (including public officials) than within a sample of lone actors who plotted against members of the public. Utilizing a unique dataset of 111 lone-actor terrorists, we test a series of hypotheses related to attack capability and operational security. The results indicate that very little differentiates those who attack high-value targets from those who attack members of the public. We conclude with a series of illustrations to theorize why this may be the case. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A false dichotomy? Mental illness and lone-actor terrorism.

We test whether significant differences in mental illness exist in a matched sample of lone- and group-based terrorists. We then test whether there are distinct behavioral differences between lone-actor terrorists with and without mental illness. We then stratify our sample across a range of diagnoses and again test whether significant differences exist. We conduct a series of bivariate, multivariate, and multinomial statistical tests using a unique dataset of 119 lone-actor terrorists and a matched sample of group-based terrorists. The odds of a lone-actor terrorist having a mental illness is 13.49 times higher than the odds of a group actor having a mental illness. Lone actors who were mentally ill were 18.07 times more likely to have a spouse or partner who was involved in a wider movement than those without a history of mental illness. Those with a mental illness were more likely to have a proximate upcoming life change, more likely to have been a recent victim of prejudice, and experienced proximate and chronic stress. The results identify behaviors and traits that security agencies can utilize to monitor and prevent lone-actor terrorism events. The correlated behaviors provide an image of how risk can crystalize within the individual offender and that our understanding of lone-actor terrorism should be multivariate in nature.

The Moderating Effects of "Dark" Personality Traits and Message Vividness on the Persuasiveness of Terrorist Narrative Propaganda.

Terrorism researchers have long discussed the role of psychology in the radicalization process. This work has included research on the respective roles of individual psychological traits and responses to terrorist propaganda. Unfortunately, much of this work has looked at psychological traits and responses to propaganda individually and has not considered how these factors may interact. This study redresses this gap in the literature. In this experiment (N = 268), participants were measured in terms of their narcissism, Machiavellianism, subclinical psychopathy, and everyday sadism-collectively called the Dark Tetrad. Participants were then exposed to a vivid or nonvivid terrorist narrative (or a control message). Results indicate that Machiavellianism interacts with both narrative exposure and narrative vividness to amplify the persuasive effect of terrorist narratives. Neither narcissism, subclinical psychopathy, nor everyday sadism had such an effect. These results highlight the importance of considering the psychological traits of audiences when evaluating proclivity for radicalization via persuasion by terrorist narratives.

Corrigendum: The moderating effects of "dark" personality traits and message vividness on the persuasiveness of terrorist narrative propaganda.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.779836.].

Psychological distress and terrorist engagement: Measuring, correlating, and sequencing its onset with negative life events, social factors, and protective factors.

This article employs probability-based modelling to unpack the complex and multifaceted individual, social, and psychological processes that may provide psychological protection for individuals engaged with terrorist groups. We outline the predictors of the onset of psychological distress across two phases of terrorist involvement (pre-engagement and engagement). Using a dataset of 96 terrorist autobiographies, we conduct sequence analyses to pinpoint the onset of psychological problems and the experiences that preceded and followed this onset. The results demonstrate a complexity in the relationship between mental disorders and terrorist engagement, as well as the heterogeneity of the lived experience of "being" a terrorist. The experience of psychological distress was mediated by numerous factors and the combination of these factors. The evidence suggests that, in certain cases, individual and group resilience may be a protective factor when an individual faces negative experiences. The presence of protective factors may not be sufficient to explain why group-actor terrorists present with a lower than expected prevalence of mental disorder. Future work should examine whether experiences commonly viewed as risk factors may be more useful in examining the occurrence of psychopathology in terrorists.

Similar crimes, similar behaviors? Comparing lone-actor terrorists and public mass murderers.

This article adds to the growth in data-driven analyses seeking to compare samples of violent extremists with other violent populations of interest. While lone-actor terrorists and public mass murderers are frequently treated as distinct offender types, both engage (or attempt to engage) in largely public and highly publicized acts of violence and often use similar weapons. This article investigates the (dis)similarities between both offender types. We use a series of bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses to compare demographic, psychologic and behavioral variables across 71 lone-actor terrorists and 115 public mass murderers. The results show little distinction in sociodemographic profiles, but significant differences in (a) the degree to which they interact with co-ideologues (b) antecedent event behaviors and (c) the degree to which they leak information before the attack. Overall, our data inform the emerging idea that lone-actor terrorists and public mass shooters are not distinct offender types. There is more that unites them than divides them. Although the over-arching focus of our results are on the few variables that distinguish them, the vast majority (80%+), of the 180+ variables showed no significant difference. We discuss implications for threat assessment and management in the context of these results.

Predictors of varying levels of risks posed by fixated individuals to British public figures.

Concerning approaches and communications to the Royal Family and other British public figures are relatively numerous. This paper examines over 2000 such cases logged over a three-year period in the United Kingdom. Using police and health data, the paper conducts a series of bivariate and multivariate analyses to demonstrate the predictors of what types of risk are posed by an individual case (e.g., communicate only, approach, security breach). The results showed that (a) the rates of serious mental disorders are higher among this sample than the general population base rate, (b) approachers were significantly more likely than communicators to suffer from serious mental disorders, (c) approachers were significantly more likely than communicators to have a history of substance use and abuse problems, (d) approachers were significantly more likely than communicators to have a history of violent behavior against property and persons, and (e) the motivations of approachers and communicators significantly differ. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications for threat assessment and management.

There and back again: The study of mental disorder and terrorist involvement.

For the past 40 years, researchers studied the relationship between mental disorder and terrorist involvement. The literature developed in 4 paradigms, each of which differs in terms of their empirical evidence, the specific mental disorders studied, and their conceptualizations of terrorist involvement. These paradigms have not, however, witnessed linear and incremental improvements upon 1 another. Although 1 paradigm has generally tended to dominate a temporal period, many false assumptions and incorrect interpretations of earlier work permeate into today's discourse. This article provides a history of the study of mental disorders and the terrorist. First, we briefly outline the core fundamental principles of the first 2 paradigms, The article then outlines the core arguments produced by the seminal reviews conducted in Paradigm 3. We highlight how these findings were consistently misinterpreted in subsequent citations. We then highlight recent innovations in the study of terrorism and mental disorder since the various influential literature reviews of 1997-2005. We conclude by outlining how future research in this area may improve in the coming years by broadening our understanding of both terrorist involvement and psychopathology away from simple dichotomous thinking. (PsycINFO Database Record

Shooting Alone: The Pre-Attack Experiences and Behaviors of U.S. Solo Mass Murderers.

This paper outlines the sociodemographic, developmental, antecedent attack, attack preparation, and commission properties of 115 mass murderers between 1990 and 2014. The results indicate that mass murderer attacks are usually the culmination of a complex mix of personal, political, and social drivers that crystalize at the same time to drive the individual down the path of violent action. We specifically focus upon areas related to prior criminal engagement, leakage, and attack location familiarity. Whether the violence comes to fruition is usually a combination of the availability and vulnerability of suitable targets that suit the heady mix of personal and political grievances and the individual's capability to engage in an attack from both a psychological and technical capability standpoint. Many individual cases share a mixture of unfortunate personal life circumstances coupled with an intensification of beliefs/grievances that later developed into the idea to engage in violence.

Evolution of potent and stable placental-growth-factor-1-targeting CovX-bodies from phage display peptide discovery.

Novel phage-derived peptides are the first reported molecules specifically targeting human placental growth factor 1 (PlGF-1). Phage data enabled peptide modifications that decreased IC(50) values in PlGF-1/VEGFR-1 competition ELISA from 100 to 1 µM. Peptides exhibiting enhanced potency were bioconjugated to the CovX antibody scaffold 1 (CVX-2000), generating bivalent CovX-Bodies with 2 nM K(D) against PlGF-1. In vitro and in vivo peptide cleavage mapping studies enabled the identification of proteolytic hotspots that were subsequently chemically modified. These changes decreased IC(50) to 0.4 nM and increased compound stability from 5% remaining at 6 h after injection to 35% remaining at 24 h with a ß phase half-life of 75 h in mice. In cynomolgus monkey, a 78 h ß half-life was observed for lead compound 2. The pharmacological properties of 2 are currently being explored.