title: Inferring cognition from action: does martyrdom imply its motive?
abstract: Drawing inferences about the decision utilities of suicide terrorists from their final action is tempting, but hazardous. Direct elicitation of those utilities would be more informative, but is infeasible. Substituting examination of archival materials for elicitation makes the assumption that leaders and bombers have similar utilities. Insight regarding the beliefs of terrorist leaders might be available from observations of recruitment strategies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, California State University, Los Angeles, CA 90032. dweiss@calstatela.eduwww.davidjweiss.com
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Weiss
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Science, California State University, Fullerton, CA 92834. jweiss@fullerton.edu http://lifestyledecision.fullerton.edu
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Weiss
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology*; D023481:Terrorism / Q000523:psychology*