Aberrant moral judgment in extremist terrorists

EDUAR HERRERA; AGUSTÍN IBÁÑEZ; SANDRA BÁEZ; LIANE YOUNG; FACUNDO MANES

Havana

Congreso; 18th IOP (The International Organization of Psychophysiology) World Congress; 2016

Terrorism jeopardizes its victims? freedom and physical integrity while compromising governmental stability and national economies. This has become clear in Colombia, where terrorist violence by paramilitary groups has shockingly escalated in the last few decades. An examination of the social-cognitive profiles characterizing terrorist groups is urgently needed, as it could help us understand, prevent, and react to their atrocious practices. Here we assessed the moral judgments and social-cognitive profiles of 66 ex-combatants from a paramilitary terrorist group, relative to a control group matched in age, gender, years of education, and verbal and fluid intellectual capacities. Results revealed that moral judgment in terrorists was abnormally guided by outcomes rather than by the integration of intentions and outcomes. Such a pattern was partially related to emotion recognition abilities but independent from other cognitive domains such as fluid intelligence, executive functions and aggression levels. In addition, moral judgment was the measure that best discriminated between groups, even when compared with other cognitive-affective variables in which terrorists exhibited atypical or impaired performance. This approach to understanding terrorists? cognitive profiles has important legal and forensic implications.