Psych 253 Book Review: Talking to the Enemy

Richard Marion

In his book Talking to the Enemy (2010), Scott Atran uses his experiences in the countries often perceived as the origin of most global terrorist actions against the United States combined with scientific proof from a wide variety of sources to argue for new methods of understanding and stopping terrorism as it exists today. Though many examples and analyses of terrorist acts are examined in the book along with many different explanations for the social and psychological mechanisms that may cause them, one of the central ideas is the power of social bonds to drive people to commit actions that they never would have considered alone. This paper will analyze Atran's argument as it is supported by social psychology, and in particular specific research that was used in the writing of the book itself. Atran states that “to kill and die with friends... almost invariably involves deep love of one's group” (p. 317) and goes on to say that having no empathy towards other groups allows this to happen. His own work in Radical Madrasas in Southeast Asia (Atran, Ginges, Magouirk, 2008) supports his claim by showing that when students viewed someone as being outside of their group and incapable of becoming a member of their group, they were much more likely to support violence against that person. This was shown by interviewing the students in regards to whether they believed that people were “born evil but learn to become good” or not, if they believed a baby born to Jewish parents but raised by Muslims would grow up to be Muslim or not, and if it was their duty to “fight and kill non-Muslims such as Christians” (Atran, 2010, p. 308). In addition, students were categorized by whether they belonged to a madrasa with connections to the radical group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) or a madrasa without such affiliations.