ABSTRACT
Research with an enlarged dataset, containing additional documents to supplement the Smith, Suedfeld, Conway, & Winter. (2008) study, confirms earlier findings that documents issued by terrorist groups express higher levels of power motive imagery and affiliation motive imagery (directed toward members of their own group or cause) than documents issued by non-terrorist groups with similar political views. However, the motive imagery scores showed few significant changes during the period before terrorist attacks carried out or inspired by the group. This suggests that motive imagery scores were of limited use in predicting terrorist attacks, at least for the groups and time period of this study.
