ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the problem of countering terrorism. It examines the role of politics in preventing the motivations for engagement in terrorism and terrorist behavior. The chapter aims to discuss a single aspect that psychologists have been focused on that really centers on the psychology of the individual: risk assessment. It identifies the risk that an individual poses is critical to our ability to identify and intervene in cases of terrorism. In August 2017, in Gentleman’s Quarterly magazine, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah published a profile of white supremacist and mass murderer Dylann Roof, who killed nine parishioners at the historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015. The Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol-18 is designed to code for eight proximal warning behaviors and ten longer-term distal characteristics. The chapter focuses on Ghansah’s piece to provide a brief history of the origins, motivation, and psychology of Dylann Roof.
