Dissonance Creates Terrorists
17th September 2009
The New York Times reports on the death of Noordin Muhammad Top.
He did not set out be become a bomb maker but began working with explosives when another militant, who had been hiding them, said he no longer wanted to keep them, Ms. Jones said, speaking by telephone from Jakarta.
“It was only when he was forced into a decision about having explosives that he became a leader and turned into a bomb maker,” she said.
Give a boy a bomb and he becomes a bombmaker. Really.
This is a possible demonstration of dissonance at work. Assuming as the quote implies that Mr. Noordin was not violent before this event, he clearly changed after this action. The behavioral act of taking the bombmaking materials would be a “counterattitudinal” behavior for a nonviolent actor that would produce dissonance. To resolve the dissonance, Noordin would change his attitudes and beliefs to become consistent with the behavior.
That’s the theory.