Value References and Terrorism 1 Exploring the Relationship between Value References and a Group’s Willingness to Engage in Terrorism

This study explored the dynamics of terrorism through a content analysis of terrorist and non-terrorist groups ’ documents. Thirteen terrorist groups were matched with non-terrorist controls, and their documents were coded for the values they attributed to their opponents and their own group. Relative to controls, terrorist groups attributed higher dominance values to their opponents and higher dominance, morality, and culture values to themselves in the full sample and in a predictive sample of documents issued before terrorism. These findings indicate that the values groups express in their documents – and particularly the values they attribute to themselves – may be used to predict whether they will engage in terrorism