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To foster a more in-depth understanding of the psychological processes leading to terrorism, the author conceptualizes the terrorist act as the final step on a narrowing staircase. Although the vast majority of people, even when feeling deprived and unfairly treated, remain on the ground floor, some individuals climb up and are eventually recruited into terrorist organizations. These individuals believe they have no effective voice in society, are encouraged by leaders to displace aggression onto out-groups, and become socialized to see terrorist organizations as legitimate and out-group members as evil. The current policy of focusing on individuals already at the top of the staircase brings only short-term gains. The best long-term policy against terrorism is prevention, which is made possible by nourishing contextualized democracy on the ground floor.

Despite disagreements about the definition of terrorism (Cooper, 2001) and claims that “one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter,” there is general agreement that terrorism has become a monstrous problem in many parts of the world and that all efforts must be made to end it. For the purpose of this discussion, terrorism is defined as politically motivated violence, perpetrated by individuals, groups, or state-sponsored agents, intended to instill feelings of terror and helplessness in a population in order to influence decision making and to change behavior. Psychologists have a vitally important responsibility to combat terrorism because (a) subjectively interpreted values and beliefs often serve as the most important basis for terrorist action (Bernholz, 2004); (b) the actions of terrorists are intended to bring about specific psychological experiences—that is, terror and helplessness (Moghaddam & Marsella, 2004); and (c) terrorism often has extremely harmful psychological consequences (Schlenger et al., 2002). Psychologists are contributing in important...