The poverty-ignorance-instability portrait of terrorists lacks empirical support

Evidence

Previously, it was widely believed that terrorists generally are impoverished, poorly educated, mentally unstable, and driven to violence by a sense of powerlessness and hopelessness. This characterization did not survive empirical scrutiny (Bandura, 1973). The search for a distinctive “terrorist personality” is misdirected. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2118

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general motif that violent or deviant actors are rational rather than pathological — resonates with the temple of sanctions and economics-of-crime literature. — connects to: Evidence for countering violent extremism programming remains thin and methodologically weak. — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 212
• CANDY: Simple counterintuitive fact: terrorists are typically not the downtrodden, unstable, or uneducated — a refutable stereotype in one line.