Interviewing the terrorists: reflections on fieldwork and implications for psychological research

In social science research on terrorism, there is a continued lack of individual-level, data-driven evidence to test hypotheses, build reliable case studies, and support the emergence of new theories about the psychological process in the development of the terrorist. To help redress this deficiency, this article calls for explicit discussion of researchers' reluctance either to interview terrorists or share their experiences of having done so, as well as greater methodological transparency in their efforts. It identifies and explores a series of challenges in interviewing participants in political violence and argues for greater future engagement from social science researchers, and psychologists in particular. If both behavioral and interdisciplinary research on terrorism is to achieve its extraordinary potential, students and scholars of terrorism must do more than simply ‘talk’ to terrorists. They must be open to comparing experiences in an attempt to remove the novelty associated with research interviews with terrorists, be more explicit about their methods, and thereby explore interviewing as a scientifically viable method of collecting data in an area that for so long has suffered the failure of not doing so.