Max Taylor: Rational Choice and Terrorist Decision Making - a podcast by John F. Morrison

This week John speaks to Prof. Max Taylor, a visiting professor at the Department of Security and Crime Sciences at University College London and the co-editor of Terrorism and Political Violence.Prior to his move to UCL he was the Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews, before which he was the head of the Department of Applied Psychology at University College Cork. For most of our listeners Max would be most widely known as a prolific and thought provoking specialist on the psychology of terrorism. However, his background also includes ground-breaking research on capacity building for disadvantaged children living in conflict zones, and the combatting of paedophile information networks in Europe. Within the realm of terrorism studies Max has published on a wide range of topics from evolutionary psychology to affordance, Irish Republicanism to Islamic fundamentalism. He is also the author of some of the most influential books on the psychology of terrorism, notably amongst them are The Terrorist, Terrorist Lives and The Fanatics.

Research discussed in the podcast as influencing Max's career:

B.F. Skinner (1951). Science and Human Behaviour

Richard S. Peters (1958). The Concept of Motivation

Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke (1986). The Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspectives on Offending

Max's key research, discussed in the podcast:

Rational choice, behaviour analysis and political violence (1992)

A conceptual framework for addressing psychological process in the development of the terrorist. With John Horgan (2006)

Is terrorism a group phenomenon? (2010)

Further episodes of Talking Terror

Further podcasts by John F. Morrison

Website of John F. Morrison