Editorial: Aggression and terrorism

Abstract

The articles presented in this special issue were all given at the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Analyses of Aggression and Terrorism, held jointly under the scientific organizations of the CICA (Coloquios Internationales sobre Cerebro y Agresion) and the STR (Society for Terrorism Research), in Miraflores de la Sierra (Madrid, Spain) from 27 to 30 September 2007. Seventy-five papers were presented by about 100 scientists from 27 countries of all the five continents. This special issue brings together a rather eclectic selection of the different scientific presentations, covering a wide range of topics, presented by leading thinkers in quite different scientific disciplines – neurosciences, social and clinical psychology, law, and political sciences, in the hope of providing a flavour of the multidisciplinary approach characteristic of the Conference. The thread that unites these apparently different subjects in a quite appropriate manner for a journal focused on problems of complexity and change in society? All of them deepen our understanding of the different ways of coping with complicated social problems related to aggression and terrorism coupled with the general understanding that peace would benefice everybody. Together with this, is the awareness that the more positive resolutions found, the better prepared societies will be in achieving world peace. The background of the first article has to be found in the Seville Statement on Violence endorsed by UNESCO (1986) – Ramirez was its convener and one its signatories – saying that biological factors are not the immediate causes of war and social violence; their causes are not hard-wired in totality. A lot of complex behavior may seem at first to run off consistently and repeatedly in the same way on different occasions, but this may be largely the result of the surrounding context being repeatedly invariant and the required ‘learning’ being quick or hidden from an observer. This does not preclude, however, the existence of a biological predisposition to anger and aggression. Even more, insofar as work for peace is linked to the struggle for justice, aggression could also have a major protective or defensive function whenever an individual is genuinely threatened or attacked. Anger can also be channelled into a constructive means of social change, from a culture of war to a culture of peace. This explains the importance of approaches like Ramirez’s article in this issue attempting to improve the understanding of the nature of aggression, focusing on