Psychopathic teamwork: lessons learned from recent terrorist attacks.

Abstract

A great team makes the difference between success and failure [1]. However, one’s resounding success could plunge the other into abject misery. Full to the brim with vanity, callousness, social deviance and impulsive behaviors, a psychopath could cause a lot of problems for everyone in the society. However, teamwork in their case could result in catastrophic disasters, witness widespread terrorist attacks conducted by the so-called ISIS recently. Approximately, 1 % of the general population fulfills the criteria for being diagnosed as a psychopath, translating into almost 73 million people in the world [2]. Despite the plethora of sentiments expressed recently trying to relate such incidents to fanaticism, other aspects of such terrorist attacks have been underestimated [3, 4]. So far, western governments have been trying to fight terrorism by keeping potential terrorists under constant surveillance through their intelligence services, but that policy seems to have failed. Violent extremist organizations such as ISIS have been actively recruiting new members through online social media, mostly those with psychopathic attitudes; they are too many to be monitored by any intelligence service. Not knowing enough about the real idealistic beliefs of such radical organizations, these people join such organizations because they see their ultimate goal the same as theirs; joining such organizations might just be a pretext for an organized psychopathy. This calls for extensive studies on the mental state of members of such organizations to shed light on their ulterior motives and the potential underlying psychiatric disorders. The result of such studies might bring health care systems to the forefront of the fight against terrorism by early identification of those who are prone to developing psychopathic disorders through continual screening for the signs and symptoms and providing appropriate support and treatment in time, before any grave event happens.