• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Martyrdom's would-be myth buster
  • Contributor: Atran, Scott
  • imprint: Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2014
  • Published in: Behavioral and Brain Sciences
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x13003555
  • ISSN: 0140-525X; 1469-1825
  • Keywords: Behavioral Neuroscience ; Physiology ; Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Lankford overgeneralizes individual psychology from limited, fragmentary and doubtful materials, and underplays strategic, ideological, and group dynamical factors. His speculative claims manifest a form of fundamental attribution error: the tendency – especially evident in popular attachment to moral presumptions of individual responsibility and volition – to overestimate effects of personality and underestimate situational effects in explaining social behavior. The book's appeal may owe more to ideological preference than to interests of science or national security.</jats:p>