---
title: "Op/ed: Don’t Pin Shooters’ Motives on Mental Illness"
date: 2022-05-20T18:30:00-04:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/op-ed-dont-pin-shooters-motives-on-mental-illness"
section: Articles
---
# Op/ed: Don’t Pin Shooters’ Motives on Mental Illness

*May 20, 2022* — by [Arie W. Kruglanski](/author/arie-w-kruglanski)


> Horrifying Trend Rooted in Perverted ‘Quest for Significance,’ Psychology Researcher Says

*Getty Images 1240744838 1920x1080 — A mourner pays her respects at a makeshift memorial across the street a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., that was the site of mass shooting, allegedly by a white supremacist, of 10 people in historically Black neighborhood.*

*In the wake of the* [*mass shooting*](https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/buffalo-ny-supermarket-shooting-latest-news) *in Buffalo, N.Y., that left 10 people dead—as well as similar acts at a synagogue in* [*Pittsburgh*](https://abcnews.go.com/US/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-portraits-11-victims/story?id=58823835)*, a Walmart in* [*El Paso*](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/03/el-paso-walmart-mass-shooting-legislature/) *and a mosque in* [*Christchurch, New Zealand*](https://www.theguardian.com/world/christchurch-shooting)*, people want to know “why?”—and whether anything can be done to stem the dreadful tide of violence, writes Distinguished University Professor of Psychology Arie Kruglanski in a new essay in The Conversation.*

*Although one easy answer is often put forth, says Kruglanski, who studies radicalization and extremism, it is insufficient to explain many of these tragedies.*

The idea that committing atrocities and killing innocent victims reflects mental illness has been [long discarded by terrorism researchers](https://doi.org/10.1080/10683169808401747) [like me](https://scholar.google.gr/citations?user=Trd2BdsAAAAJ&hl=en). The over 40,000 foreign fighters who joined the Islamic State organization to kill and die [weren’t all mentally disturbed](https://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ICSR-Report-From-Daesh-to-%E2%80%98Diaspora%E2%80%99-Tracing-the-Women-and-Minors-of-Islamic-State.pdf), nor were the mass shooters who in the first 19 weeks of 2022 managed to carry out nearly [200 attacks on U.S. soil](https://www.npr.org/2022/05/15/1099008586/mass-shootings-us-2022-tally-number).

There is a mental and psychological dimension to the problem, to be sure, but it is not illness or pathology. It is the universal human quest for significance and respect—the mother, I believe, of all social motives.

*Read* [*the rest*](https://theconversation.com/a-quest-for-significance-gone-horribly-wrong-how-mass-shooters-pervert-a-universal-desire-to-make-a-difference-in-the-world-183199) *in The Conversation.*




**Topics:** [Research](https://today.umd.edu/tags/research)