Je suis Charlie New Findings on the Social and Political Psychology of Terrorism Je suis Charlie Nouvelles Avancees en Psychologie Sociale et Politique du Terrorisme]
Terrorism is a form of political violence that seeks to instill fear, anxiety and chaos (Dumont, Yzerbyt, Wigboldus Gordijn, 2003) It can take many forms and reflect the actions of a State. Nevertheless, as Pelletier and DrozdaSenkowska (2016) suggest, regardless of its various forms, the goals and consequences of terrorism are in fundamental ways psychological in nature. As such, terrorism is psychological warfare. Social psychologists have made an important theoretical and empirical contribution to the study of terrorism (Kruglanski et al. 2013) Much of that contribution can be found in the previous special issue of the International Review of Social Psychology devoted to the topic (see Arciszewski, Verlhiac, Goncalves Kruglanski, 2009) In the present issue, we provide new evidence on the psychological impact of terrorism on the population at large and our focus is on the January 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Casher in Paris, France. This special issue is part of a wider project supported by grants from the ANR and from the mission for interdisciplinarity of the CNRS in France, seeking to put state of the art research on terrorism from a psychological and social science perspective at the top of the research agenda. There is indeed an urgent need to study these forms of extreme violence so that people can understand what is going on. We feel that collaboration between experts from various fields is needed. We are happy to include in this special issue contributions from psychologists but also from political scientists. Researchers in the human and social sciences can play a major role here because with better understanding comes greater well being. Longterm exposure to political violence brings psychological distress and other health problems (Canetti, Russ, Luborsky, Gerhart Hobfoll, 2014) However, research has shown that understanding the causes of terrorism reduces its negative psychological impact (Fisher, Postmes, Koeppl, Conway Fredriksson, 2011)