I commend Dr. Diamond for starting a discussion on the psychology of recruitment of terrorism. I think he presented well the viewpoint from the psychology of unconscious dynamics. My colleagues and I are creating a psychology of conscious purpose, which offers a different perspective on the issue of recruitment of terrorists. Read More

I believe that a flawed philosophy of science has led psychologists to pay inadequate attention to human purpose, which I think is the single most important factor for understanding and predicting behavior. We have created a psychology of what happens in laboratories. Read More

Some psychologists have talked about pleasure seeking or hedonism as a personality trait. I believe, however, that the construct of 'pleasure seeking' is invalid. Nobody seeks sensual pleasure. Here's why.

The phenomenon of satiation disproves the construct of hedonism (sensuality). Suppose, for example, that a theorist defined sensuality to include pleasure from eating and sex. Read More

Working with children with intellectual disabilities (ID), Edward Zigler and his colleagues studied five motives in detail: dependency, fear of strangers, expectancy of success, outerdirectedness, and competence motivation (Zigler, Bennet-Givens, & Hodapp 1999). Read More