Ralph W. Hood Jr. is a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He writes and teaches on the psychology of religious fundamentalism.

Clark McCauley Jr. is Rachel C. Hale Professor of Mathematics and the Sciences and co-director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College. His research focuses on the psychological foundations of ethnic conflict and genocide. At the April 2011 conference at Fordham, McCauley argued that “ideology and religion are more rationalization […]

James W. Jones is an expert in the psychology of religion and teaches in the religion department at Rutgers University. He is the author of Blood That Cries Out From the Earth: The Psychology of Religious Terrorism.

Read a January 9, 2010 New York Times story exploring research on what motivates terrorists.

Read an October 5, 2011 NPR story about a controversial book by Ken Ballen, Terrorists in Love: The Real Lives of Islamic Radicals. Ballen spent five years interviewing more than 100 Islamic extremists to learn what motivated them to carry out violent attacks against the United States and others they considered enemies of Islam.

Read a June 7, 2013 Westword Book Club interview with Lynda Hilburn, author and psychotherapist, about the popularity and therapeutic relief of reading books on the paranormal, vampires and erotic fiction.

Read a May 4, 2011, essay in Scientific American, “Does Revenge Serve an Evolutionary Purpose?” A psychologist who studies human behavior explains the complex desire for vengeance in the context of bin Laden’s death.

Paul Djupe is a political scientist at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where he specializes in religion and politics. He edits the Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics series and has written about people of faith’s voting patterns, the religious right and faith-based opposition to socialism.

Joseph Nicolosi is founder and former president of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, based in Encino, Calif. His books include, as co-author with wife Linda Ames Nicolosi, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality (Intervarsity Press, 2002).