Bryn Mawr Psychology Professor Clark McCauley's latest blog post for Psychology Today looks at the case of Christopher Harper-Mercer, who killed nine people in the writing class in which he was enrolled at Umpqua Community College.
In his post, McCauley applies the "disconnected-disordered profile" to Harper-Mercer.
From the blog:
It is perhaps not surprising that the disconnected-disordered profile, which was drawn in part from study of school attackers, describes the most recent school attacker. But whether the profile is useful for prediction remains unknown. We don’t know how many individuals who fit the profile will never turn to violence. We might surmise however, that we should pay attention when an individual who fits the profile begins admiring previous lone killers.
McCauley's research interests include stereotypes, group dynamics, intergroup conflict, and the psychological foundations of genocide and terrorism. He is a consultant and reviewer for the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation for research on dominance, aggression, and violence, and a principal investigator of the National Consortium for Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (NC-START). With Dan Chirot, he is author of Why Not Kill Them All? The Logic of Mass Political Murder and Finding Ways of Avoiding it. With Sophia Moskalenko, he is author of Friction: How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us. He is founding editor of the journal Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict. McCauley received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970.