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Profile · Posted 2012-01-25, 05:13 PM

Here's an interesting article on the BBC about the psychology of snipers, and how they're less likely to experience trauma than a common soldier.

A snippet:

Quote:

But a study into snipers in Israel has shown that snipers are much less likely than other soldiers to dehumanise their enemy in this way.

Chris Kyle killed an estimated 40 people during the second battle of Fallujah in 2004
Part of the reason for this may be that snipers can see their targets with great clarity and sometimes must observe them for hours or even days.

"It's killing that is very distant but also very personal," says anthropologist Neta Bar. "I would even say intimate."

She studied attitudes to killing among 30 Israeli snipers who served in the Palestinian territories from 2000 to 2003, to examine whether killing is unnatural or traumatic for human beings.

She chose snipers in particular because, unlike pilots or tank drivers who shoot at big targets like buildings, the sniper picks off individual people.

What she found was that while many Israeli soldiers would refer to Palestinian militants as "terrorists", snipers generally referred to them as human beings.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16544490