Abstract: There is still no consensus about the definition of terrorism. In this article, terrorism refers to the acts of any individual, group or organization in order to achieve certain political, religious or social purposes, illegally using violence or other coercive means against innocent people with the intention of catching the attention of the target objects or the public and creating an atmosphere of terror. The formation and development of terrorism can be explained by Syndrome Model, Narcissism-Aggression Model, Frustration-Aggression Model, Tool Model, Social Context Model and other integrated models. The authors reviewed these models and proposed several psychological strategies for terrorism prevention. In psychology, the empirical research on terrorism is relatively small, and mostly focuses on the description and interpretation. So the research on the prediction and application of terrorism need to be further developed.

Key words: violence, terror, terrorism, terrorist, counterterrorism