David Webber

Worldview Accommodation: Selectively Modifying Committed Beliefs Provides Defense Against Worldview Threat

Although numerous studies have examined compensatory reactions to ideological threats such as derogation, relatively little research has focused on alternative forms of defense. One such alternative, termed accommodation, involves accepting and incorporating parts of the threatening information into existing belief-structures. The present research employs a terror management framework to assess the effects of worldview threat, death-thoughts, and trait self-esteem on worldview accommodation. Five studies demonstrate that accommodation entails selectively modifying only peripheral worldview beliefs, while retaining core beliefs. Study 1 demonstrates that accommodation increases as a function of death-thought accessibility (DTA) aroused by threat. Studies 2–5 show that self-esteem moderates the effects of threat on accommodation, such that people with low (but not high) self-esteem accommodate their worldview. Moreover, accommodation is found to reduce source derogation (Studies 1–3), fluid defensiveness (Study 4), and DTA (Study 5). Discussion focuses on implications for understanding various means of coping with worldview threats.

To the fringe and back: Violent extremism and the psychology of deviance.

We outline a general psychological theory of extremism and apply it to the special case of violent extremism (VE). Extremism is defined as motivated deviance from general behavioral norms and is assumed to stem from a shift from a balanced satisfaction of basic human needs afforded by moderation to a motivational imbalance wherein a given need dominates the others. Because motivational imbalance is difficult to sustain, only few individuals do, rendering extreme behavior relatively rare, hence deviant. Thus, individual dynamics translate into social patterns wherein majorities of individuals practice moderation, whereas extremism is the province of the few. Both extremism and moderation require the ability to successfully carry out the activities that these demand. Ability is partially determined by the activities’ difficulty, controllable in part by external agents who promote or oppose extremism. Application of this general framework to VE identifies the specific need that animates it and offers broad guidelines for addressing this pernicious phenomenon.

Finding death in meaninglessness: evidence that death-thought accessibility increases in response to meaning threats

The meaning maintenance model proposes that violations to ones expectations will cause subsequent meaning restoration. In attempts to distinguish meaning maintenance mechanisms from mechanisms of terror management, previous research has failed to find increased death-thought accessibility (DTA) in response to various meaning threats. The present research suggests that this failure may have resulted from methodological differences in the way researchers measured DTA. Studies 1a and 1b found that by replacing this method with a standard method employed when studying worldview and self-esteem threats, DTA increased in response to two different meaning violations. Study 2 found increased DTA, but only among individuals high in personal need for structure, when using this standard DTA procedure, but not when using the procedure taken from previous meaning maintenance studies. Interestingly, these studies did not find increased meaning restoration, so an additional study (Study 3) was designed to provide a theoretically informed examination of this null effect. A meaning restoration effect was observed after removing the standard DTA assessment procedure, but only among participants high in personal need for structure. Implications for the threat-compensation literature are discussed.

The Road to Extremism: Field and Experimental Evidence That Significance Loss-Induced Need for Closure Fosters Radicalization.

The present studies examined the hypothesis that loss of personal significance fuels extremism via the need for cognitive closure. Situations of significance loss—those that make one feel ashamed, humiliated, or demeaned—are inconsistent with the desire for a positive self-image, and instill a sense of uncertainty about the self. Consequently, individuals become motivated to seek certainty and closure that affords the restoration of personal significance. Extremist ideologies should thus increase in appeal, because they promise clear-cut strategies for such restoration. These notions were supported in a series of studies ranging from field surveys of political extremists imprisoned in the Philippines (Study 1) and Sri Lanka (Study 2) to experiments conducted with American samples (Studies 3–4). Implications of these findings are considered for the psychology of extremism, and for approaches to counterradicalization, and deradicalization.

Divergent paths to martyrdom and significance among suicide attackers

Abstract This research used open source information to investigate the motivational backgrounds of 219 suicide attackers from various regions of the world. We inquired as to whether the attackers exhibited evidence for significance quest as a motive for their actions, and whether the eradication of significance loss and/or the aspiration for significance gain systematically differed according to attackers’ demographics. It was found that the specific nature of the significance quest motive varied in accordance with attackers’ gender, age, and education. Whereas Arab-Palestinians, males, younger attackers, and more educated attackers seem to have been motivated primarily by the possibility of significance gain, women, older attackers, those with little education, and those hailing from other regions seem to have been motivated primarily by the eradication of significance loss. Analyses also suggested that the stronger an attacker’s significance quest motive, the greater the effectiveness of their attack, as measured by the number of casualties. Methodological limitations of the present study were discussed, and the possible directions for further research were indicated.

The social psychological makings of a terrorist

Social psychological factors pertain to all aspects of terrorism, including how terrorist organizations operate, and the impact of terrorism on everyday people. The present analysis focuses on the aspect of terrorism where social psychologys voice is perhaps most critical: radicalization (i.e., how terrorists are made) and deradicalization (i.e., how terrorists are unmade). In reviewing the literature, we identify three factors critical to radicalization: (1) the individual need that motivates one to engage in political violence, (2) the ideological narrative that justifies political violence, and (3) the social network that influences ones decisions along the pathway to extremism. Theoretical and empirical contributions are discussed. We end with an examination of interviews conducted with former extremists of various ideological leanings to highlight these same three factors as critical to their individual deradicalization experiences.

The making of violent extremists.

The authors outline a psychological model of extremism and analyze violent extremism as a special case of it. Their significance quest theory identifies 3 general drivers of violent extremism: need, narrative, and network. The theory asserts that the need for personal significance—the desire to matter, to “be someone,” and to have meaning in ones life—is the dominant need that underlies violent extremism. A violence-justifying ideological narrative contributes to radicalization by delineating a collective cause that can earn an individual the significance and meaning he or she desires, as well as an appropriate means with which to pursue that cause. Lastly, a network of people who subscribe to that narrative leads individuals to perceive the violence-justifying narrative as cognitively accessible and morally acceptable. The authors describe empirical evidence for the theory, which was tested on a wide variety of samples across different cultures and geopolitical contexts. They go on to offer a general road map to guide efforts to counter and prevent violent extremism in its various forms.

Al-Qaeda’s propaganda decoded: A psycholinguistic system for detecting variations in terrorism ideology

ABSTRACT We describe a novel hybrid method of content analysis that combines the speed of computerized text analysis with the contextual sensitivity of human raters, and apply it to speeches that were given by major leaders of Al-Qaeda (AQ)—both in its “core” Afghanistan/Pakistan region and its affiliate group in Iraq. The proposed “Ideology Extraction using Linguistic Extremization” (IELEX) categorization method has acceptable levels of inter-rater and test-retest reliabilities. The method uncovered subtle (and potentially non-conscious) differences in the emphases that Usama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri put on the various components of their ideological justification for terrorism. We show how these differences were independently recognized as the crux of the rift in AQ, based on documents that were confiscated in Abbottabad following Usama Bin Laden’s assassination. Additionally, several of the ideological discrepancies that we detected between AQ “core” and its Iraqi affiliate correspond to schisms that presumably led to the splintering of AQ Iraq and the rise of ISIS. We discuss IELEX’s capability to quantify a variety of grievance-based terrorist ideologies, along with its use towards more focused and efficient counter-terrorism and counter-messaging policies.