Social Processes in Political Violence

Motivation, Ideology and the Social Process in Radicalization and Deradicalization

Principal Investigator: Arie Kruglanski, University of Maryland

Co-Investigators: Michele Gelfand, University of Maryland; Scott Atran, ARTIS Research; Rich Davis, ARTIS Research; Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, George Mason University; Andrzej Nowak, University of Warsaw; Jeremy Ginges, The New School for Social Research

Years of Award: 2012-2018

Supporting Service Agency: Office of Naval Research

Project Description

It is increasingly apparent that although “kinetic”/operational measures are indispensable in the global war on terror, they cannot comprise the entire solution to the problem of radicalization. To understand why radical groups are appealing and how to counteract them, we need to understand radicalization as a social, cultural, and psychological process. We define radicalization as movement toward the advocacy of/engagement in activities that run counter to widely accepted norms and values, such as disregard for the prohibition of killing uninvolved civilians. Not all those who hold radical attitudes necessarily engage in terrorism, but those who engage in terrorism are likely to hold radical attitudes, that is, attitudes that justify terrorism. This project, therefore, was based on the premise that a viable program to combat violent extremism must understand ways to prevent radicalization, and to reverse it where it has taken root, i.e. to promote effective deradicalization. 

Owl in the Olive Tree posts

• Lyons-Padilla, Sarah, and Michele J. Gelfand. 2018. Radicalism and Cultural Homelessness. Owl in the Olive Tree. December 17.

Select Publications

• Kruglanski, Arie W., Jocelyn J. Belanger, and Rohan Gunaratna. Forthcoming (2019). The Three Pillars of Radicalization: Needs, Networks, and Narratives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kruglanski, Arie W., David Webber, and D. Koehler. Forthcoming (2019). Radical's Journey: German Neo-Nazis' Voyage to the Edge and Back. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Gelfand, Michele. 2018. Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Kruglanski, Arie W. 2018. Our Shared Reality Is Fraying. The Conversation. September 12.
• Kruglanski, Arie W., Katarzyna Jasko, David Webber, Marina Chernikova, and Erica Molinario. 2018. The Making of Violent Extremists. Review of General Psychology. 22(1): 107-120.
• Webber, David, Marina Chernikova, Arie W. Kruglanski, Michele J. Gelfand, Malkanthi Hettiarcachchi, Rohan Gunaratna, et. al. 2018. Deradicalizing Detained Terrorists. Political Psychology. 39(3): 539-556.
• Webber, David, Maxim Babush, Noa Schori-Eyal, Anna Vazeou-Nieuwenhuis, Malkanthi Hettiarachchi, Jocelyn J. Belanger, Manuel Moyano, et. al. 2018. The Road to Extremism: Field and Experimental Evidence that Significance Loss-induced Need for Closure Fosters Radicalization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 114(2): 270-285.
• Kruglanski, Arie W., Katarzyna Jasko, Marina Chernikova, Michelle Dugas, and David Webber. 2017. To the Fringe and Back: Violent Extremism and the Psychology of Deviance. American Psychologist. 72(3): 217-230.
• Moaddel, Mansoor, and Michele J. Gelfand, eds. 2016. Values, Political Action, and Change in the Middle East and the Arab Spring. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Nowak, Andrzej, Michele J. Gelfand, Wojciech Borkowski, and Arie Kruglanski. 2016. Autocratic Recidivism: Computational Models of Why Revolutions Fail. In Values, Political Action, and Change in the Middle East and the Arab Spring, edited by Mansoor Moaddel and Michele J. Gelfand. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 271-294.
• Sheikh, Hammad, Angel Gomez, and Scott Atran. 2016. Empirical Evidence for the Devoted Actor Model. Current Anthropology. 57(S13): S204-S209.
• Ginges, Jeremy, Hammad Sheikh, Scott Atran, and Nicole Argo. 2016. Thinking from God’s Perspective Decreases Biased Valuation of the Life of a Non-Believer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 113(2): 316-319.
• Alizadeh, Meysam, and Claudio Cioffi-Revilla. 2015. Activation Regimes in Opinion Dynamics: Comparing Asynchronous Updating Schemes. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. 18(3): 8.
• Alizadeh, Meysam, Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, and Andrew Crooks. 2015. The Effect of In-Group Favoritism on the Collective Behavior of Individuals’ Opinions. Advances in Complex Systems. 18(1-2): 1-27. 
• Kruglanski, Arie W., Michele J. Gelfand, Anna Sheveland, Maxim Babush, Malkanthi Hetiarachchi, Michele Ng-Bonto, and Rohan Gunaratna. 2016. What a Difference Two Years Make: Patterns of Radicalization in a Philippine Jail. Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict. 9(1-3): 13-36.
• Lyons-Padilla, Sarah, Michele J. Gelfand,  Hedieh Mirahmadi, Mehreen Farooq, and Marieke van Egmund. 2015. Belonging Nowhere: Marginalization and Radicalization Risk among Muslim Immigrants. Behavioral Science and Policy. 1(1): 1-12.
• Atran, Scott, and Nafees Hamid. 2015. Paris: The War ISIS Wants. The New York Review of Books. November 16.
• Sheikh, Hammad. 2015. IS-Kampfer: Die drei Grundformen des Dschihad [IS-Fighters: The Three Types of Jihad]. Die Zeit. December 15.
• Wilson, Lydia. 2015. What I Discovered from Interviewing Imprisoned ISIS Fighters. The Nation. October 21.

• Atran, Scott, Hammad Sheikh, and Angel Gomez. 2014. Devoted Actors Sacrifice for Close Comrades and Sacred Cause. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 111(50): 17702-17703.