From political extremism to violence: A SAT analysis of right-wing extremism

• In Event: Social Contexts and Differential Expression of Crime Propensities in Relation to Gender, Adjudication, Problematic Substance Use, and Political Extremism

Abstract

In spite of significant progress in the study of political extremism in the last decade, the inherent challenges related to this field of research have left many questions unanswered. Mainly, it is unclear what leads to political extremism, what factors can predict this set of values, and how these factors relate to the violent tendency that links political extremism to political violence. The current study has three main goals. First, the theoretical framework of SAT is used to propose a conceptualization of what political extremism is, the moral process leading to it, and how it relates to or results in violence. Based on this, a preliminary model describing how moral values, moral emotions, cognitive processes and environmental exposure relate to extremism will be suggested. Finally, I will test how key personal and environmental factors from this model relate to political extremism and violence, using a general sample of UK youth. The study of extremism as moral development offers an alternative approach, which mitigates the disadvantage of studying terrorism as an inverse problem and the tendency of terrorist case-studies to be unrepresentative.

Author

• Gali Perry, Cambridge University / Hebrew University of Jerusalem