Using Augmented Reality to Examine Support for and Willingness to Engage in Protest and Terrorism

• In Event: Experimenting with Terrorism

Abstract

Why do some individuals support terrorism, while others choose to engage in peaceful political protest or take no political action? This question has been widely debated and discussed in the terrorism literature and popular discourse. We build on our online, cross-national, experimental research, which concluded that both political grievances and social-personality factors have an important influence on active support for and justification of terrorism. In the present study, we use Augmented Reality (AR) technology to instantiate treatment conditions. Since we cannot randomly assign these conditions in the real world, AR provides a safe, legal, and ethical way to examine how realism impacts decision-making. Our focus here was to empirically establish how grievance, opportunity, and social-personality factors have the potential to produce greater support for political actions, including support for nonviolent protest participation and terrorism.

Authors

• Anthony Lemieux, Georgia State University

• Allison Betus, Georgia State University

• Erin Kearns, University of Alabama