- Email: [email protected]
Psychological processes common to social conservatism and terrorism
Personality and Individual Differences 120 (2018) 75–80
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Review
Psychological processes common to social conservatism and terrorism
MARK
Lazar Stankov School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia University of Southern Queensland, Australia
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Conservative Syndrome Militant extremist mindset Nastiness Grudge Excuse
There are areas of overlap between contemporary social conservatism and psychological aspects of terrorism. This paper summarizes empirical evidence from our large-scale cross-cultural surveys linking the two domains. Two component processes of both domains – Religiosity and Nastiness – are closely related. On their own, these processes are unlikely to lead to a significant increase in terrorist activity, even if the number of conservativeleaning members of the population were to increase. Our research, however, identified another component of the militant extremist mindset (MEM) – Grudge – that might precipitate a new wave of terrorism by groups linked to extreme conservative right-wing/populist political parties.
1. Introduction This paper explores the relationship between two constructs – social conservatism and psychological aspects of terrorism - that are not usually seen as being related. Of course, it is hard to imagine typical present day terrorists as fighters for liberal causes or as revolutionaries. Our empirical studies suggest that there may be a closer link between conservatism and militant extremism than previously thought. 2. Terrorism and conservatism defined Encyclopedia Britannica defines terrorism as the “systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.” Two related terms radicalism and extremism - have stronger psychological connotations. They suggest a pattern of thinking, or what Saucier, Akers, Miller, Stankov, and Knezevic (2009) refer to as a Militant Extremist Mindset (MEM), that is, a set of beliefs, feelings, thoughts and motivations among those who plan or actively engage in terrorism. Psychological components of MEM belong to the category of social attitudes - states of mind and feelings that involve evaluations (e.g., like or dislike) of a specific object or social interaction. Monahan (2015) sees MEM scales as useful instruments for the individual risk assessment of terrorism. Conservatism reflects human fear of sudden change and a tendency to rely on habitual activities. The term is commonly used in public discourse in connection with various forms of conservatism - political, fiscal, cultural, or social.1 The issues of interest to psychologists usually
fall under the category of ‘social conservatism’, since psychological interpretations tend to invoke the notion of traits (i.e., personality dimensions and aspects of social attitudes) and dispositions that are expressed in our interactions with social environment (e.g., values, social axioms, social norms). Stankov (2009) referred to a constellation of such constructs as Conservative Syndrome. At one level, Conservative Syndrome can be thought of as a broad dimension that is conceptually similar to, say, Extroversion/Introversion. Consequently, from the psychological point of view, individuals and countries that score low on measures of Conservative Syndrome can be described as liberal. Indeed, Stankov (2016b) argued that at the countries' level correlations among the components are high enough to allow us to classify countries as broadly Conservative or Liberal. The traits and dispositions captured by this label should not be seen as negative (or pathological) in nature. Like the concept of “authoritarian syndrome”, which is commonly used in political science (see Raden, 1999), our construct refers to both trait-like habitual patterns of behavior and to processes that are significantly influenced by the environment. At the individual level correlations among the components of the Conservative Syndrome do not show high correlations among themselves and therefore can be viewed as a ‘collection of symptoms’ – i.e., as a ‘syndrome’ – not a strong source trait. Although Conservative Syndrome is broader than MEM, the two share common psychological processes. These include social attitudes such as those captured by measures of proneness to aggression, materialism, proviolence, ethno-nationalism, materialism, Machiavellianism and religiosity, among others (Stankov & Lee, 2016a). Compared to the measures
E-mail address: [email protected]. Social conservatism is different from fiscal conservatism which, like classical liberalism, advocates low taxes, reduced government spending, free trade and minimal government debt. Members of contemporary conservative political parties (e.g., Republicans in the US, conservatives in the UK and their equivalents in Australia and Canada) may have preference for both or, perhaps, for either one of these two brands of conservatism. 1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.08.029 Received 8 August 2017; Received in revised form 14 August 2017; Accepted 17 August 2017 0191-8869/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Personality and Individual Differences 120 (2018) 75–80
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Militant Extremist Mindset (MEM)
Grudge
Social Awareness/ Morality
Nastiness
Nastiness/ Social Dominance
Excuse (Religiosity, Utopianism)
values, and House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, and Gupta's (2004) social norms, to examine their convergent and discriminant validity (see Stankov, Saucier et al., 2010; Stankov et al., in press; Stankov, Higgins, Saucier, & Knežević, 2010; Stankov, Saucier, & Knežević, 2011). This process led to the identification of three MEM factors, which were labeled Excuse, Nastiness and Grudge (as shown on the left-hand side of Fig. 1). As pointed out by Stankov et al. (in press), components of MEM fit into the model of vulnerabilities and propensities to extremist ideologies and terrorism that was proposed by Borum (2014). Although Grudge was an important MEM ingredient, subsequent work indicated that it plays a negligible role in the Conservative Syndrome. As I elaborate below, this was not the case with the other two component processes of MEM. Religiosity, which is a component of Excuse and Nastiness in MEM research, proved to be an important aspect of conservatism. Our team developed no new measures of conservatism. Instead, we employed well-known measures of personality, -isms, values, social axioms, and social norms that had been developed and used by other investigators and which had previously demonstrated significant crosscultural differences. Thus, there was no a priori plan to focus on Conservative Syndrome itself. Our studies were intended to be exploratory and as previously noted one of the objectives was to identify measures that show large or small differences between countries and regions. The data were analyzed using factor analysis (exploratory and confirmatory) and latent profile analyses in which both individuals and countries were employed as units (Stankov, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2017; Stankov & Lee, 2008, 2009, 2016a, 2016b; Stankov, Lee, & van de Vijver, 2014; Stankov & Saucier, 2015). In the outcome, three factors were identified: Religiosity, Nastiness/Social Dominance and Social Awareness/Morality (as shown on the right-hand side of Fig. 1). One of these – Social Awareness/Morality – turned out to be somewhat less important for our purposes in this paper. Cross-cultural differences on this dimension were comparatively small (ICC = 0.093) and, in latent profile analyses at individual and country levels, differences between the groups on this dimension were also small. Religiosity and Nastiness/Social Dominance, however, were important for understanding the Conservative Syndrome. The percentages of total variance accounted for by countries' differences on these two factors were large (42.3% and 21.7%, respectively; Stankov, 2016b) in comparison to all other scales employed in our work.
Conservative Syndrome
Religiosity
Fig. 1. The structure of MEM and Conservative Syndrome and relationships between components in each domain. Note: This is an illustration, not the outcome of structural equation modeling.
from other psychological domains such as personality or values, these social attitudes tend be more powerful determinants of behavior and crosscultural differences (Stankov & Lee, 2016b).
3. Assessment issues This paper compares the findings from two different lines of survey work, one on Conservative Syndrome and the other on the MEM (see Fig. 1). Two psychological processes proved to be unique to each domain – Social Awareness/Morality to Conservative Syndrome and Grudge to MEM. Both lines of enquiry also identified psychological processes – Religiosity and Nastiness – that are similar across the domains. It is important to state at the outset that the presence of common processes between two psychological domains may or may not imply causal relationship. Our evidence to date is based on cross-sectional data. The direction of the observed effect is also difficult to discern without experimental manipulations or longitudinal studies. In the absence of such information, we should refrain from claiming that conservatism is the cause of MEM and terrorism or vice versa. Our studies of conservatism (Stankov, 2011, 2016b) were based on two datasets (N1 = 2029 and N2 = 8883) each from 33 countries. The selection of variables was guided by a desire to measure the constructs that have been well researched by cross-cultural psychologists and which have shown reliable mean differences between countries and world regions. The main aims of the projects were to: a) Identify the structure that underlies measures from the domains of personality, social attitudes, values, axioms, and norms; b) Identify groups of individuals and countries that have similar patterns of scores; c) Identify the psychological domains that show small and those that show large cross-cultural differences. Our studies of MEM (Stankov, Saucier, & Knežević, 2010) were also based on international samples (total N = 2424) from 10 countries. The aims of this work were to: a) Develop and pilot-test close to 400 new MEM items; and b) Establish convergent and discriminant validity of the scales that were constructed following item analyses. The items did not contain words linked to a particular group (e.g., Islam). Three approaches to item development were employed: a) Themes were extracted from texts written by members of known terrorist groups and items were developed to capture these themes; b) Psychological, literary (Dostoyevsky, Marquis de Sade) and revolutionary (e.g., anarchist) texts were consulted and matched to the identified themes; c) Linguistic analysis of propaganda material and terrorist texts available on the internet was used to identify radicalization-related words, and actual statements containing such words were used as items. New scales of MEM constructed from item analyses of all statements were correlated with widely used, established scales such as Saucier's (2009) Big Six measure of personality, Schwartz and Bilsky's (1990)
4. The core of Conservative Syndrome: Religiosity and Nastiness/ Social Dominance 4.1. Religiosity Stankov (2009) defined the Conservatism Syndrome by two religiosity measures (Saucier's Traditional Religiousness and belief in paranormal experiences), values of Tradition and Conformity, and personality traits of Conscientiousness and (negative) Openness to Experience. In other studies, several Religiosity measures would all load on the same factor, but some of the additional scales would have low or no loadings. Religiosity, therefore, appears to be a hallmark of Conservative Syndrome. Three scales assessed Religiosity directly. Items in the Alphaism scale pertain to the acceptance of one or more traditional religious sources of authority, such as a religious text or scripture, or a religious figure, institution, or organization (Saucier, 2000). The Religion scale used in Social Axioms studies (Bond, 2009) refers to the acceptance of the existence of a supernatural being and to the beneficial functions of religious practice (Example statement: “Belief in a religion helps one understand the meaning of life”). The Duke Religiosity Index captures both behavior and personal spiritual feelings (e.g., “How often do you attend church, mosque, temple, or other religious meetings?”). The Religiosity factor in Stankov and Lee (2016b) also has small loadings from the Family Values scale (e.g., “The father should be the head of the 76
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negatively correlated with conservatism. Finally, the same negative correlations obtain for measures of political stability, rule of law, government effectiveness, control of corruption, democracy index, and happiness. In contemporary cross-cultural studies, several social-psychological constructs have shown pronounced differences between countries. Perhaps the best known is the social norm of Collectivism/ Individualism (see Triandis & Gelfand, 1998). Stankov (2017) reports that conservative countries tend to be more collectivistic than less conservative countries. They also tend to give stronger endorsement to Power Distance (House et al., 2004) statements and Traditional and Survival values identified in the work of Inglehart and Welzel (2005). All correlations listed above are in broad agreement with the claim that Conservative Syndrome is indeed measured by the instruments employed in our studies. In general, Religiosity measures are more strongly related than Nastiness/Social Dominance measures to the host of cognitive, economic, and sociological indices of conservatism mentioned above.
family.”), negative Machiavellianism (“The end justifies the means”) and a measure of ethnonationalism (e.g., “The homeland of my people is sacred because of its monuments to our ancestors and heroes.”) 4.2. Nastiness/Social Dominance It is important to keep in mind that the Nastiness component of MEM is narrower than the Nastiness/Social Dominance factor identified in studies of Conservative Syndrome. Both Grudge and Pro-violence MEM scales were administered to all participants in our studies of Conservative Syndrome but the importance of these scales is overshadowed by a host of other measures of (Anti-)Social Attitudes (Stankov & Lee, 2016b). Altogether, ten separate scales loaded on the Nastiness/Social Dominance factor. Paraphrases of the example statements for these scales give a general sense of its nature. Thus, those scoring high on Nastiness/Social Dominance believe that: the presentday world is vile and miserable; sometimes it is necessary to take advantage of others; killing is justified when it is an act of revenge; when someone insults you it is normal to go for days thinking of nothing else but revenge; one's honor is worth defending aggressively; pleasure, material possessions, and the self should be given exalted status; kindhearted people are easily bullied; we should hold on to our possessions; there are ways to control our luck and avoid unlucky things; and in our society, boys are encouraged more than girls to attain higher education. It is necessary to keep in mind that the overall level of endorsement of nasty statements in the population is low. The distribution of scores is skewed to the left, that is, the overall mean on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree is around 2 (i.e., “disagree”). However, the right-hand tail is long and there are indeed a relatively small number of people in every country who score high on the Nastiness scales. In general, it can be expected that convicted criminals, including terrorists, would score above the average on measures of Nastiness. Overall, people scoring high on measures of Religiosity and Nastiness/Social Dominance tend to be more conservative than those scoring low. This is particularly apparent when countries are used as units of analysis. In our studies, the most conservative countries are from the Southern hemisphere (South and South East Asia, Africa and Latin America). The most liberal are Western and some South European countries, as well as Canada and Australia. All other countries, including the USA, Russia and China, are in the middle.
6. MEM and conservatism in Serbia Empirical studies directly linking MEM to Conservative Syndrome are scarce but are starting to appear in the literature. Međedović and Petrović (2016) administered MEM scales from Stankov, Higgins et al. (2010) along with two groups of measures that have not been used in our work to date. One group assessed conservative attitudes using scales of Conservatism and Traditionalism from Duckitt, Bizumic, Krauss, and Heled (2010). The second group assessed the “ethos of conflict” construct as defined by Bar-Tal and Halperin (2011). Ethos of conflict consists of eight subscales that were adapted to be appropriate for use in Serbia. For example, the following item was used in the Victimization subscale: “During the conflict between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, Serbs were usually the victims of Albanian aggression.” The results of the study by Međedović and Petrović (2016) are very much in agreement with the analyses linking MEM and conservatism. Thus, as expected, a combined measure of Duckitt et al.'s (2010) Conservatism and Traditionalism is closely related to the Religiosity (i.e., Divine Power) Excuse component of MEM. A new finding is that Conservatism is also linked to the “ethos of conflict” composite score, which in turn predicts Nastiness (Pro-violence) and Grudge (Vile World) components of the MEM. In other words, “ethos of conflict” captures both Grudge and Nastiness components of MEM - those scoring high on Conservative Syndrome tend to express somewhat more Nasty views and hold more Grudges.
5. Correlates of Religiosity, Nastiness/Social Dominance and Conservative Syndrome Conservative Syndrome shows consistent negative correlations with cognitive performance. Stankov (2009; Stankov & Lee, 2016a) reported that measures of Conservative Syndrome are negatively correlated with cognitive ability at the individual level. These correlations range from r = −0.17 with a measure of fluid intelligence to r = − 0.40 with a vocabulary test, which is a good measure of crystallized intelligence. Since crystallized intelligence captures the effects of acculturated learning (i.e., education), it is reasonable to assume that increased levels of schooling will lead to decreased levels of conservatism. At the country level, correlations are somewhat higher (e.g., r = − 0.47 with PISA mathematics achievement scores) in Stankov and Lee (2016a). Stoet and Geary (2017) also report that higher levels of religiosity at the national level are associated with lower educational performance in science and mathematics (rs ranging from −0.65 to − 0.74) in largescale international assessments of PISA and TIMSS. Our studies show that poor and less democratic countries tend to score high on Conservative Syndrome measures. Stankov and Lee (2016b) reported that the average gross domestic product (GDP) of liberal countries used in our studies is about seven times larger than the GDP of the conservative countries. Our findings also show that GDP and the UN's Human Development Index (HDI) are both significantly
7. Contemporary “white working-class” conservatism Overall, social conservatives in our studies tend to be more religious than liberals and are more inclined to endorse rough treatment of those outside their own group. Lower levels of education and socio-economic status, are known to be related to higher levels of conservatism. Therefore, it can be expected that members of the working-class will score higher than the rest of the population on dimensions of conservatism. In today's world, these dimensions are different from those that led to the development of authoritarian systems in the last century. People are better educated and generally better off, and the rule-of-law is more commonly accepted and applied. Nevertheless, it may be advisable to monitor the political situation and levels of MEM and Conservative Syndrome in the population. This may not be an easy task but steps to gather relevant information need to be taken before the situation worsens. The correctional institutions in Canada and Australia are already gathering some information about inmates' attitudes towards terrorism. Employees at the law enforcement agencies can also be trained to be vigilant about the MEM. Finally, carefully crafted statements reflecting Conservative Syndrome and MEM may be possible 77
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“dissenting views” - might become targets of terrorist attacks.
to use in large-scale social surveys. The governments will need to introduce management procedures to synthesize and evaluate these different sources of information. Emboldened by the emergence of populist politicians, vigilantes and members of local right-wing factions in Western countries might perpetrate acts of terrorism in addition to those committed by people from other countries and local lone wolves. There might also be an increase in what Drake (2007) called ‘conservative terrorism.’ This term arose in a debate related to loyalist terrorism in Northern Ireland. Drake (2007) argued that ‘pro-state’ terrorism, whereby terrorists carry out attacks in order to eliminate threats, which they believe should have been eliminated by the state's security forces, is more properly seen in the wider context of conservative terrorism. Some signs of it may already be on the horizon since the executive vice president and CEO of the USA National Rifle Association has recently stated that academic and media elites are “America's greatest domestic threats.”2
9. Grudge dilution Stankov et al. (2011) suggested that Nastiness and Religiosity might be hard to modify because both appear to be influenced by genetics (see Hatemi et al., 2014), and efforts to reduce Religiosity are likely to attract strong opposition. They argued for the engagement of media, community groups and education to reduce Grudge as a means of combating the threat of terrorism. Our findings about the components of Grudge can be used to delineate target populations and provide some guiding principles for intervention. First, it can be expected that the perception of the West as an aggressor will be weak in Western countries and more pronounced among the citizens of some poor, non-Western countries. The same perception will exist among immigrants from these countries living in the West. To address this issue, Western governments can either use factual information to counter claims of aggression or, if this is not appropriate, publicly apologize to the people involved. Second, a perception that the West is a morally rotten society is not restricted to foreigners; it can be present among sections of every society. Governments need to invest more effort in informing the public prior to enacting laws that might be seen by some as morally problematic. It may also be a good idea to mobilize the support of religious leaders, who should be encouraged to focus their teaching less on the idea that theirs is a ‘religion of peace’ and more on debunking the proposition that the West is evil and promoting the value of life. Third, a perception that the world we live in is vile borders on the pathological. It might develop as a consequence of psychological upheavals during adolescence and, if it continues into adult life, transform into depression. People scoring high on the Vile World factor may be less influenced by the ideological aspects of radicalization and more likely to stage lone wolf attacks. Psychological counseling may be the best kind of intervention. As pointed out by P. Barrett in his comments about the present paper, intervention should be thought of as an evolving-over-time nonlinear dynamical complex system. We should anticipate the introduction of a variety of interventions designed to perhaps dilute Grudge over time. By this he means that as we address issues related to Grudge with specific but small interventions their effect will be to diffuse among a population such that high levels of Grudge are harder and harder to maintain by some individuals. Of particular interest will be the possibility of modeling such a diffusion process using evolved-overtime population simulation modeling (as is done using Netlogo3) driven by competing plausible theory effect-parameters.
8. Conservative Syndrome, MEM and terrorism While it is clear that Conservative Syndrome and militant extremist mindset (MEM) share two groups of similar psychological processes, it would be wrong to assume that the next generation of home-grown terrorists will necessarily emerge from within the white working-class population. This is because an understanding of both Conservative Syndrome and MEM requires consideration of additional factors within each domain. As mentioned above, the additional factor within the Conservative Syndrome is Social Awareness/Morality. This captures processes that facilitate communal life and interactions with fellow human beings. Overall, while Social Awareness/Morality is a constituent of Conservative Syndrome, it appears to have no relationship to MEM. More important, however, is the effect of the third MEM factor, Grudge. Stankov et al. (2011) identify two varieties of Grudge. A narrow version - “West: Sins of the Western nations” (Stankov, Higgins et al., 2010) - has two components. First, the West is seen as an aggressor that has committed violence against other countries, implying that revenge against the West is acceptable. Its narrowness derives at least in part from the preponderance of Islamic groups in contemporary writings that reflect militant extremism. Many statements we used to measure MEM were based on these writings. Second, the West is seen as morally rotten; the statements that fall into this category can be interpreted as attempts to demonize the enemy. A broad version of Grudge, labeled “Vile World”, was reported by Stankov, Saucier et al. (2010). This factor is not limited to the West and it reflects general dissatisfaction with the conditions in the world today (e.g., the world is heading for destruction and the human race is facing calamity). Without Grudge, MEM is incomplete, and Nastiness/Social Dominance and Excuse (e.g., Religiosity), on their own, are unlikely to lead to terrorist activity. Thus, the absence of a strong Grudge within a conservative society is likely to prevent the emergence of complete MEM. There are, however, suggestions in the current political climate that this may be changing – for instance, the emergence of Donald Trump in the US, right-wing populist politicians in France and Holland, and even more so in parts of Eastern Europe, such as Victor Orban's Hungary. It is conceivable that conservative terrorism along the lines of Drake's (2007) writings may increase as a reaction to what may be seen as “over-the-top” political correctness and tolerance of views seen as contrary to those of the “ordinary people”. In other words, political correctness may be interpreted as the implementation of morally rotten policies in our social lives. As a consequence, social institutions - including universities, which are perceived to promote or tolerate such
10. What about liberalism and terrorism? Among the Excuse components of MEM, religiosity is the most salient dimension. The MEM religiosity factors were labeled “Divine Power” in Stankov, Saucier et al. (2010) and “God: In the name of God” in Stankov, Higgins et al. (2010). Another dimension of excuse, mentioned in Stankov et al. (2011) and elaborated in Stankov et al. (in press), is Utopianism, which provides noble atheistic justification for terrorist acts. An example measurement item is: “One day, a just world, free of exploitation and dictatorship, will be created.” Needless to say, for some terrorist groups, such as the Red Brigades, who use utopian (e.g. communist) ideas as an excuse, the link between Conservative Syndrome and MEM is weak. In other words, these kinds of terrorists are likely to score low on Religiosity, which is an important component of Conservative Syndrome. They will nevertheless display Nastiness, which, by itself, is not the defining attribute of conservatism. Left-wing
2 Yahoo News, April 29, 2017. Executive vice president and CEO of the National Rifle Association Wayne LaPierre spoke ahead of President Trump at an NRA meeting. (https://www.yahoo.com/news/nra-wayne-lapierre-calls-academic-185509983.html.)
3 This is the link to Netlogo simulation program: https://ccl.northwestern.edu/ netlogo/docs/
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threat of lone-wolf attacks. Members of organized terrorist groups are likely to have a similar mental make-up. Contemporary criminologists focus on radicalization, which is often interpreted as strong identification with a religious group. Within the framework outlined above, their focus is mostly on aspects of the Excuse component. Nastiness and Grudge are arguably equally strong or even stronger triggers for terrorist activity and should be taken into serious consideration in discussions of radicalization. The link between Conservative Syndrome and MEM, however, can take us even further. At present, resistance to change appears to be at work in many societies. The movement towards conservatism is gaining strength, and it will take some time before it runs out of steam. Under these circumstances the demands of the oppressed people, such as minorities in many countries, are likely to be seen as instruments of change and will be suppressed. Needless to say, failing to take care of those who have grievances and feel neglected can lead to increased tensions and conflict within a society. It remains to be seen whether young people today will challenge or join this conservative movement.
extremists are less visible today but, of course, this too may change in future. 11. Where to from here? Most of the work summarized above was based on our own research. This needs to be related to theoretical accounts and extensive empirical studies of both conservatism and terrorism by other investigators. For example, with respect to conservatism, it will be important to compare our findings both with older studies (e.g., Wilson & Patterson, 1968) and with more recent work on the topic (e.g., Duckitt et al., 2010; Jost & Amodio, 2012). With respect to terrorism, it will be necessary to examine the place of MEM measures within the overall approach to terrorism risk assessment (see Hogg, Meehan, & Farquharson, 2010; Monahan, 2015). MEM will also need to be examined in relationship to authoritarianism, dogmatism, and related social attitudes, including what is now referred to as the Dark Triad narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Above all, however, it will be important to examine both Conservative Syndrome and MEM in relation to theories that have emerged in social psychology and which have generated a great deal of empirical work that appears to be in broad agreement with our own. For example, the work of Jost and his associates' views political ideology as motivated social cognition. They present behavioral and neurological evidence indicating that needs to reduce uncertainty, ambiguity, threat, and disgust are all positively associated with conservatism (Jost & Amodio, 2012). Nastiness and Grudge in particular may be related to these needs. Another example is the work inspired by the social identity theory. Hogg et al. (2010) used laboratory experiments to show that, when people feel that their self-relevant values and practices are under threat, self-uncertainty strengthens identification with “radical” groups. Another study within the same theoretical framework was focused on religion. Ysseldyk, Matheson, and Anisman (2010) argue that religion may be seen to serve a uniquely powerful function in shaping psychological and social processes. Religious identification offers both a distinctive “sacred” worldview and “eternal” group membership, unmatched by identification with other social groups. This, however, may have a pronounced negative impact when religious identity itself is threatened through intergroup conflict. This is also in agreement with our findings that religiosity can act as an Excuse and that it is related to Nastiness. Empirical procedures inspired by these and other theories from social psychology will need to be linked to our versions of Conservative Syndrome and MEM.
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12. Discussion From a psychological point of view, contemporary conservatism and terrorism have notable overlap. Two component processes of each domain are closely related. Thus, MEM's component Nastiness is related to Conservative Syndrome's component Nastiness/Social Dominance. The Religiosity component of Conservative Syndrome is also related to the component Excuse (Religiosity aspect) of MEM. This link has assumed greater relevance following recent political developments. By themselves these two components are unlikely to lead to a strong increase in terrorist activity, even if the number of conservative-leaning members of the population were to increase. If, however, appropriate measures to control the third component of MEM, Grudge, are not taken, we might witness a new wave of home-grown terrorism from groups with rightwing political orientation who are responding to the agenda of populist politicians. It appears that psychology, rather than solely political economy and ideology/religion, may provide useful information about the sources, future directions in development and, perhaps, ways of controlling threats of terrorism. By its very nature psychology offers a more promising approach than, say, sociology to address the increasingly serious 79
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country-level differences: Conservatism/liberalism and harshness/softness. Learning and Individual Differences, 30, 22–33. Stankov, L., & Saucier, G. (2015). Social axioms in 33 countries: Good replicability at the individual but less so at the country level. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 46(2), 296–315. Stankov, L., Saucier, G., & Knežević, G. (2010). Militant extremist mindset: Pro-violence, vile world, and divine power. Psychological Assessment, 22(1), 70–86. Stankov, L., Saucier, G., & Knežević, G. (2011). Militant extremist mindset. In S. Boag, & N. Tiliopoulos (Eds.), Personality & intelligence: Theory, assessment, & applications. Nova Science Publishers, Inc. Stoet, G., & Geary, D. C. (2017). Students in countries with higher levels of religiosity perform lower in science and mathematics. Intelligence, 1(62), 71–78. Triandis, H. C., & Gelfand, M. J. (1998). Converging measurement of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 118–128. Wilson, G. D., & Patterson, J. R. (1968). A new measure of conservatism. The British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 7, 264–269. Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 60–71.
Nastiness, social awareness/morality, religiosity and broad conservatism/liberalism. Learning and Individual Differences, 49, 138–150. Stankov, L. (2017). Conservative syndrome: Individual and cross-cultural differences. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022022117709984. Stankov, L., Higgins, D., Saucier, G., & Knežević, G. (2010). Contemporary militant extremism: A linguistic approach to scale development. Psychological Assessment, 22(2), 246–258. Stankov, L., Knežević, G., Saucier, G., Radović, B., & Milovanović, B. (2017). Militant extremist mindset and the assessment of radicalization in general population. Journal of Individual Differences (in press). Stankov, L., & Lee, J. (2008). Culture: Ways of thinking and believing. In G. J. Boyle, G. Matthews, & D. Saklofske (Eds.), The Handbook of Personality Theory and Testing (pp. 560–575). Sage Publications. Stankov, L., & Lee, J. (2009). Dimensions of cultural differences: Pancultural, etic/emic, and ecological approaches. Learning and Individual Differences, 19(3), 339–354. Stankov, L., & Lee, J. (2016a). Toward a psychological atlas of the world with mixture modeling. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 47(2), 249–262. Stankov, L., & Lee, J. (2016b). Nastiness, morality and religiosity in 33 nations. Personality and Individual Differences, 99, 56–66. Stankov, L., Lee, J., & van de Vijver, F. J. R. (2014). Two dimensions of psychological
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Review
Psychological processes common to social conservatism and terrorism
MARK
Lazar Stankov School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia University of Southern Queensland, Australia
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Conservative Syndrome Militant extremist mindset Nastiness Grudge Excuse
There are areas of overlap between contemporary social conservatism and psychological aspects of terrorism. This paper summarizes empirical evidence from our large-scale cross-cultural surveys linking the two domains. Two component processes of both domains – Religiosity and Nastiness – are closely related. On their own, these processes are unlikely to lead to a significant increase in terrorist activity, even if the number of conservativeleaning members of the population were to increase. Our research, however, identified another component of the militant extremist mindset (MEM) – Grudge – that might precipitate a new wave of terrorism by groups linked to extreme conservative right-wing/populist political parties.
1. Introduction This paper explores the relationship between two constructs – social conservatism and psychological aspects of terrorism - that are not usually seen as being related. Of course, it is hard to imagine typical present day terrorists as fighters for liberal causes or as revolutionaries. Our empirical studies suggest that there may be a closer link between conservatism and militant extremism than previously thought. 2. Terrorism and conservatism defined Encyclopedia Britannica defines terrorism as the “systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.” Two related terms radicalism and extremism - have stronger psychological connotations. They suggest a pattern of thinking, or what Saucier, Akers, Miller, Stankov, and Knezevic (2009) refer to as a Militant Extremist Mindset (MEM), that is, a set of beliefs, feelings, thoughts and motivations among those who plan or actively engage in terrorism. Psychological components of MEM belong to the category of social attitudes - states of mind and feelings that involve evaluations (e.g., like or dislike) of a specific object or social interaction. Monahan (2015) sees MEM scales as useful instruments for the individual risk assessment of terrorism. Conservatism reflects human fear of sudden change and a tendency to rely on habitual activities. The term is commonly used in public discourse in connection with various forms of conservatism - political, fiscal, cultural, or social.1 The issues of interest to psychologists usually
fall under the category of ‘social conservatism’, since psychological interpretations tend to invoke the notion of traits (i.e., personality dimensions and aspects of social attitudes) and dispositions that are expressed in our interactions with social environment (e.g., values, social axioms, social norms). Stankov (2009) referred to a constellation of such constructs as Conservative Syndrome. At one level, Conservative Syndrome can be thought of as a broad dimension that is conceptually similar to, say, Extroversion/Introversion. Consequently, from the psychological point of view, individuals and countries that score low on measures of Conservative Syndrome can be described as liberal. Indeed, Stankov (2016b) argued that at the countries' level correlations among the components are high enough to allow us to classify countries as broadly Conservative or Liberal. The traits and dispositions captured by this label should not be seen as negative (or pathological) in nature. Like the concept of “authoritarian syndrome”, which is commonly used in political science (see Raden, 1999), our construct refers to both trait-like habitual patterns of behavior and to processes that are significantly influenced by the environment. At the individual level correlations among the components of the Conservative Syndrome do not show high correlations among themselves and therefore can be viewed as a ‘collection of symptoms’ – i.e., as a ‘syndrome’ – not a strong source trait. Although Conservative Syndrome is broader than MEM, the two share common psychological processes. These include social attitudes such as those captured by measures of proneness to aggression, materialism, proviolence, ethno-nationalism, materialism, Machiavellianism and religiosity, among others (Stankov & Lee, 2016a). Compared to the measures
E-mail address: [email protected]. Social conservatism is different from fiscal conservatism which, like classical liberalism, advocates low taxes, reduced government spending, free trade and minimal government debt. Members of contemporary conservative political parties (e.g., Republicans in the US, conservatives in the UK and their equivalents in Australia and Canada) may have preference for both or, perhaps, for either one of these two brands of conservatism. 1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.08.029 Received 8 August 2017; Received in revised form 14 August 2017; Accepted 17 August 2017 0191-8869/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Militant Extremist Mindset (MEM)
Grudge
Social Awareness/ Morality
Nastiness
Nastiness/ Social Dominance
Excuse (Religiosity, Utopianism)
values, and House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, and Gupta's (2004) social norms, to examine their convergent and discriminant validity (see Stankov, Saucier et al., 2010; Stankov et al., in press; Stankov, Higgins, Saucier, & Knežević, 2010; Stankov, Saucier, & Knežević, 2011). This process led to the identification of three MEM factors, which were labeled Excuse, Nastiness and Grudge (as shown on the left-hand side of Fig. 1). As pointed out by Stankov et al. (in press), components of MEM fit into the model of vulnerabilities and propensities to extremist ideologies and terrorism that was proposed by Borum (2014). Although Grudge was an important MEM ingredient, subsequent work indicated that it plays a negligible role in the Conservative Syndrome. As I elaborate below, this was not the case with the other two component processes of MEM. Religiosity, which is a component of Excuse and Nastiness in MEM research, proved to be an important aspect of conservatism. Our team developed no new measures of conservatism. Instead, we employed well-known measures of personality, -isms, values, social axioms, and social norms that had been developed and used by other investigators and which had previously demonstrated significant crosscultural differences. Thus, there was no a priori plan to focus on Conservative Syndrome itself. Our studies were intended to be exploratory and as previously noted one of the objectives was to identify measures that show large or small differences between countries and regions. The data were analyzed using factor analysis (exploratory and confirmatory) and latent profile analyses in which both individuals and countries were employed as units (Stankov, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2017; Stankov & Lee, 2008, 2009, 2016a, 2016b; Stankov, Lee, & van de Vijver, 2014; Stankov & Saucier, 2015). In the outcome, three factors were identified: Religiosity, Nastiness/Social Dominance and Social Awareness/Morality (as shown on the right-hand side of Fig. 1). One of these – Social Awareness/Morality – turned out to be somewhat less important for our purposes in this paper. Cross-cultural differences on this dimension were comparatively small (ICC = 0.093) and, in latent profile analyses at individual and country levels, differences between the groups on this dimension were also small. Religiosity and Nastiness/Social Dominance, however, were important for understanding the Conservative Syndrome. The percentages of total variance accounted for by countries' differences on these two factors were large (42.3% and 21.7%, respectively; Stankov, 2016b) in comparison to all other scales employed in our work.
Conservative Syndrome
Religiosity
Fig. 1. The structure of MEM and Conservative Syndrome and relationships between components in each domain. Note: This is an illustration, not the outcome of structural equation modeling.
from other psychological domains such as personality or values, these social attitudes tend be more powerful determinants of behavior and crosscultural differences (Stankov & Lee, 2016b).
3. Assessment issues This paper compares the findings from two different lines of survey work, one on Conservative Syndrome and the other on the MEM (see Fig. 1). Two psychological processes proved to be unique to each domain – Social Awareness/Morality to Conservative Syndrome and Grudge to MEM. Both lines of enquiry also identified psychological processes – Religiosity and Nastiness – that are similar across the domains. It is important to state at the outset that the presence of common processes between two psychological domains may or may not imply causal relationship. Our evidence to date is based on cross-sectional data. The direction of the observed effect is also difficult to discern without experimental manipulations or longitudinal studies. In the absence of such information, we should refrain from claiming that conservatism is the cause of MEM and terrorism or vice versa. Our studies of conservatism (Stankov, 2011, 2016b) were based on two datasets (N1 = 2029 and N2 = 8883) each from 33 countries. The selection of variables was guided by a desire to measure the constructs that have been well researched by cross-cultural psychologists and which have shown reliable mean differences between countries and world regions. The main aims of the projects were to: a) Identify the structure that underlies measures from the domains of personality, social attitudes, values, axioms, and norms; b) Identify groups of individuals and countries that have similar patterns of scores; c) Identify the psychological domains that show small and those that show large cross-cultural differences. Our studies of MEM (Stankov, Saucier, & Knežević, 2010) were also based on international samples (total N = 2424) from 10 countries. The aims of this work were to: a) Develop and pilot-test close to 400 new MEM items; and b) Establish convergent and discriminant validity of the scales that were constructed following item analyses. The items did not contain words linked to a particular group (e.g., Islam). Three approaches to item development were employed: a) Themes were extracted from texts written by members of known terrorist groups and items were developed to capture these themes; b) Psychological, literary (Dostoyevsky, Marquis de Sade) and revolutionary (e.g., anarchist) texts were consulted and matched to the identified themes; c) Linguistic analysis of propaganda material and terrorist texts available on the internet was used to identify radicalization-related words, and actual statements containing such words were used as items. New scales of MEM constructed from item analyses of all statements were correlated with widely used, established scales such as Saucier's (2009) Big Six measure of personality, Schwartz and Bilsky's (1990)
4. The core of Conservative Syndrome: Religiosity and Nastiness/ Social Dominance 4.1. Religiosity Stankov (2009) defined the Conservatism Syndrome by two religiosity measures (Saucier's Traditional Religiousness and belief in paranormal experiences), values of Tradition and Conformity, and personality traits of Conscientiousness and (negative) Openness to Experience. In other studies, several Religiosity measures would all load on the same factor, but some of the additional scales would have low or no loadings. Religiosity, therefore, appears to be a hallmark of Conservative Syndrome. Three scales assessed Religiosity directly. Items in the Alphaism scale pertain to the acceptance of one or more traditional religious sources of authority, such as a religious text or scripture, or a religious figure, institution, or organization (Saucier, 2000). The Religion scale used in Social Axioms studies (Bond, 2009) refers to the acceptance of the existence of a supernatural being and to the beneficial functions of religious practice (Example statement: “Belief in a religion helps one understand the meaning of life”). The Duke Religiosity Index captures both behavior and personal spiritual feelings (e.g., “How often do you attend church, mosque, temple, or other religious meetings?”). The Religiosity factor in Stankov and Lee (2016b) also has small loadings from the Family Values scale (e.g., “The father should be the head of the 76
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negatively correlated with conservatism. Finally, the same negative correlations obtain for measures of political stability, rule of law, government effectiveness, control of corruption, democracy index, and happiness. In contemporary cross-cultural studies, several social-psychological constructs have shown pronounced differences between countries. Perhaps the best known is the social norm of Collectivism/ Individualism (see Triandis & Gelfand, 1998). Stankov (2017) reports that conservative countries tend to be more collectivistic than less conservative countries. They also tend to give stronger endorsement to Power Distance (House et al., 2004) statements and Traditional and Survival values identified in the work of Inglehart and Welzel (2005). All correlations listed above are in broad agreement with the claim that Conservative Syndrome is indeed measured by the instruments employed in our studies. In general, Religiosity measures are more strongly related than Nastiness/Social Dominance measures to the host of cognitive, economic, and sociological indices of conservatism mentioned above.
family.”), negative Machiavellianism (“The end justifies the means”) and a measure of ethnonationalism (e.g., “The homeland of my people is sacred because of its monuments to our ancestors and heroes.”) 4.2. Nastiness/Social Dominance It is important to keep in mind that the Nastiness component of MEM is narrower than the Nastiness/Social Dominance factor identified in studies of Conservative Syndrome. Both Grudge and Pro-violence MEM scales were administered to all participants in our studies of Conservative Syndrome but the importance of these scales is overshadowed by a host of other measures of (Anti-)Social Attitudes (Stankov & Lee, 2016b). Altogether, ten separate scales loaded on the Nastiness/Social Dominance factor. Paraphrases of the example statements for these scales give a general sense of its nature. Thus, those scoring high on Nastiness/Social Dominance believe that: the presentday world is vile and miserable; sometimes it is necessary to take advantage of others; killing is justified when it is an act of revenge; when someone insults you it is normal to go for days thinking of nothing else but revenge; one's honor is worth defending aggressively; pleasure, material possessions, and the self should be given exalted status; kindhearted people are easily bullied; we should hold on to our possessions; there are ways to control our luck and avoid unlucky things; and in our society, boys are encouraged more than girls to attain higher education. It is necessary to keep in mind that the overall level of endorsement of nasty statements in the population is low. The distribution of scores is skewed to the left, that is, the overall mean on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree is around 2 (i.e., “disagree”). However, the right-hand tail is long and there are indeed a relatively small number of people in every country who score high on the Nastiness scales. In general, it can be expected that convicted criminals, including terrorists, would score above the average on measures of Nastiness. Overall, people scoring high on measures of Religiosity and Nastiness/Social Dominance tend to be more conservative than those scoring low. This is particularly apparent when countries are used as units of analysis. In our studies, the most conservative countries are from the Southern hemisphere (South and South East Asia, Africa and Latin America). The most liberal are Western and some South European countries, as well as Canada and Australia. All other countries, including the USA, Russia and China, are in the middle.
6. MEM and conservatism in Serbia Empirical studies directly linking MEM to Conservative Syndrome are scarce but are starting to appear in the literature. Međedović and Petrović (2016) administered MEM scales from Stankov, Higgins et al. (2010) along with two groups of measures that have not been used in our work to date. One group assessed conservative attitudes using scales of Conservatism and Traditionalism from Duckitt, Bizumic, Krauss, and Heled (2010). The second group assessed the “ethos of conflict” construct as defined by Bar-Tal and Halperin (2011). Ethos of conflict consists of eight subscales that were adapted to be appropriate for use in Serbia. For example, the following item was used in the Victimization subscale: “During the conflict between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, Serbs were usually the victims of Albanian aggression.” The results of the study by Međedović and Petrović (2016) are very much in agreement with the analyses linking MEM and conservatism. Thus, as expected, a combined measure of Duckitt et al.'s (2010) Conservatism and Traditionalism is closely related to the Religiosity (i.e., Divine Power) Excuse component of MEM. A new finding is that Conservatism is also linked to the “ethos of conflict” composite score, which in turn predicts Nastiness (Pro-violence) and Grudge (Vile World) components of the MEM. In other words, “ethos of conflict” captures both Grudge and Nastiness components of MEM - those scoring high on Conservative Syndrome tend to express somewhat more Nasty views and hold more Grudges.
5. Correlates of Religiosity, Nastiness/Social Dominance and Conservative Syndrome Conservative Syndrome shows consistent negative correlations with cognitive performance. Stankov (2009; Stankov & Lee, 2016a) reported that measures of Conservative Syndrome are negatively correlated with cognitive ability at the individual level. These correlations range from r = −0.17 with a measure of fluid intelligence to r = − 0.40 with a vocabulary test, which is a good measure of crystallized intelligence. Since crystallized intelligence captures the effects of acculturated learning (i.e., education), it is reasonable to assume that increased levels of schooling will lead to decreased levels of conservatism. At the country level, correlations are somewhat higher (e.g., r = − 0.47 with PISA mathematics achievement scores) in Stankov and Lee (2016a). Stoet and Geary (2017) also report that higher levels of religiosity at the national level are associated with lower educational performance in science and mathematics (rs ranging from −0.65 to − 0.74) in largescale international assessments of PISA and TIMSS. Our studies show that poor and less democratic countries tend to score high on Conservative Syndrome measures. Stankov and Lee (2016b) reported that the average gross domestic product (GDP) of liberal countries used in our studies is about seven times larger than the GDP of the conservative countries. Our findings also show that GDP and the UN's Human Development Index (HDI) are both significantly
7. Contemporary “white working-class” conservatism Overall, social conservatives in our studies tend to be more religious than liberals and are more inclined to endorse rough treatment of those outside their own group. Lower levels of education and socio-economic status, are known to be related to higher levels of conservatism. Therefore, it can be expected that members of the working-class will score higher than the rest of the population on dimensions of conservatism. In today's world, these dimensions are different from those that led to the development of authoritarian systems in the last century. People are better educated and generally better off, and the rule-of-law is more commonly accepted and applied. Nevertheless, it may be advisable to monitor the political situation and levels of MEM and Conservative Syndrome in the population. This may not be an easy task but steps to gather relevant information need to be taken before the situation worsens. The correctional institutions in Canada and Australia are already gathering some information about inmates' attitudes towards terrorism. Employees at the law enforcement agencies can also be trained to be vigilant about the MEM. Finally, carefully crafted statements reflecting Conservative Syndrome and MEM may be possible 77
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“dissenting views” - might become targets of terrorist attacks.
to use in large-scale social surveys. The governments will need to introduce management procedures to synthesize and evaluate these different sources of information. Emboldened by the emergence of populist politicians, vigilantes and members of local right-wing factions in Western countries might perpetrate acts of terrorism in addition to those committed by people from other countries and local lone wolves. There might also be an increase in what Drake (2007) called ‘conservative terrorism.’ This term arose in a debate related to loyalist terrorism in Northern Ireland. Drake (2007) argued that ‘pro-state’ terrorism, whereby terrorists carry out attacks in order to eliminate threats, which they believe should have been eliminated by the state's security forces, is more properly seen in the wider context of conservative terrorism. Some signs of it may already be on the horizon since the executive vice president and CEO of the USA National Rifle Association has recently stated that academic and media elites are “America's greatest domestic threats.”2
9. Grudge dilution Stankov et al. (2011) suggested that Nastiness and Religiosity might be hard to modify because both appear to be influenced by genetics (see Hatemi et al., 2014), and efforts to reduce Religiosity are likely to attract strong opposition. They argued for the engagement of media, community groups and education to reduce Grudge as a means of combating the threat of terrorism. Our findings about the components of Grudge can be used to delineate target populations and provide some guiding principles for intervention. First, it can be expected that the perception of the West as an aggressor will be weak in Western countries and more pronounced among the citizens of some poor, non-Western countries. The same perception will exist among immigrants from these countries living in the West. To address this issue, Western governments can either use factual information to counter claims of aggression or, if this is not appropriate, publicly apologize to the people involved. Second, a perception that the West is a morally rotten society is not restricted to foreigners; it can be present among sections of every society. Governments need to invest more effort in informing the public prior to enacting laws that might be seen by some as morally problematic. It may also be a good idea to mobilize the support of religious leaders, who should be encouraged to focus their teaching less on the idea that theirs is a ‘religion of peace’ and more on debunking the proposition that the West is evil and promoting the value of life. Third, a perception that the world we live in is vile borders on the pathological. It might develop as a consequence of psychological upheavals during adolescence and, if it continues into adult life, transform into depression. People scoring high on the Vile World factor may be less influenced by the ideological aspects of radicalization and more likely to stage lone wolf attacks. Psychological counseling may be the best kind of intervention. As pointed out by P. Barrett in his comments about the present paper, intervention should be thought of as an evolving-over-time nonlinear dynamical complex system. We should anticipate the introduction of a variety of interventions designed to perhaps dilute Grudge over time. By this he means that as we address issues related to Grudge with specific but small interventions their effect will be to diffuse among a population such that high levels of Grudge are harder and harder to maintain by some individuals. Of particular interest will be the possibility of modeling such a diffusion process using evolved-overtime population simulation modeling (as is done using Netlogo3) driven by competing plausible theory effect-parameters.
8. Conservative Syndrome, MEM and terrorism While it is clear that Conservative Syndrome and militant extremist mindset (MEM) share two groups of similar psychological processes, it would be wrong to assume that the next generation of home-grown terrorists will necessarily emerge from within the white working-class population. This is because an understanding of both Conservative Syndrome and MEM requires consideration of additional factors within each domain. As mentioned above, the additional factor within the Conservative Syndrome is Social Awareness/Morality. This captures processes that facilitate communal life and interactions with fellow human beings. Overall, while Social Awareness/Morality is a constituent of Conservative Syndrome, it appears to have no relationship to MEM. More important, however, is the effect of the third MEM factor, Grudge. Stankov et al. (2011) identify two varieties of Grudge. A narrow version - “West: Sins of the Western nations” (Stankov, Higgins et al., 2010) - has two components. First, the West is seen as an aggressor that has committed violence against other countries, implying that revenge against the West is acceptable. Its narrowness derives at least in part from the preponderance of Islamic groups in contemporary writings that reflect militant extremism. Many statements we used to measure MEM were based on these writings. Second, the West is seen as morally rotten; the statements that fall into this category can be interpreted as attempts to demonize the enemy. A broad version of Grudge, labeled “Vile World”, was reported by Stankov, Saucier et al. (2010). This factor is not limited to the West and it reflects general dissatisfaction with the conditions in the world today (e.g., the world is heading for destruction and the human race is facing calamity). Without Grudge, MEM is incomplete, and Nastiness/Social Dominance and Excuse (e.g., Religiosity), on their own, are unlikely to lead to terrorist activity. Thus, the absence of a strong Grudge within a conservative society is likely to prevent the emergence of complete MEM. There are, however, suggestions in the current political climate that this may be changing – for instance, the emergence of Donald Trump in the US, right-wing populist politicians in France and Holland, and even more so in parts of Eastern Europe, such as Victor Orban's Hungary. It is conceivable that conservative terrorism along the lines of Drake's (2007) writings may increase as a reaction to what may be seen as “over-the-top” political correctness and tolerance of views seen as contrary to those of the “ordinary people”. In other words, political correctness may be interpreted as the implementation of morally rotten policies in our social lives. As a consequence, social institutions - including universities, which are perceived to promote or tolerate such
10. What about liberalism and terrorism? Among the Excuse components of MEM, religiosity is the most salient dimension. The MEM religiosity factors were labeled “Divine Power” in Stankov, Saucier et al. (2010) and “God: In the name of God” in Stankov, Higgins et al. (2010). Another dimension of excuse, mentioned in Stankov et al. (2011) and elaborated in Stankov et al. (in press), is Utopianism, which provides noble atheistic justification for terrorist acts. An example measurement item is: “One day, a just world, free of exploitation and dictatorship, will be created.” Needless to say, for some terrorist groups, such as the Red Brigades, who use utopian (e.g. communist) ideas as an excuse, the link between Conservative Syndrome and MEM is weak. In other words, these kinds of terrorists are likely to score low on Religiosity, which is an important component of Conservative Syndrome. They will nevertheless display Nastiness, which, by itself, is not the defining attribute of conservatism. Left-wing
2 Yahoo News, April 29, 2017. Executive vice president and CEO of the National Rifle Association Wayne LaPierre spoke ahead of President Trump at an NRA meeting. (https://www.yahoo.com/news/nra-wayne-lapierre-calls-academic-185509983.html.)
3 This is the link to Netlogo simulation program: https://ccl.northwestern.edu/ netlogo/docs/
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threat of lone-wolf attacks. Members of organized terrorist groups are likely to have a similar mental make-up. Contemporary criminologists focus on radicalization, which is often interpreted as strong identification with a religious group. Within the framework outlined above, their focus is mostly on aspects of the Excuse component. Nastiness and Grudge are arguably equally strong or even stronger triggers for terrorist activity and should be taken into serious consideration in discussions of radicalization. The link between Conservative Syndrome and MEM, however, can take us even further. At present, resistance to change appears to be at work in many societies. The movement towards conservatism is gaining strength, and it will take some time before it runs out of steam. Under these circumstances the demands of the oppressed people, such as minorities in many countries, are likely to be seen as instruments of change and will be suppressed. Needless to say, failing to take care of those who have grievances and feel neglected can lead to increased tensions and conflict within a society. It remains to be seen whether young people today will challenge or join this conservative movement.
extremists are less visible today but, of course, this too may change in future. 11. Where to from here? Most of the work summarized above was based on our own research. This needs to be related to theoretical accounts and extensive empirical studies of both conservatism and terrorism by other investigators. For example, with respect to conservatism, it will be important to compare our findings both with older studies (e.g., Wilson & Patterson, 1968) and with more recent work on the topic (e.g., Duckitt et al., 2010; Jost & Amodio, 2012). With respect to terrorism, it will be necessary to examine the place of MEM measures within the overall approach to terrorism risk assessment (see Hogg, Meehan, & Farquharson, 2010; Monahan, 2015). MEM will also need to be examined in relationship to authoritarianism, dogmatism, and related social attitudes, including what is now referred to as the Dark Triad narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Above all, however, it will be important to examine both Conservative Syndrome and MEM in relation to theories that have emerged in social psychology and which have generated a great deal of empirical work that appears to be in broad agreement with our own. For example, the work of Jost and his associates' views political ideology as motivated social cognition. They present behavioral and neurological evidence indicating that needs to reduce uncertainty, ambiguity, threat, and disgust are all positively associated with conservatism (Jost & Amodio, 2012). Nastiness and Grudge in particular may be related to these needs. Another example is the work inspired by the social identity theory. Hogg et al. (2010) used laboratory experiments to show that, when people feel that their self-relevant values and practices are under threat, self-uncertainty strengthens identification with “radical” groups. Another study within the same theoretical framework was focused on religion. Ysseldyk, Matheson, and Anisman (2010) argue that religion may be seen to serve a uniquely powerful function in shaping psychological and social processes. Religious identification offers both a distinctive “sacred” worldview and “eternal” group membership, unmatched by identification with other social groups. This, however, may have a pronounced negative impact when religious identity itself is threatened through intergroup conflict. This is also in agreement with our findings that religiosity can act as an Excuse and that it is related to Nastiness. Empirical procedures inspired by these and other theories from social psychology will need to be linked to our versions of Conservative Syndrome and MEM.
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12. Discussion From a psychological point of view, contemporary conservatism and terrorism have notable overlap. Two component processes of each domain are closely related. Thus, MEM's component Nastiness is related to Conservative Syndrome's component Nastiness/Social Dominance. The Religiosity component of Conservative Syndrome is also related to the component Excuse (Religiosity aspect) of MEM. This link has assumed greater relevance following recent political developments. By themselves these two components are unlikely to lead to a strong increase in terrorist activity, even if the number of conservative-leaning members of the population were to increase. If, however, appropriate measures to control the third component of MEM, Grudge, are not taken, we might witness a new wave of home-grown terrorism from groups with rightwing political orientation who are responding to the agenda of populist politicians. It appears that psychology, rather than solely political economy and ideology/religion, may provide useful information about the sources, future directions in development and, perhaps, ways of controlling threats of terrorism. By its very nature psychology offers a more promising approach than, say, sociology to address the increasingly serious 79
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