Feeling uncertain about who you are and what you want to do with your life? Such doubt may lead you to sympathize with \a radical or extremist group, according to a new study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Groups that rally around radical beliefs may provide a searching person with the sense of self and social identity they are lacking.
Michael Hogg, a psychologist at Claremont Graduate University, and his colleagues increased feelings of doubt in a group of college students by asking them to write down several things about which they felt uncertain. The researchers then asked them whether they supported some very strong (some might say radical) responses to tuition increases, such as blockading the campus, rallies and vigorous protests. The experimenters found that these uncertain students stopped preferring the usual moderate courses, such as holding meetings, printing leaflets and sending letters to newspapers, and they shifted toward favoring the more radical actions.
The results hint that organizations espousing extreme views may be especially attractive to people with questions about their purpose. “Some groups provide a more clearly defined sense of self,” Hogg explains. “These are the groups that seem from the outside to be a bit cliquish, a bit closed. At the extreme, you get groups that look like religious terrorist groups.” Helping people navigate through times of social change, therefore, by providing them with a strong sense of self and belonging, may help lower the risk that they will end up in extremist organizations.
This article was originally published with the title Embracing the Radical.
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Add CommentI believe most extremism comes from black and white thinking that creates false dilemmas. Most people seem to be black and white thinkers. This type of thinking helps preserve a person's self-esteem, typically by believing themselves to be good and others to be bad (at least others who are different). They often frame the issue in a "more is better" for whatever solution they support.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is very evident in the political movements we are seeing in which people think anything associated with the government is bad. They believe we must eliminate the government and replace it with private enterprise. Anyone who believes different is a socialist or a commie. Any form of regulation is bad. Self-regulation works best. They want to get rid of the EPA, FDA, NRC, SEC, etc (see Ayn Rand Institute--supported by Alan Greenspan). They believe private nuclear power operating companies should regulate themselves. Many people that have a strong sense of being a libertarian can actually be better characterized as an anarcho-capitalist.
The article is unconvincing to a scientist because the study does not appear to meet the requirements of a valid test. There is no report of a falsifiable component, such as a group where uncertainty was increased rather than decreased. Too often in experimental psychology the results merely serve to validate a hunch rather than prove a relationship.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience writing like this, which fails to give the real science, leads to rampant speculation, where readers feel that the tests validate their own hunches. The comments quickly fill up with superfluous arguments that often polarize into factions with extreme positions. Perhaps this type of writing leads to uncertainty in the reader about what is real science?
Solspot,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid you intentionally agree with the outcome of the study with your premise? Uncertainty leads readers/commenters to polarize into extreme groups. Since you were quick to put down the experimental validity of the study, I would guess this was unintentional.
Hogg used a 2x2 experimental design where self-uncertainty and group-radicalism were manipulated. That means two factors were used and two values for each factor. More specifically, people used for the study were those characterized low and high self-uncertainty. The groups (or hypothetical group responses) were characterized as radical or non-radical. 82 persons were in the study.
You should complain about Carrie Arnold's review of the study rather than the study itself. Did you read the referenced publication? And what do you expect? It's psychology.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJB-50CV859-5&_user=10&_coverDate=11%2F30%2F2010&_rdoc=27&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_origin=browse&_zone=rslt_list_item&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%236874%232010%23999539993%232414764%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=6874&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=49&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=528372b6a90a6557380c34d6127c1e8f&searchtype=a
I would add to Cramer's comment that most of the people of whom he speaks are incapable of defining socialism and, for the life of them, cannot distinguish between socialism and communism. Now would they understand that Marxists are not necessarily communists and that there are many different forms of all of these isms. People with sacred cows have very little knowledge of the husbandry involved.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA very interesting observation, however it must be remarked that looking for a mission in life is an schyzophrenic trait, many psychiatrists consider a goal oriented behavior as a manic behaviour and there is even one man that said that a coherent speech is a psychotic speech. Who can escape all of this ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for your reply. I intentionally applied the author's interpretation to the nature of comments in order to point out the problems that can result when SciAm writers fail to convey the real science, even in a short review, and so they leave the readers to speculate on a controversial interpretation of the study.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI didn't intend to criticize the study; rather I indicated the reason why it is so important to summarize the real science in these studies, instead of summarizing one possible interpretation of the results, which I called "a hunch". The writer didn't provide a link to the study; and frankly, it shouldn't be needed. Readers expect a short review to faithfully report, not expound upon, the results. But if the article is accurate, and the study author did present the results in such a controversial light as "embracing the radical", then there would be reason to call the
study report biased.
In short, we seem to agree that it was this article that was flawed. But, to resolve the question of whether the flaw was in the review or in the study would require the reader to search for the source, as you did. Honestly, if I had to do that much work in order to resolve this question, I would simply discount this review as ineffective, and drop it. I merely wrote the comment in order to advise the readers of this question.
I do not consider the uk student protesters to be extremist. Who sponsered this? The Tories? Why do you think not being able to afford college because of tuition increases, would not be harmful to ones sense of belonging? Were mlk and Gandhi extremists, because they engaged in civil disobedience rather than just attending meeting and handing out pamplets?
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