![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper seeks to examine the mechanisms of the 3 N model (need, narrative, and network) by testing a serial mediation model of group identity and ideology. We propose two rival hypotheses: need for significance predicts violent extremism, and its relationship is serially mediated by (1) group identity and ideology (Model 1); (2) ideology and group identity (Model 2). To test the hypotheses, we conducted a survey of 137 terrorism detainees from prisons across Indonesia. The results revealed that Model 1 had a better fit than Model 2, suggesting the important role of group processes in developing violent extremism’s ideology.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Emma Morris, “Children: Extremism and Online Radicalization,” Journal of Children and Media 10, no. 4 (October 2016): 508–14, https://doi.org/10.1080/17482798.2016.1234736.
2 Arie W. Kruglanski, Michele J. Gelfand, Jocelyn J. Bélanger, Anna Sheveland, Malkanthi Hetiarachchi, and Rohan Gunaratna, “The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization: How Significance Quest Impacts Violent Extremism,” Political Psychology 35 (January 2014): 69–93, https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12163; Arie W. Kruglanski, Michele J. Gelfand, Jocelyn J. Bélanger, Malkanthi Hetiarachchi, and Rohan Gunaratna, “Significance Quest Theory as the Driver of Radicalization towards Terrorism,” in Resilience and Resolve: Communities Against Terrorism, ed. Jolene Jerard and Salim Mohamed Nasir (London: Imperial College Press, 2015), 17–30, https://doi.org/10.1142/9781783267743_0002; Webber and Kruglanski, “The Social Psychological Makings of a Terrorist.”
3 Katarzyna Jasko, Gary LaFree, and Arie W. Kruglanski, “Quest for Significance and Violent Extremism: The Case of Domestic Radicalization,” Political Psychology 38, no. 5 (November 2016): 815–31, https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12376.
4 Michael A. Hogg, “Self-Uncertainty, Social Identity, and the Solace of Extremism,” in Extremism and the Psychology of Uncertainty, ed. Michael A Hogg and Danielle L. Blaylock (John Wiley and Sons, 2011); Paul G. Grieve and Michael A. Hogg, “Subjective Uncertainty and Intergroup Discrimination in the Minimal Group Situation,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25, no. 8 (August 1999): 926–40, https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672992511002; Barbara-Ann Mullin and Michael A. Hogg, “Dimensions of Subjective Uncertainty in Social Identification and Minimal Intergroup Discrimination,” British Journal of Social Psychology 37, no. 3 (September 1998): 345–65, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.1998.tb01176.x.
5 Arie W. Kruglanski and Edward Orehek, “The Need for Certainty as a Psychological Nexus for Individuals and Society,” in Extremism and the Psychology of Uncertainty, ed. Michael A Hogg and Danielle L. Blaylock (John Wiley and Sons, 2011); Arie W. Kruglanski, Xiaoyan Chen, Mark Dechesne, Shira Fishman, and Edward Orehek, “Fully Committed: Suicide Bombers’ Motivation and the Quest for Personal Significance,” Political Psychology 30, no. 3 (2009): 331–57, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2009.00698.x; Kruglanski, Gelfand, Bélanger, Sheveland, Hetiarachchi, and Gunaratna, “The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization.”
6 Jeff Victoroff, “The Mind of the Terrorist: A Review and Critique of Psychological Approaches,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 1 (2005): 3–42, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002704272040; Seth J. Schwartz, Curtis S. Dunkel, and Alan S. Waterman, “Terrorism: An Identity Theory Perspective,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 32, no. 6 (May 2009): 537–59, https://doi.org/10.1080/10576100902888453; Mirra Noor Milla, Joevarian Hudiyana, and Haykal Hafizul Arifin, “Attitude Toward Rehabilitation as a Key Predictor for Adopting Alternative Identities in Deradicalization Programs: An Investigation of Terrorist Detainees’ Profiles,” Asian Journal of Social Psychology 23, no. 1 (July 2019): 15–28, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12380.
7 Michael A. Hogg, Arie W. Kruglanski, and Kees van den Bos, “Uncertainty and the Roots of Extremism,” Journal of Social Issues 69, no. 3 (2013): 407–18, https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12021.
8 Martha Crenshaw, “An Organizational Approach to the Analysis of Political Terrorism,” Orbis 29 (1985): 465–89; Fathali M. Moghaddam, “The Staircase to Terrorism: A Psychological Exploration,” American Psychologist 60, no. 2 (2005): 161–9, https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.60.2.161; Webber and Kruglanski, “The Social Psychological Makings of a Terrorist”; Simona Trip, Carmen Hortensia Bora, Mihai Marian, Angelica Halmajan, and Marias Ioan Drugas, “Psychological Mechanisms Involved in Radicalization and Extremism. A Rational Emotive Behavioral Conceptualization,” Frontiers in Psychology 10 (March 2019), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00437.
9 Jocelyn J. Bélanger, Manuel Moyano, Hayat Muhammad, Lindsy Richardson, Marc-André K. Lafrenière, Patrick McCaffery, Karyne Framand, and Noëmie Nociti, “Radicalization Leading to Violence: A Test of the 3N Model,” Frontiers in Psychiatry 10 (February 2019), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00042.
10 Curtis D. Hardin and E. Tory Higgins, “Shared Reality: How Social Verification Makes the Subjective Objective,” in Handbook of Motivation and Cognition: The Interpersonal Context,Vol. 3, ed. Richard M. Sorrentino and E. Tory Higgins (New York: Guilford Press, 1996), 28–84, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=psyh&AN=1996-98385-002&loginpage=Login.asp; John T. Jost, Alison Ledgerwood, and Curtis D. Hardin, “Shared Reality, System Justification, and the Relational Basis of Ideological Beliefs,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2 (2008): 171–86.
11 Kruglanski, Gelfand, Bélanger, Sheveland, Hetiarachchi, and Gunaratna, “The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization: How Significance Quest Impacts Violent Extremism”; Albert Bandura, “Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 3, no. 3 (August 1999): 193–209, https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0303_3; Albert Bandura, Claudio Barbaranelli, Gian Vittorio Caprara, and Concetta Pastorelli, “Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71, no. 2 (1996): 364–74, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.364; Bélanger, Moyano, Muhammad, Richardson, Lafrenière, McCaffery, Framand, and Nociti, “Radicalization Leading to Violence: A Test of the 3N Model.”
12 Erica Molinario, Arie W. Kruglanski, Flavia Bonaiuto, Mirilia Bonnes, Lavinia Cicero, Ferdinando Fornara, Massimiliano Scopelliti, Jeroen Admiraal, Almut Beringer, Tom Dedeurwaerdere, et al. “Motivations to Act for the Protection of Nature Biodiversity and the Environment: A Matter of “Significance”,” Environment and Behavior 52, no. 10 (January 2019): 1133–63, https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916518824376.
13 Oluf Gøtzsche-Astrup, “The Time for Causal Designs: Review and Evaluation of Empirical Support for Mechanisms of Political Radicalisation,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 39 (2018): 90–9, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2018.02.003.
14 Mirra Noor Milla, Joevarian Hudiyana, Wahyu Cahyono, and Hamdi Muluk, “Is the Role of Ideologists Central in Terrorist Networks? A Social Network Analysis of Indonesian Terrorist Groups,” Frontiers in Psychology 11 (March 2020): 1–11, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00333.
15 Mark Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
16 Milla, Hudiyana, Cahyono, and Muluk, “Is the Role of Ideologists Central in Terrorist Networks? A Social Network Analysis of Indonesian Terrorist Groups.”
17 Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks.
18 Hogg, “Self-Uncertainty, Social Identity, and the Solace of Extremism”; Justin Reedy, John Gastil, and Michael Gabbay, “Terrorism and Small Groups,” Small Group Research 44, no. 6 (October 2013): 599–626, https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496413501892.
19 Arie W. Kruglanski, Jocelyn J. Bélanger, and Rohan Gunaratna, The Three Pillars of Radicalization: Needs, Narratives, and Networks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190851125.001.0001.
20 Bélanger, Moyano, Muhammad, Richardson, Lafrenière, McCaffery, Framand, and Nociti, “Radicalization Leading to Violence: A Test of the 3N Model.”
21 Ibid.
22 Hanga Horváth-Sántha, “Radicalization into Salafi Jihadism: Some Patterns and Profiles in Europe 2015–2017,” Honvédségi Szemle –Hungarian Defence Review 145, no. 2 (2017): 26–47, https://honvedelem.hu/images/media/5f58bfe5ce52b574704220.pdf.
23 Kruglanski, Gelfand, Bélanger, Sheveland, Hetiarachchi, and Gunaratna, “The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization: How Significance Quest Impacts Violent Extremism.”
24 Mirra Noor Milla, Idhamsyah Eka Putra, and Ahmad Naufalul Umam, “Stories from Jihadists: Significance, Identity, and Radicalization through the Call for Jihad,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 25, no. 2 (May 2019): 111–21, https://doi.org/10.1037/pac0000371.
25 Molinario, Kruglanski, Bonaiuto, Bonnes, Cicero, Fornara, Scopelliti, Admiraal, Beringer, Dedeurwaerdere, et al., “Motivations to Act for the Protection of Nature Biodiversity and the Environment: A Matter of “Significance”.”
26 Michael A. Hogg, David K. Sherman, Joel Dierselhuis, Angela T. Maitner, and Graham Moffitt, “Uncertainty, Entitativity, and Group Identification,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43, no. 1 (January 2007): 135–42, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2005.12.008.
27 Michael A. Hogg, “Social Identity,” in Handbook of Self and Identity, ed. Mark R. Leary Tangney and June Price Tangney (New York: The Guilford Press, 2003), 462–79.
28 Kumar Ramakrishna, “Understanding Youth Radicalization in the Age of ISIS: A Psychosocial Analysis,” E-International Relations, 11 February 2016, https://www.e-ir.info/2016/02/11/understanding-youth-radicalization-in-the-age-of-isis-a-psychosocial-analysis/.
29 Kruglanski, Chen, Dechesne, Fishman, and Orehek, “Fully Committed: Suicide Bombers’ Motivation and the Quest for Personal Significance”; Arie W. Kruglanski and MichelleJ. Gelfand, “Motivation, Ideology, and the Social Process in Radicalization,” APS Observer, 2013; Michelle Dugas and Arie W. Kruglanski, “The Quest for Significance Model of Radicalization: Implications for the Management of Terrorist Detainees,” Behavioral Sciences & the Law 32, no. 3 (May 2014): 423–39, https://doi.org/10.1002/bsl.2122.
30 Dugas and Kruglanski, “The Quest for Significance Model of Radicalization: Implications for the Management of Terrorist Detainees”; Kruglanski, Gelfand, Bélanger, Sheveland, Hetiarachchi, and Gunaratna, “The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization: How Significance Quest Impacts Violent Extremism.”
31 Dugas and Kruglanski, “The Quest for Significance Model of Radicalization: Implications for the Management of Terrorist Detainees”; Jasko, LaFree, and Kruglanski, “Quest for Significance and Violent Extremism: The Case of Domestic Radicalization”; Sageman, Understanding Terror Network.
32 Jocelyn J. Bélanger, Birga M. Schumpe, Bhavna Menon, J. Ng, Noëmie Nociti, V. Zeigler-Hill, and T. K. Shackelford, “Self-Sacrifice for a Cause: A Review and an Integrative Model,” in The SAGE Handbook of Personality and Individual Differences: Volume II: Origins of Personality and Individual Differences (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd, n.d.), 465–85, https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526451200.n25.
33 Milla, Putra, and Umam, “Stories from Jihadists: Significance, Identity, and Radicalization through the Call for Jihad.”
34 Martin E. P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realise Your Potential For Lasting Fulfilment (Free Press, 2002).
35 Arie W. Kruglanski and Edward Orehek, “The Role of the Quest for Personal Significance in Motivating Terrorism,” in The Psychology of Social Conflict and Aggression, ed. Joseph P. Forgas, Arie W. Kruglanski, and Kiplong D. Williams (New York: Psychology Press, 2011), 153–66.
36 Dugas and Kruglanski, “The Quest for Significance Model of Radicalization: Implications for the Management of Terrorist Detainees.”
37 Scott Atran, Robert Axelrod, and Richard Davis, “Sacred Barriers to Conflict Resolution,” Science 317, no. 5841 (August 2007): 1039–40, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1144241; Scott Atran, “Pathways to and from Violent Extremism: The Case for Science-Based Field Research Statement before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats & Capabilities,” 2010, https://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00505380.
38 Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg, “Comments on the Motivational Status of Self-Esteem in Social Identity and Intergroup Discrimination,” European Journal of Social Psychology 18, no. 4 (August 1988): 317–34, https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2420180403; Vincenzo Iacoviello, Jacques Berent, Natasha Stine Frederic, and Andrea Pereira, “The Impact of Ingroup Favoritism on Self-Esteem: A Normative Perspective,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 71 (July 2017): 31–41, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.12.013.
39 Kruglanski and Orehek, “The Role of the Quest for Personal Significance in Motivating Terrorism”; Webber and Kruglanski, “The Social Psychological Makings of a Terrorist”; Arie W. Kruglanski and David Webber, “The Psychology of Radicalization,” Zeitschrift Für Internationale Strafrechtsdogmatik 9, no. 9 (2014): 379–88, https://doi.org/http://www.zis-online.com/dat/artikel/2014_9_843.pdf.
40 Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon Solomon, “The Causes and Consequences of a Need for Self-Esteem: A Terror Management Theory,” in Public Self and Private Self (Springer New York, 1986), 189–212, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9564-5_10; Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, and Jeff Greenberg, “Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory,” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Elsevier, 2015), 1–70, https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2015.03.001.
41 Edward Orehek, Jo A. Sasota, Arie W. Kruglanski, Mark Dechesne, and Leianna Ridgeway, “Interdependent Self-Construals Mitigate the Fear of Death and Augment the Willingness to Become a Martyr,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 107, no. 2 (August 2014): 265–75, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036675.
42 Bertjan Doosje, Fathali M. Moghaddam, Arie W. Kruglanski, Arjan De Wolf, Liesbeth Mann, and Allard R. Feddes, “Terrorism, Radicalization and de-Radicalization,” Current Opinion in Psychology 11 (October 2016): 79–84, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.06.008.
43 Kruglanski and Orehek, “The Role of the Quest for Personal Significance in Motivating Terrorism.”
44 Ibid.
45 Doosje, Moghaddam, Kruglanski, De Wolf, Mann, and Feddes, “Terrorism, Radicalization and de-Radicalization.”
46 Arie W. Kruglanski, Katarzyna Jasko, Marina Chernikova, Michelle Dugas, and David Webber, “To the Fringe and Back: Violent Extremism and the Psychology of Deviance,” American Psychologist 72, no. 3 (April 2017): 217–30, https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000091.
47 Philip E. Tetlock, “Cognitive Style and Political Belief Systems in the British House of Commons,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46, no. 2 (1984): 365–75, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.46.2.365; Philip E. Tetlock, “A Value Pluralism Model of Ideological Reasoning,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50, no. 4 (1986): 819–27, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.50.4.819.
48 Kruglanski and Gelfand, “Motivation, Ideology, and the Social Process in Radicalization.”
49 Ibid.
50 Atran, “Pathways to and from Violent Extremism: The Case for Science-Based Field Research Statement before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats & Capabilities.”
51 Kruglanski and Gelfand, “Motivation, Ideology, and the Social Process in Radicalization.”
52 Dugas and Kruglanski, “The Quest for Significance Model of Radicalization: Implications for the Management of Terrorist Detainees.”
53 Christina Hellmich, “Creating the Ideology of Al Qaeda: From Hypocrites to Salafi-Jihadists,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 31, no. 2 (February 2008): 111–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/10576100701812852.
54 Mirra N. Milla, Mengapa Memilih Jalan Teror (Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 2010).
55 Kruglanski, Bélanger, and Gunaratna, The Three Pillars of Radicalization: Needs, Narratives, and Networks.
56 Kruglanski and Gelfand, “Motivation, Ideology, and the Social Process in Radicalization.”
57 Webber and Kruglanski, “The Social Psychological Makings of a Terrorist.”
58 Jasko, LaFree, and Kruglanski, “Quest for Significance and Violent Extremism: The Case of Domestic Radicalization.”
59 Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg, Social Identity Theory: Constructive and Critical Advances (Springer-Verlag Publishing, 1990).
60 Solomon E. Asch, “Opinions and Social Pressure,” Scientific American 193, no. 5 (November 1955): 31–5, https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1155-31; Winnifred R. Louis, “Collective Action — and Then What ?,” Psychology 65, no. 4 (2009): 727–48, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2009.01623.x; Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York: Harper & Row, 1974); Michael A. Hogg and Namrata Mahajan, “Domains of Self-Uncertainty and Their Relationship to Group Identification,” Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology 2, no. 3 (April 2018): 67–75, https://doi.org/10.1002/jts5.20.
61 Scott Matthew Kleinmann, “Radicalization of Homegrown Sunni Militants in the United States: Comparing Converts and Non-Converts,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 35, no. 4 (April 2012): 278–97, https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610x.2012.656299.