Prevention of Violent Extremism
Definition
Prevention of Violent Extremism refers to the systematic effort to reduce individuals' susceptibility to recruitment and radicalisation by extremist organisations, particularly among vulnerable populations in high-risk environments. One approach draws on psychological inoculation, which builds resistance against the manipulation techniques extremist groups deploy, including strategies such as gaining trust, isolating targets from their communities, and applying social pressure toward violence. The Radicalise game, tested in a randomised controlled trial with 191 at-risk youth in post-conflict regions of Iraq previously under ISIS control, demonstrated that a short gamified inoculation intervention significantly improved participants' ability to identify manipulative extremist messaging on platforms such as WhatsApp (p = 0.034, d = 0.31). Such interventions are specifically oriented toward building counter-persuasion competence rather than general psychological profiling, as the same trial found no significant effect on participants' ability to identify individuals vulnerable to recruitment (p = 0.896, d = 0.02).
Sources: Saleh et al. (2023)
Related Terms
- Field Research (1 shared article)
- Post-Conflict Region (1 shared article)
- Gamification (1 shared article)
- Inoculation Theory (1 shared article)
Applications
Prevention of Violent Extremism and Inoculation Theory
A technique-based prevention approach informed the design of the Radicalise game, which forewarned players about recruitment manipulation techniques and used interactive perspective-taking exercises to develop counterargument skills. The game pre-emptively exposed participants to weakened forms of manipulative argumentation with the aim of building resistance to genuine persuasion attempts. The randomised controlled trial in post-conflict Iraq confirmed that this mechanism produced a statistically significant improvement in participants' ability to spot extremist messaging.
Sources: Saleh et al. (2023)
Prevention of Violent Extremism and Vulnerable Youth Populations
Youth in post-conflict settings represent a primary target group for prevention efforts, given the convergence of risk factors including unemployment, political exclusion, war-related trauma, and low literacy. In Iraq, roughly 60 percent of the population is under 25, and this demographic faces continued exposure to IS recruitment activity in areas where the group retains a presence. The Radicalise trial specifically recruited participants from these areas, treating prior exposure to conflict as a contextual variable that may shape baseline perceptions of extremist messaging.
Sources: Saleh et al. (2023)
