radicalization
Definition
Radicalization refers to a process by which individuals come to endorse or engage in politically motivated violence, driven by psychological, developmental, and social factors that vary considerably across populations and ideological contexts. Adverse childhood experiences, particularly household dysfunction and maltreatment, appear at elevated rates among individuals involved in violent extremist groups spanning right-wing, Islamist, and white supremacist movements, suggesting that early developmental disruption may increase vulnerability to the radicalization process, though ACEs alone are neither necessary nor sufficient to produce this outcome. Among adolescents, within-person increases in political distrust, powerlessness, and dissatisfaction with political institutions were associated with concurrent increases in radical political behavior across a five-year longitudinal study of Swedish youth, with political dissatisfaction showing a reciprocal over-time relationship with radicalism. At the individual motivational level, obsessive passion for an ideology, a form of commitment in which self-worth becomes contingent on a cause, predicts deliberate engagement with radical people and settings, and this pairing functions as a self-reinforcing syndrome rather than a linear pathway from belief to violence. Deliberate engagement, not incidental exposure to extremist content, consistently mediates the relationship between obsessive passion and support for political violence across ideologically diverse samples.
Sources: Pammi et al. (2026), Miklikowska & Besta (2026), Bélanger et al. (2026)
Related Terms
- adolescence (1 shared article)
- political trust (1 shared article)
- radical political behavior (1 shared article)
- radicalism (1 shared article)
- political alienation (1 shared article)
- political powerlessness (1 shared article)
- political dissatisfaction (1 shared article)
- violent extremism (1 shared article)
- mental health (1 shared article)
- adverse childhood experiences (1 shared article)
- trauma (1 shared article)
- political violence (1 shared article)
- obsessive passion (1 shared article)
- deliberate engagement (1 shared article)
- within-person dynamics (1 shared article)
Applications
Radicalization and Obsessive Passion
Obsessive passion for an ideology predicts both deliberate engagement with radical content and support for political violence, while harmonious passion, reflecting an equally strong but balanced commitment, shows no consistent association with violence across Democrat, Republican, environmentalist, and Muslim samples. Longitudinal data from right-wing Americans demonstrate that obsessive passion and deliberate engagement reciprocally reinforce one another within persons over six-week intervals, forming a tightly coupled syndrome in which the two variables sustain each other rather than operating as sequential stages.
Sources: Bélanger et al. (2026)
Radicalization and Political Alienation
Political alienation, comprising distrust, powerlessness, and dissatisfaction with political institutions, is associated with radical political behavior at both the within-person and between-person levels across adolescence, with political distrust accounting for the largest share of variance at 19%. Gender moderates these effects: the association between alienation and radicalism is consistently stronger for boys than girls, and violent forms of radicalism are predominantly perpetrated by young men, with gendered pathways appearing to begin during adolescence.
Sources: Miklikowska & Besta (2026)
Radicalization and Adverse Childhood Experiences
Violent extremist individuals show a higher prevalence of adverse childhood experiences compared to the general population, with household dysfunction the most commonly reported ACE domain across 23 included studies covering 4,946 individuals. The relationship reflects multifinality: ACEs can lead to many different outcomes, and certain comparison groups such as violent offenders and gang members show similarly elevated ACE rates, indicating that childhood adversity is a general risk factor rather than a specific predictor of radicalization.
Sources: Pammi et al. (2026)
