“They Think We Are a Threat to Their Culture”: Meta-Cultural Threat Fuels Willingness and Endorsement of Extremist Violence against the Cultural Outgroup

Abstrac

Engaging in extreme activism in support of others’ political struggles: The role of politically motivated fusion with out-groups

Humans are a coalitional, parochial species. Yet, extreme actions of solidarity are sometimes taken for distant or unrelated groups. What motivates people to become solidary with groups to which they do not belong originally? Here, we demonstrate that such distant solidarity can occur when the perceived treatment of an out-group clashes with one’s political beliefs (e.g., for Leftists, oppressive occupation of the out-group) and that it is driven by fusion (or a feeling of oneness) with distant others with whom one does not share any common social category such as nationality, ethnicity or religion. In Study 1, being politically Leftist predicted European-Americans’ willingness to engage in extreme protest on behalf of Palestinians, which was mediated by fusion with the out-group. Next, in Study 2, we examined whether this pattern was moderated by out-group type. Here, Norwegian Leftists fused more with Palestinians (i.e., a group that, in the Norwegian context, is perceived to be occupied in an asymmetrical conflict) rather than Kurds (i.e., a group for which this perception is less salient). In Study 3, we experimentally tested the underlying mechanism by framing the Kurdish conflict in terms of an asymmetrical occupation (vs. symmetrical war or control conditions) and found that this increased Leftist European-Americans’ fusion with Kurds. Finally, in Study 4, we used a unique sample of non-Kurdish aspiring foreign fighters who were in the process of joining the Kurdish militia YPG. Here, fusion with the out-group predicted a greater likelihood to join and support the Kurdish forces in their fight against ISIS, insofar as respondents experienced that their political orientation morally compelled them to do so (Study 4). Together, our findings suggest that politically motivated fusion with out-groups underpins the extreme solidary action people may take on behalf of distant out-groups. Implications for future theory and research are discussed

Investigation of gender bias in the mental imagery of faces

People tend to think of the prototypical person as a man more than as a woman, but this bias has primarily been observed in language-based tasks. Here, we investigated whether this bias is also present in the mental imagery of faces. A preregistered cross-cultural reverse-correlation study including participants from six WEIRD and non-WEIRD countries varying in gender equality (i.e., China, Ghana, Norway, Pakistan, Turkey, and the US; N = 645) unexpectedly suggested that people imagine the face of a generic “person” more as a woman than as a man. Replicating this unexpected result, a second preregistered study (N = 115) showed that U.S. participants imagine the face of a typical person as being more similar to their imagined face of a woman than of a man. We discuss explanations for these unexpected findings, including the possibility that the prototypical person is male-biased—consistent with previous work—but the default face may be female-biased.publishedVersio

The Changing Landscape for Stroke\ua0Prevention in AF: Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Background GLORIA-AF (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation) is a prospective, global registry program describing antithrombotic treatment patterns in patients with newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke. Phase 2 began when dabigatran, the first non\u2013vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC), became available. Objectives This study sought to describe phase 2 baseline data and compare these with the pre-NOAC era collected during phase 1. Methods During phase 2, 15,641 consenting patients were enrolled (November 2011 to December 2014); 15,092 were eligible. This pre-specified cross-sectional analysis describes eligible patients\u2019 baseline characteristics. Atrial fibrillation disease characteristics, medical outcomes, and concomitant diseases and medications were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results Of the total patients, 45.5% were female; median age was 71 (interquartile range: 64, 78) years. Patients were from Europe (47.1%), North America (22.5%), Asia (20.3%), Latin America (6.0%), and the Middle East/Africa (4.0%). Most had high stroke risk (CHA2DS2-VASc [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age  6575 years, Diabetes mellitus, previous Stroke, Vascular disease, Age 65 to 74 years, Sex category] score  652; 86.1%); 13.9% had moderate risk (CHA2DS2-VASc = 1). Overall, 79.9% received oral anticoagulants, of whom 47.6% received NOAC and 32.3% vitamin K antagonists (VKA); 12.1% received antiplatelet agents; 7.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. For comparison, the proportion of phase 1 patients (of N = 1,063 all eligible) prescribed VKA was 32.8%, acetylsalicylic acid 41.7%, and no therapy 20.2%. In Europe in phase 2, treatment with NOAC was more common than VKA (52.3% and 37.8%, respectively); 6.0% of patients received antiplatelet treatment; and 3.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. In North America, 52.1%, 26.2%, and 14.0% of patients received NOAC, VKA, and antiplatelet drugs, respectively; 7.5% received no antithrombotic treatment. NOAC use was less common in Asia (27.7%), where 27.5% of patients received VKA, 25.0% antiplatelet drugs, and 19.8% no antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions The baseline data from GLORIA-AF phase 2 demonstrate that in newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients, NOAC have been highly adopted into practice, becoming more frequently prescribed than VKA in Europe and North America. Worldwide, however, a large proportion of patients remain undertreated, particularly in Asia and North America. (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation [GLORIA-AF]; NCT01468701

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The psychology of terrorism revisited : an integrated model of radicalization and terrorism

Defence date: 23 March 2016Examining Board: Professor Olivier Roy, European University Institute/RSCAS) (Supervisor); Professor Donatella della Porta (formerly EUI/Scuola Normale Superiore, Firenze); Professor Max Taylor, University College London; Professor Farhad Khosrokhavar, (EHESS, Paris).In the media there are two common explanations for terrorist attacks: Those who commit these acts are either described as mentally ill or as religious fundamentalists. For example, when Anders Breivik killed 77 teenagers he was declared insane suffering from paranoid and schizophrenia, whereas the perpetrators of 9/11 attacks were described as religious zealots. Unfortunately, the scientific literature also simplifies radicalization and terrorism in a similar fashion; the field is divided between person and situation explanations of terrorism and radicalization. However, to understand terrorism and radicalization adequately the dichotomy of person-situation needs to be readdressed. This dissertation begins to explore the premises that the potential for participating in asymmetrical collective violence must be understood as interplay between intra-individual, social psychological and external/societal factors. Broadly speaking, this dissertation aims to answer the following question: What are the social and psychological factors and processes that contribute to the motivations behind the radicalization of first, second and third generation of Muslim Europeans? This dissertation first addressees the dichotomy of person and situation and proposes an integrated model of terrorism and radicalization. Second, integrating perspectives from various line of research I demonstrate how factors from the different domains of research relate, and more importantly, complement each other in shaping circumstances, which will make radicalization more or less likely to occur. Finally, I explore the influence of person factors such as personality traits. While previous research on extremism and violent has overlooked the potential role of non-pathological personality differences, it is proposed here that non-pathological personality characteristics would predict both violent and non-violent behavioral intentions and actual behavior among Muslims in defense of their group. Therefore, this work aims to extend knowledge on terrorism beyond existing literature, which tends to focus exclusively on either situational factors or psychopathology

Cultural Threat Perceptions Predict Violent Extremism via Need for Cognitive Closure

Understanding the psychological processes that drive violent extremism is a pressing global issue. Across six studies, we demonstrate that perceived cultural threats lead to violent extremism because they increase people’s need for cognitive closure (NFC). In general population samples (from Denmark, Afghanistan, Pakistan, France, and an international sample) and a sample of former Mujahideen in Afghanistan, single-level and multi-level mediation analyses revealed that NFC mediated the association between perceived cultural threats and violent extremist outcomes. Further, in comparisons between the sample of former Afghan Mujahideen and the general population sample from Afghanistan following the known-group paradigm, the former Mujahideen scored significantly higher on cultural threat, NFC, and violent extremist outcomes. Moreover, the proposed model successfully differentiated former Afghan Mujahideen participants from the general Afghan participants. Next, two pre-registered experiments provided causal support for the model. Experimentally manipulating the predictor (cultural threat) in Pakistan led to higher scores on the mediator (NFC) and dependent variables (violent extremist outcomes). Finally, an experiment conducted in France demonstrated the causal effect of the mediator (NFC) on violent extremist outcomes. Two internal meta-analyses using state-of-the-art methods (i.e., meta-analytic structural equation modelling and pooled indirect effects analyses) further demonstrated the robustness of our results across the different extremist outcomes, designs, populations, and settings. Cultural threat perceptions seem to drive violent extremism by eliciting a need for cognitive closure

The Role of Muslim Identity in Predicting Violent Behavioural Intentions to Defend Muslims

A sense of shared Muslim suffering seems to play a key role in uniting Muslims around the world. Therefore, in the current paper we hypothesized that the social psychological underpinnings of Islamist extremism would be similar for Muslims living in the West and Muslims living in countries with prolonged and ongoing exposure to Western-led military interventions. Across four studies among Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan (Ns = 425, 402 and 127) and Muslims living in 20 Western countries (N = 366), we examined a path model, in which group-based anger mediated the link between Muslim identification, perceived injustice of Western military and foreign policy, and violent behavior intentions. Our results indicate that regardless of whether Muslims live in places with prolonged and ongoing experience of Western military interventions, or not, the social psychological factors predicting violent Islamist extremism appear to be similar. We discuss implications for future theory and research