Rethinking Radicalization: Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory as a Framework to Understand Pathways to Political Activism and Radicalization

Neil Shortland, Michael Palmieri, AnaCristina Bedoya and Presley McGarry

Terrorism and Political Violence, 2025, vol. 37, issue 7, 909-926

Abstract: This paper proposes a theory of radicalization to violence centered on the psychological, neuropsychological, and physiological processes of human motivation. Specifically, we argue that the movement towards extremist violence is centered on motivation processes that create goal pursuit and acquisition. Here we use Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) to identify how variations in intentions to engage in extremism (measured via activism and radicalism) are a result of trait differences in the approach and withdrawal motivational pathways. We present findings from a large-n study that measures the association between RST personality variables and activism and radicalism. Overall, we found support for RST in that both behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and behavioral activation system (BAS) variables correlated with higher activism and radicalism intention scores. Furthermore, we demonstrate that certain types of motivation are more associated with intentions for activism (behavior) versus radicalism (extremist thought). Based on these findings we highlight the potential theoretical and methodological benefits of applying RST to the study of individuals’ movement towards extremist violence. Specifically, we empathize the importance of centering discussions of involvement, engagement and disengagement around the psychological process of motivation to engage (or remain engaged).

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09546553.2025.2549553 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ftpvxx:v:37:y:2025:i:7:p:909-926

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ftpv20

DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2025.2549553

Access Statistics for this article

Terrorism and Political Violence is currently edited by James Forest

More articles in Terrorism and Political Violence from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().