Objective: Violent radicalization threatens global peace and public health, with youth being especially vulnerable to radical ideologies and violence. While concerns grow about online environments promoting extremist attitudes, few studies examine both online and offline factors simultaneously. Existing research often relies on strict, formulaic linear methodologies that overlook the complex interactions influencing youth support for violent radicalization (SVR). We employed the neoecological framework and novel network analysis to explore the complex interconnectedness of individual factors, relational experiences in both online and offline contexts, and SVR among adolescents. Method: We recruited 1,911 Canadian high school students aged 14-18 (M-age = 15.67; SDage = 0.98) to participate in this online cross-sectional survey study. Results: Findings revealed a complex, ecologically nested dynamic: peer support, depressive symptoms, and cyber victimization emerged as key risk factors for adolescents' SVR. While online environments may contribute to greater depressive symptoms, offline relational experiences, particularly positive family support, school climate, and peer relationships, may interact to buffer against depression, potentially minimizing SVR. These protective effects were stronger among girls than boys, with family support remaining essential to adolescent well-being in the ever-changing digital world. Cyber victimization had the most significant influence, indicating that targeted interventions in this area may yield cascading benefits, including reduced psychological vulnerability and lower SVR. Conclusions: Overall, the networks revealed the important role of both digital and offline ecologies in shaping youth vulnerability and access to protective resources in today's polarized sociopolitical climate and broader polycrisis (e.g., climate change, wars, economic stress, and the erosion of human rights), consistent with the neoecological framework.
Objective: How partners' psychopathology is associated with intimate partner violence (IPV) remains poorly understood. This study examined whether within-indicator dyadic psychopathology configurations are differentially associated with IPV in forensic treatment-seeking couples. Method: Seventy heterosexual couples from a Dutch forensic mental health institution completed screening assessments across 31 psychopathology indicators and three dual-informant IPV outcomes (frequency, severity, and IPV variety) using the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale. For each indicator, couples were classified as both below the threshold, male only above the threshold, female only above the threshold, or both above the threshold. A maximum-value approach combined self-reports and partner reports to reduce underreporting. Kruskal-Wallis tests examined differences in IPV outcomes across these configurations. Results: IPV was bidirectional but asymmetric: Men had higher frequency and severity scores for psychological aggression, physical assault, sexual coercion, and injury, as well as higher IPV variety scores. Across psychopathology indicators, two dyadic patterns were observed, with small-to-moderate effect sizes. Selected contrasts suggested a cumulative pattern: For drug use, anxiety, posttraumatic stress, and borderline features, both-above configurations showed higher IPV outcomes than both-below or male-only configurations. A partner-specific pattern was most evident for paranoid features and anxiety, with higher male IPV outcomes when only the woman was elevated. Conclusions: Shared elevation did not uniformly translate into higher IPV. How psychopathology is distributed between partners may be key to understanding IPV in forensic heterosexual couples. Assessment and treatment should therefore involve both partners rather than focusing exclusively on the referred client.
Objective: Drawing on significance quest theory, we propose that a distinctive linguistic feature of populist political rhetoric is the recurrent use of honor-loss vocabulary-terms associated with humiliation, disrespect, and diminished social value. By focusing on this linguistic pattern, the study seeks to advance populism research through the identification of a measurable discursive mechanism by which leaders may evoke feelings of threatened significance in their audiences, thereby increasing support for actions aimed at restoring significance-even when such actions are violent. Method: We conducted two large-scale textual analyses using the Honor Dictionary to quantify honor-related language. Study 1 examined European political leaders' posts from their Personal X Accounts in 2022. Study 2 analyzed transcripts from U.S. presidential election debates spanning 1960-2024. In both data sets, we compared word frequencies in populist versus nonpopulist speech to test whether populist rhetoric contains more honor-loss words. Results: Across both studies, populist (vs. nonpopulist) discourse displayed a higher proportion of honor-loss terms, supporting the hypothesis that threats to honor and significance serve as rhetorical anchors in populist messaging. This pattern held consistently across communication platforms (televised debates vs. social media posts), cultural contexts (the United States vs. the European Union), and political circumstances (power maintenance vs. electoral competition). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that populist communication may function by heightening perceptions of significance loss, thereby motivating audiences to seek restoration through action, including violent one. A key implication is that honor-based rhetoric may play a role in fueling support for aggressive or extreme responses.
Objective: This research explored the relationships between primal world beliefs (i.e., general beliefs about the fundamental nature of the world) and intentions to engage in violent extremism. Method: We tested for these relationships in seven studies conducted with activists for a variety of ideologies, some of whom had already endorsed or committed violence for their cause (total N = 2,245). Results: After exploring all primal world beliefs across four U.S. ideological groups, only Meaningful world belief-the belief that most things, including people, tend to matter and have meaning-was consistently and negatively associated with violent extremism intentions. After establishing this relationship across ideological samples, a quasi-experiment showed that imprisoned Kazakhstani jihadist terrorists had significantly lower Meaningful world belief scores than nonterrorist violent offenders (e.g., murderers, rapists) in the same prisons. Next, an experiment found that a 10-day photography-based intervention to increase Meaningful world belief significantly reduced violent extremism intentions in a sample of Republicans who endorsed the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Finally, an additional experiment found that this same intervention reduced violent extremism intentions among a general U.S. sample, especially for people with above-minimum baseline levels of violent extremism intentions, although it failed to increase Meaningful world belief, limiting causality. Conclusions: Overall, the results align with motivational theories of violent extremism, which suggest that having limited sources of meaning can contribute to extremism, and suggest the potential utility of positive psychology interventions in policy and programming to prevent violent extremism.
