Radicalization is a process where a person increasingly accepts the use of violence to achieve political, religious, or ideological goals.Radicalization is a process where a person increasingly accepts the use of violence to achieve political, religious, or ideological goals.Which psychological mechanisms can play a role in radicalization processes?

Radicalization has become a popular word, but it is often poorly defined. Often, radicalization is used in such a way that it encompasses all terrorists, but that is using the concept too broadly.

There are many paths into a terrorist group or act of terror. Not all terrorists are radicalized.

What is radicalization?

A process where a person increasingly accepts the use of violence to achieve political goals.

Radicalization processes can occur within all types of totalitarian worldviews and political ideologies, whether it is neo-Nazism, anarchism, or extreme religious sects, including extreme Islamism.

Social needs

The field is complex: On one hand, some people experience so much frustration that they may seek alternative and extreme ways of understanding society and wish to change society in extreme ways.

Often, such a condition is linked to degrees of perceived isolation and societal marginalization.

There is strong research evidence indicating that many of those who participate in violent extremist groups and activities do so for social reasons and needs, and not because of ideological conviction and religion, according to Bjørgo, 2015.

The vulnerable are recruited

On the other hand, within sects and extreme Islam, there are individuals who recruit very actively and who, through manipulative techniques, pull people—often vulnerable ones—into the group.

There are therefore both individuals who actively seek out extreme groups or extreme actions, and individuals who are manipulated into them.

Once one has become part of the group, the manipulative forces are strong.

Characteristics of the radicalization process

Development of a one-sided worldview

No room for alternative perspectives

Drastic actions, such as support for or calls to violence, are deemed necessary

An idea that the end justifies the means

A full radicalization process is characterized by a targeted attack on a person’s identity and habits. The purpose is to change the person’s perception of reality and self-image.

If we understand the psychological mechanisms behind the radicalization process, we are better positioned to provide effective help.

Targeted process

The explanation for the radicalization process is not primarily found in the radicalized person’s history; it is found in the active recruitment.

For the group and the recruiter, the radicalization process is targeted at changing the person’s perception of reality and self-image.

Submission

The purpose is to make the recruit submit to the recruiter, who represents the leadership, and to the doctrine of the extreme group. Such processes occur beneath the radar of consciousness.

It is common for someone who is radicalized to begin recruiting within their own network, such as among friends and family. This phenomenon is one of many commonalities between sects and terrorist groups.

And even if the top leadership remains hidden during this phase, this type of peer pressure is part of how the leadership achieves control.

Radical change

What is typical of a radicalization process is that it reflects a radical change in previous values, attitudes, and behavior.

It seems as though the choices are made voluntarily at the moment—no one is holding a gun to anyone’s head—but the changes involve a high cost for the recruit.

This cost can involve isolation from family and friends, negative publicity, breaking away from previous commitments, loss of time, money, missed opportunities, and psychological harm to oneself and loved ones.

What is the cost?

When we spot the costs that the radicalized bear, it becomes easier to see the manipulation:

Imagine a recruiter asking:

“Hey, do you want to drop your plans for the future, break all contact with your family and friends, and submit totally to serve our cause and our leader? I don’t know what role you’ll get—it could be washing dishes, raising money, recruiting others, becoming a suicide bomber, or a sex slave. So, what do you say? Interested in joining?”

No one says yes to this. Yet, that is the consequence of the process.

Sick? The link between radicalization and mental health

There has been much discussion in recent years regarding the relationship between the presence of mental disorders—including trauma and psychosis—and radicalization.

Recent research sees connections between mental disorders—especially depression, psychosis, and autism—as a risk factor for radicalization, as shown by researcher Bhui and colleagues in 2020.

There is now a growing understanding of the link between mental health and violent extremism, and the significance of mental health as a contributing or driving factor in radicalization and recruitment.

Therefore, there is also a greater understanding of the important role that mental health plays in preventing violent extremism. The main challenge for this sector is to interpret signs of radicalization in individuals across different settings and help those who may be at risk of becoming radicalized. The RAN Mental Health Working Group focuses on raising awareness within the healthcare sector and contributing to establishing an effective network of health professionals across EU member states.

This issue of Spotlight magazine from the healthcare professionals’ network takes a look at the nature of mental health challenges, including personality disorders and childhood experiences, gender, training for practitioners, and ethical considerations. The magazine features a series of original articles from various experts on topics such as personality disorders, as well as a podcast on extremism discussing, among other things, which factors pull individuals into radicalization.

Certain elements can particularly make people more vulnerable to recruitment.

Increasing vulnerability

Loneliness, such as moving to a new place

Depression, which we might feel when we lose a friend or fail to sustain a friendship

Uncertainty about life choices, such as “What should I become?” or “How can I manage to be good enough?”

A frustrating life situation, such as unemployment, a lack of life opportunities, substance use, or involvement in crime that one feels ashamed of

Marginalization

Overall, one can say that vulnerability increases where a person is, or feels, isolated from the benefits of society. This is often referred to as marginalization or exclusion (utenforskap).

However, vulnerabilities are not a magic clue to participation in various destructive groups. It is often only in interaction with a manipulator—someone who creates fantasies and gives false promises of a new role, identity, and purpose in life—that membership can become tempting.

It requires maturity to say no and offer resistance. Such maturity assumes that the person or youth has formed an identity that is socially accepted. People who do not have a strong sense of self-esteem have a stronger tendency to identify with cultural heroes and internalize their values.

A useful resource for the group

Terrorists must function sufficiently to be considered a useful resource for the group they are recruited into.

Solo terrorists may to a greater extent have mental health problems or be in a state of psychological imbalance when they commit acts of terror. The Police Security Service (PST), in its 2022 thematic report on extremism and mental disorders, points to a study showing that the probability of a solo terrorist having a mental disorder is 13 times higher than for members of a terrorist cell.

Whether radicalization processes and participation in terrorism in themselves can lead to poor mental health, however, is a different question.

The mechanisms of manipulation

The model that best fits explaining how many terrorists are recruited and convinced enough to carry out acts of terror does not start from personal character or unique vulnerabilities, but from a unique indoctrination process that uses powerful mechanisms of manipulation.

Because recruiters manage to isolate the recruit from other sources of information, social influence acts much more strongly.

Isolated from their own doubt

The type of peer pressure they feel is not just conformity, but rather a kind of “super-conformity”:

The recruit lives a claustrophobic existence and makes decisions within a very restricted reality. He or she is not only isolated from society and family, but also from themselves, their own feelings, and their own doubt.

The mechanisms of radicalization are not mysterious. They can be explained using knowledge of social influence and the brain’s two thinking systems, originally proposed by psychologists Keith Stanovich and Richard West.

The brain’s two thinking systems

System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.

System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.

Creating a new attachment

There are many mechanisms that create compliance, conformity, and obedience. What is special about these processes, and what distinguishes them from our everyday lives, is their intensity.

Recruiters can spend hundreds of hours creating a new attachment, isolating the recruit, and making them obedient.

They manipulate fundamental human needs: having a good self-image, being socially accepted, and making good choices.

Grooming

In the beginning, “love”—also referred to as grooming—is the most important mechanism.

The leadership pretends to like their “radicalization subjects,” acts as if they share the same interests, and rapidly builds trust.

They offer praise, positive reinforcement, send gifts and text messages, and spend time together without disclosing who they are or which organization they represent.

It is not that the radicalized person becomes radicalized simply because they are marginalized, but because someone loves them and gives them an intense feeling of being seen. Often, that feeling is so strong that they cannot remember ever feeling such love before.

Later, when that love is withdrawn, the recruit begins working hard to regain that good feeling. They have become addicted.

Peer pressure and fear

Once the recruit has progressed further into the process, the manipulation mechanisms change. Then, fear and peer pressure take over.

First, it is about getting under the recruit’s skin so that alarm bells do not go off.

It is a conscious and intense assault on identity, where the recruit must change their habits, eating habits, dress codes, and daily routines.

This radical rupture with everyday routines and trust in parents and society produces an element of uncertainty, which in turn leads to increased vulnerability to the guidance of others.

Playing on fear

When people become afraid, they can sometimes become paralyzed, but a skilled recruiter points toward an option for action and stresses urgency: You will lose your path to salvation or your opportunity to save the world if you do not act now.

This can be a powerful motivator when the recruit’s mental state is overloaded with fear and confusion.

The interplay and dynamics within the relationship and the ideology of totalitarian groups are often referred to as the destructive triad:

The recruit has identified with the leader, submitted, and become dependent on acceptance. This follower-leader relationship, in combination with a perfectionistic ideology, is held up like a mirror to reinforce guilt and trap the recruit in a process of self-radicalization.

Foot-in-the-door techniques

“Self-radicalization” sounds autonomous, but it is actually about a dependence on being “good enough” relative to the perfectionistic and moral ideal in the doctrine.

The technique that initiates the process is called the foot-in-the-door mechanism because it often starts with small, innocent steps, such as collecting money for victims in a war zone, and is driven by increasingly larger commitments that are consistent with that first small step.

The leadership plays on guilt. Therefore, the recruit does not see through the manipulation and believes the choices they are making are voluntary.

We can help them put words to what they are experiencing by asking small, gentle, probing questions. It is incredibly difficult to admit and dare to face the fact that one became so dependent on love and acceptance.

What can parents and friends do?

The first thing we can do is start with a non-judgmental attitude.

This can be extremely difficult because the radicalized person often feels they have gained access to a secret about this world. They feel chosen and have often been told not to share this secret with us.

Encountering a radical and arrogant person who holds a completely different perception of reality than our own with a non-judgmental attitude can therefore be a massive challenge. It can be compared to having a drug addict in the family. And we cannot manage it alone.

Ordinary communication and concern-focused conversations with parents and friends will not be enough to help them escape this cynical and powerful radicalization process.

Gathering positive forces

Therefore, it can be wise to gather a group of people who love your child—preferably with a psychologist or another professional who understands extremism and manipulation—and ideally include a former member (a “leaver”) from the group they belong to; they can be extremely helpful.

Together, you can plan a communication strategy and an action plan.

In short, it comes down to loving them back and reminding them of who they were.

Where the recruiter spends hundreds of hours on “love bombing,” we must spend at least two hundred hours truly showing that we love them, that there is a place for them, and that we want them with us.

Being the contrast to the recruiter

Where the recruiter uses isolation to limit their choices, we can create situations that open up choices. We can provide knowledge and ask good questions.

Where the recruiter uses guilt, we can tell them that we accept them exactly as they are and help them see that they are “good enough,” giving them a sense of mastery and a place in our society.

It is difficult enough for us to break up with a partner or quit a job. Leaving an extreme group is extremely more difficult—not least because of the shame that the desire to be seen and loved caused them to do things they otherwise would never have done.

But there is always hope of getting them back. It has happened many times before.

“I don’t recognize my own child…”
Parents become worried for good reason when they do not quite recognize their children and experience them doing uncharacteristic things.

If this is your concern, write down a list of behaviors that break with their previous identity.

Depending on who they were before, such behavior might include lying, disappearing, and isolating themselves for extended periods, changing eating habits, losing interest in school and future plans, stopping reading the news, and stopping calling old friends.

It could also be that the radicalized person wants to “save” or “convert” their parents.

Knowledge is power

The more we understand about totalitarian groups, sects, and group psychology, the better equipped we will be to counteract the destructive radicalization process.

Three steps on the way:

Step one: Build trust and strengthen the connections that exist in the person’s natural network.

Step two: Gather information, such as everything the radicalized person used to enjoy doing and being before.

Step three: Plant doubt in their black-and-white thinking and include them in new activities.

Possible methods

Methods we can use include motivational interviewing or cognitive techniques for reality-testing, combined with plenty of care, understanding, and listening.

We must be prepared to engage in difficult political discussions without getting defensive, constantly helping them discover all the shades of gray so that the extreme worldview begins to crack. Then, they can start thinking for themselves again.

Furthermore, psychoeducation—or teaching about the condition—is important for the radicalized person, so they themselves can understand the mechanisms of how the group managed to alter their perception of reality.

The radicalization process can be reversed

It is also important to understand how others managed to shape their personality so that it served the group’s goals; how they managed to devalue and dehumanize all other sources of information and make them dependent on the group; how their own inner voice was suppressed; and how destructive boundaries were established between them and the outside world.

It is crucial to remember that it is fully possible to reverse a radicalization process.

There is a way in, but there is also a way out, and we are not helpless.

There is always hope of turning the process around and winning our loved ones back.