PsyPost · Oct 2026
Nostalgia for a party’s past cuts both ways when it comes to support for political violence
Featuring our study on collective nostalgia and passion
The psychology of why people turn to violence — and how they can be moved toward a safer, more sustainable world.
Using general-population samples from 40 countries, plus a sample of 80 incarcerated jihadists, we put the 12 strongest known correlates of radical intentions (the willingness to use violence for an ideology) into direct competition. Three consistently held up across countries and ideologies: moral neutralization (justifying violence), obsessive passion (a rigid, ego-involved commitment to the cause), and perceived discrimination (a sense that one’s group is treated unjustly). Among the incarcerated jihadists, moral neutralization and obsessive passion remained consistent correlates, while perceived discrimination was weaker.
Bélanger, J. J., Gómez, A., Snook, D., Adam-Troian, J., Wolfowicz, M., Akariya, S., Kreienkamp, J., König, J., Agostini, M., Landry, A. P., & Leander, N. P. (2026). An international tournament of risk factors for radical intentions: Evidence from 40 countries. Frontiers in Psychology. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1855329
Our lab studies two challenges of our time: violent extremism and environmental sustainability. Through cross-cultural research in the lab and in the field, we work to understand the psychological processes that lead people toward political violence and toward pro-environmental behavior — and to design effective interventions that build safer, more sustainable societies.
The assumption underlying our work is that human judgment and behavior are goal-driven and dynamic: what people do depends on the salience and desirability of competing goals, the means available to them, and the networks they belong to.
Across religious, right- and left-leaning movements, we study how the loss of personal significance turns belief into obsession — and how restoring significance can reverse it.
Read more →From a meta-analysis of 3,000,000+ observations to global field experiments across 63 countries, we test which interventions genuinely move climate action.
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