Explaining Violent Extremism for Subgroups by Gender and Immigrant Background, Using SAT as a Framework

Abstract

The principal object of this paper is to study the effects of extremist propensity, exposure to extremist moral settings and their interaction effect on political violence in sub groups by gender and immigrant background. The situational action theory, as outlined by Wikström is used as a framework. Although previous studies have found empirical evidence for this interaction effect in the light of general offending, no study so far has applied SAT to the study of violent extremism. In doing so, we will also address the stability of the interaction effect by gender and immigrant background. The present study is based on a large web survey on self-reported political violence as a measure for violent extremism. Strong support is found for the hypothesis that the effect of exposure to violent extremist moral settings is depending on the strength or weakness of individual violent extremist propensity. This indicates that exposure to violent extremist moral settings has the strongest effect on political violence for individuals with a high propensity to violent extremism. These results imply that SAT can be used to as a framework to explain individual violent extremism. This pattern is found for boys and girls of both native (Belgian) and immigrant background.