Extremism loves company: Sunstein
2014/09/03 2 Comments
Cass Sunstein on the psychology of radicalization.
What nudge does he suggest to reduce polarization and extremism?
Why does group polarization occur? The first answer involves information. Suppose that most group members begin by thinking that some religious group, leader or nation is evil. If so, they will hear a lot of arguments to that effect. As they absorb them, they will be inclined to move toward a more extreme version of their initial judgment.
People also care about their reputations, so some group members will adjust their positions in the direction of the dominant view. A disturbing implication is that if group members listen only to one another, and if most of them have extremist tendencies, the whole group might well march toward greater radicalism and even brutality.
Writing in 1998, Russell Hardin, a political scientist at New York University, drew attention to the “crippled epistemology of extremism,” by which he meant to emphasize how little extremists know. Focused on Islamic fundamentalists, Hardin was concerned about what happens “when the fanatic is in a group of like-minded people, and especially when the group isolates itself from others.”
In the years ahead, the international effort to combat violent extremism will sometimes require force, and it will sometimes require economic pressure. But it will succeed only if it disrupts recruitment and radicalization by enclaves of like-minded people.
Bloomberg’s Cass R. Sunstein (pay wall)
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Multicultural Meanderings 
The phenomenon of religious or ideological conversion often results from or is part of an ‘identity crisis’, and often happens in adolescence, or young manhood or womanhood, and the issue has been explored by Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development which offers a great many ideas relevant to the spread of Fundamentalism – the adolescent need for revolt against parents and against ‘society’ in order to explore and invent a new self, and the need for strong, radical, absolutist ideals as armour & justification of this new self, is part of, or perhaps a perversion of, the – necessary – drive to develop an idea of the autonomous self, to define one’s new personality clearly, to seize on mental and spiritual ‘technologies’ which allow one to become a true person, with newly acquired values and a newly acquired world view. A fundamentalist religion or ideology is a great ‘epistemological simplifier’: curiosity, openness, I-thou relationships, vulnerability, flexibility, irony, humanity can be tossed out the door. When a totalitarian idealist vision is available, when the hypocrisies and injustices of existing society and its belief systems are clear, when ‘ethnic’ and ‘social’ and ‘racial’ identities, within the person are conflictual, when unjust wars are going on amid general indifference, then the moment is ripe for ‘conversion’, and a charismatic leader, or preacher, in this context, is,literally, dynamite. Another key text, I think, is Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer” which gives a very suggestive analysis of fanaticism. Robert Tucker, if I remember correctly, explored the analogies between Fascism, Communism, and the Judeo-Christian traditions – saints ,martyrs, sacred texts, rituals, confession, exegesis of texts, charismatic cult-like leaders, which demonstrated the common social and psychological roots of these quite different movements. Quite of few of these insights I think could be applied to the present wave of jihadists and to the so-called Islamic State. When I was a teenager a number of my friends were converted to a rather Evangelical version of Christianity, so I have seen a small example of the process up close. Evil ideals are best fought, among other things, by Good Ideals.
Thanks for sharing. Impressed by your readings 🙂
And like your conclusion.