There are too many knee-jerk, brief (and incorrect) explanations for why the US is experiencing such a rise in hatred and violence. Claiming that violent perpetrators are “mentally ill” is wrong. We have research and we understand the dangerous path that some young men get involved in and which ultimately leads them to violence. The right answers are more subtle, but we do know them and we do know what to do about them. We take another look at Significance Quest theory.
Resources
- To the Fringe and Back: Violent Extremism and the Psychology of Deviance (note: PDF download)
- Significance Quest Theory: How Do We De-Radicalize People?
- Kruglanski, A., Jasko, K., Webber, D., Chernikova, M., & Molinario, E. (2018). The making of violent extremists. Review of General Psychology, 22(1), 107-120. doi:10.1037/gpr0000144
- The road to extremism: Field and experimental evidence that significance loss-induced need for closure fosters radicalization.
Nic Greene
August 21, 2019Hi Michael – another excellent Podcast. Couple of points.
The point you make concerning the male child’s need to be accepted into precarious manhood. The need for this is in part motivated by the child’s need to escape from the attachment to the mother and also to establish a place in the ‘dominance hierarchy’. The notion of bringing the child back into the fold is essentially a feminine notion of caring and nurturing and thus again linked to the mother, which the male child is trying to grow out of. So, why don’t female children have this problem, simple, they overcome the fear of the mother by turning into one themselves. On a slightly different point, if male children encounter difficulty or conflict in early life with the primary care giver, the mother, there are many solutions, one being to become ‘trans’, narcissistic or follow the well worn path of nascent misogyny that underlies society.