Personality and Extremism
Back in October 2009 myPersonality advertised a study by Dr Gareth Hagger-Johnson and Professor Vincent Egan on “personality and attitudes”, which many of you were kind enough to help out with. Gareth has written us a summary of their research and what they were looking for as a way of saying thank-you for helping and also to let you know what it was all about!
Forensic psychologists have learned that personality traits are a key predictor of antisocial and violent behaviour. Evaluating personality underlies the accurate prediction of risk behaviour in offenders. Traditional demographic variables (age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic status) are too broad for use with individual offenders since they are such a small section of the population. Environmental factors (e.g. where one lives) are mediated through the individual, so it is important to focus on the specific personality and individual differences that offenders have.
Extremism is a form of antisocial behaviour that is less well understood. It is not ’caused’ by poverty or ignorance, and we know little about how personality might influence the development of extremist attitudes. In our pilot study, a set of extremist attitudes were used to develop an Ideological Opinions Scale, derived from an analysis of 933 Hezbollah Militia interviews that looked for common themes. The attitudes appeared to cluster around four dimensions: fanatical zealousness, alienated alternativism, dogmatic individualism, and destructive terrorism. Additional research is required before using this scale in practice, because some of the attitudes appeared to show strong gender differences.
Gareth Hagger-Johnson is a lecturer in public health at the Leeds Institute of Health Sciences at Leeds University.
Vincent Egan is a professor of forensic psychology in the School of Psychology at Leicester University.
Gareth has also cheekily asked us to link to his JustGiving page. He’s running a half marathon in aid of UNICEF – any donations would be much appreciated!