A Four-Part Series on Extremism and Online Recruitment – Part 2: Quest for Significance
Introduction
“Cyber void is so full of amazing emptiness that makes us feel fulfilled.” – Munia Khan
Social psychologist Roy Baumeister hypothesized that the desire for interpersonal attachments is a fundamental motivation for humans. This need is deeply ingrained that when our social environments reject us, it will unfavourably affect our adjustment and threaten both our physical health and psychological well-being. In this digital era, one can easily access online communities that not only cater to his/her preferences but also imbibe a sense of being a part of something bigger than oneself.
Unfortunately, there are a few but quite influential online communities which provide the need to belong for their members at the cost of harmful consequences for the intergroup relations in the society. Similar with social change movements such as environmental protection groups, their discontents are directed toward the current societal condition. However, rather than perpetuating democratic values, imbuing their members with hatred and violent narratives toward their perceived enemies are often their approach.
Previously, the presence of online communities suggests an increased attention to political movements particularly among youth. Aligned with this, social media is massively used by extremist groups as a propaganda medium. For instance, ever since Islamic State utilized Twitter in 2012 as their propaganda machine, the public have become more aware of the presence of online extremism. Teenagers and young adults are particularly vulnerable as they are the primary target of recruitment by those extremist groups. But why are these young people vulnerable? What factor attracts these youths to commit to these violent communities? Here, we argue that the quest for significance – or the meaning seeking psychological motivation – is the primary driver for youth extremism.
Why Extremist Communities are Attractive for Young People: Lessons from the Psychology of Violent Extremism
Narratives perpetuating the existence of injustice toward a particular group are ever present in the violent extremist groups. To extremist groups, the current society is not ideal, unfair, and may threaten the existence of their group. Take white supremacist online communities, for example. They believe that hatred and discrimination toward immigrants are necessary to defend the sophisticated Western civilization. In order to avoid its collapse, it is necessary to protect the purity of the Caucasian ethnicity and culture. Similar narratives can be seen in the Salafi-jihadist communities which often emphasize the purity of their religious teachings while propagating against the degradation of the society caused by the Western civilization.
While such political and ideological narratives are useful in characterizing the agenda of each community, it is not sufficient to motivate individuals – particularly youth – to commit atrocities such as violence. Our research demonstrated that Indonesian ideological narrators in extremist groups are less influential compared to operational leaders. While the first primarily focuses on ideological or religious persuasion, the latter may combine religious narratives with the followers’ psychological needs. For example, these operational leaders promising a hero status to members, fulfilling their revenge that they may be seeking, and rewarding their dedication. Religious teachings may be used to justify such needs.
Catering to the followers’ psychological needs is important, simply because it is more attractive. People can sacrifice themselves to a great extent (i.e. martyrdom) for their community where they belong as these groups provide them with a sense of meaning. Therefore, it was posited that personal significance attainment is a primary driver of extremism.
According to the quest for significance theory, the condition of personal insignificance such as perceived alienation by the society, exclusion, loneliness, meaninglessness, and deprivation of psychological needs is agonising and thus a person seeks to overcome such condition by searching for significance. This is relevant to youth recruitment by extremist groups, particularly those who perceived themselves as outcasts, experiencing hollowness in their lives, or simply feeling lonely. By joining extremist groups, youths are offered solace in times of insignificance and a sense of something to fight for.
An ongoing research conducted by one of the authors found that Indonesian college students’ attitude toward extremism may be linked to their need for personal significance and identity-seeking motivation. In other words, personal significance is important in shaping youths’ attitude toward extremism. These youths were more favourable to extremism when they were encountering personal insignificance. Interestingly, many of these college students came from economically comfortable families. This suggests that condition of insignificance may occur independent of one’s economic status.
Moreover, in a phenomenon called pop-jihadism, youths were persuaded by online extremist propaganda because it was edgy and exciting. They imagined that being a terrorist equated to being a superhero like Iron Man, the Hulk, or Batman. Religious narratives were less important here as the pursuit of excitement became the primary driver. Excitement seeking has been noted as a potential factor for youth radicalization. As an extension to the quest for significance theory, studies have demonstrated that excitement seeking was present in individuals who were willing to commit self-sacrifice and are more supportive of political violence. In this perspective, meaning-seeking motivation stimulates a person to find excitement in political violence.
Extremist propaganda resonates with the diaspora community and youths in particular by facilitating them to negotiate their identities via the internet. Their propaganda is aimed at promulgating their ideological narratives and mobilizing diverse youth groups. Additionally, by developing an online community, it could provide a platform for sharing and reinforcing these narratives. Through such communities, youths may feel that they have contributed to an important social change.
What can We Do?
In the past two decades, many programmes have been proposed and enacted to help youths disengage from the militant extremist groups. Some of these programmes attempted to change their belief systems or ideology. Others focused on providing monetary support. Unfortunately, both may be limited in its effectiveness. Attempts to change one’s ideology may instead elicit resistance. For instance, in response to deradicalization attempts by the Indonesian government, the terrorist detainees considered such attempts as a means to corrupt their cherished beliefs. Monetary support may be useful to motivate youths to disengage from extremist groups, but may have limited viability as a long-term solution. There is also a high risk of recidivism since the ideology still persists in their minds.
To increase the effectiveness, psychological interventions should be amalgamated into such programmes. After all, the primary drivers for youths are psychological. In other words, addressing the narratives (ideology) and networks (engagement with extremist groups) alone in counter-radicalization attempts may not be enough.
Supporting this is positive indications from incorporating psychological interventions in deradicalization programmes. Indonesia, with more than 200 terrorist detainees spread across the country, is beginning to see positive outcomes from doing so. Among others, one key psychological element that is address is the quest for significance.
According to our empirical findings with Indonesian youth terrorist prisoners as participants, support for violent extremism was lower when they derived significance from alternate sources , away from their extremist communities. Often, those who remain committed to the violent extremist groups possessed only a single identity – that is, their extremist group. By awakening their personal significance through other identities, those youth are exposed to alternative means of compensating their personal insignificance.
Familial ties, romantic ties, or pursuit of social status are potential alternative sources of significance. This approach, however, should be individualized because valuable sources of significance may differ from person to person. For instance, a person who values achievement may see their economic status as a more valued source of significance compared to a person who value kinship. On the contrary, those who value familial ties may pursue happiness for their families rather than personal achievements.
Other than providing alternative sources of significance, this strategy also works to improve the social identity complexity. Youths can be made to understand that their affiliation is not only with a single community (extremist community) but actually encompasses multiple ingroups – each may or may not overlap with each other. Such understanding can be followed by the acceptance of diversity in society. This is evident from previous works that demonstrated social identity complexity may improve intergroup relationship and tolerance toward outgroups.
With regards to the need for excitement that is prevalent in youths, it may be important to alter the pursuit of significance – from violence to a non-violent pursuit that may provide an equal sense of excitement. Unfortunately, peaceful or normative quest for significance (e.g. prosocial or humanitarian goals) may not be perceived as equally exciting by those who seek such sensations. Ostensibly, the issue is with the framing of such pursuits that do not invoke a sense of excitement in youths. Instead of framing prosocial goals merely as something good or useful, perhaps these goals can be framed as ae quest to defeat the enemies of humanity in general. In other words, enabling them to perceive themselves as heroes in a noble quest.
Since appealing to the youths’ psychological needs were the primary means of recruitment by extremist groups, it is pertinent to consider psychological factors – such as quest for significance and social identity complexity in helping these youths get out of violent extremism. By doing so, youths are encouraged to adopt alternative sources of meaning and identity, and thus significance. Here, it is important to emphasize that it is insufficient to convince youths to leave their groups by countering their ideological narratives alone.
Part 1: Linguistic Appeal of Propaganda
