Vulnerability to extremism

While pursuing group identity can be a means of seeking shelter, it can serve darker purposes. Although there is much talk of the importance of "belonging" and "community," what one finds in a group is more often temporary, and the idea of "group identity" has severe limitations. After all, one is bound by one's literal skin and body, subject to one's own thoughts and disenchantments. There will always be some degree of separation, even under the illusion of merging, bonding, or togetherness. In fact, feelings of lack of personal significance or existential uncertainty precede not only group identity, but extremism as well. 

Extremism can be understood as a kind of unhinged, unrestrained clinging to intense thought, with an almost addictive or obsessive force. It clouds judgment in politics, relationships, science, education, and more; extremism takes to the edge any semblance of an idea and turns thoughts and perspectives into the only truth. And once you learn extremism's inner workings, you begin to see it all around, on all political sides, and in all aspects of daily life. Understanding it offers a counterweight against which you can measure and temper your own inclinations in a healthier way – given the intense group pressures across social media, we are all, in a sense, swimming in extremism and it merely passes for "the norm." But once you learn about extremism – what it looks like and what motivates it – you may recognize it in your own life. As such, it's important to probe further and evaluate the line between a healthy sense of community and an extreme sense of groupthink; fortunately, researchers and social scientists across the world are hard at work unraveling the hidden psychological forces that shape our mindsets and behaviors, and you deserve to know what is being uncovered. 

The literature on extremism is extensive, stemming mainly from wide interest in political violence internationally, as well as more recent ideological polarization found in the United States. Surprisingly, from the studies on ex-terrorists that focus on the psychological underpinnings of radicalization, it's not too far of a stretch to say that some of the same psychological processes occur on a smaller scale every day with our neighbors, friends, and colleagues. That is, some of the same needs and ways of thinking can be found across a range of human interactions, from neighbor squabbles to violent terrorism. Intense needs drive intense behaviors, with belonging, meaning, and purpose being prime examples of what drive our behavior in the world. 

Psychologists tackle the study of extremism via various theories. What is missing, however, is a broad framework for how the internet has created new groups and pathways of radicalization – and I don't mean exposure to early sites like 4chan, as we saw in the 2000s. I mean that people's minds and conceptions of themselves have literally been altered in parallel with the algorithms reinforcing identity. The internet has created vast exposure, which has created widespread uncertainty, and now led to extreme group identification. The virtual world has created new interest groups, and those groups are now active offline and creating real change, for both good and bad. The internet has enabled entire new classes of people, organized around psychographics – the classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria. As leading group identity researcher at Claremont Graduate University, Michael Hogg writes in Current Directions in Psychological Science, "Identifying with a group is a powerful way to resolve self-uncertainty. . . . Self-uncertainty places a premium on identity –defining belief systems that are distinctive, unambiguous, all-encompassing, explanatory, and behaviorally prescriptive." That is, in our era of dizzying information onslaught and wide-ranging identity explorations, groups and labels that offer certainty become highly appealing. And turns out that this kind of research on the psychology of group identity formation is exactly what is needed to help us understand extremism in ourselves and in our world. 

A British social psychologist who spent his childhood in South Asia, Hogg later studied in the UK and settled in Southern California, and he now leads several international research initiatives focused on extremism and group identity. He designed and developed uncertainty-identity theory, which is referenced widely in psychological literature, and its definition is just what it sounds like: Self-uncertainty makes one vulnerable to groups that have strong, clearly defined norms and rules, thus offering the uncertain person a strong sense of identity and self-certainty. Applying this theory to today, we can see such a phenomenon all around us, as people we may know in our own lives become captive to any number of ideologies and groups that actually start on X, Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. Current fads and fan bases around beauty trends like face yoga are mild examples, but more serious cults or ideologies that lead to religious fanaticism are another. 

Uncertainty-identity theory is "a motivational account of group and intergroup behavior, and social identity phenomena," writes Hogg, "but it can also explain the conditions under which radicalization and extremism arise and the various forms they can take. People strive to reduce uncertainty, especially uncertainties that reflect on, or are directly about, who they are." 

He continues: 

Group identification reduces uncertainty because it causes people to internalize a shared identity and associated group prototype, which defines and prescribes who one is and how one should behave and describes how one will be perceived and treated by others. However, some groups and identities are better equipped to reduce self-uncertainty – specifically, distinctive groups with clearly defined and prescriptive identities that are relatively unambiguous and consensual. In more extreme circumstances and manifestations, self-uncertainty can motivate a strong preference for and zealous identification with extremist groups – groups that have identities that echo populist ideology and behavior, and associated conspiracy theories and narratives of victimhood, and have strong and directive leaders who can be populist, autocratic and toxic. 

The application of Hogg's theory to our discussion of self-silencing is rather obvious, and I hope illuminating. To put it plainly, when someone does not have a strong sense of self, they are more vulnerable to any kind of group identity, and then the group identification simultaneously makes one more likely to self-censor. It becomes an unhealthy cycle and requires self-awareness and a strong emotional backbone to stay alert, grounded, and true to oneself in the midst of group pressures to conform. 

When Needs Compete 

Another route to extreme group identity is that of the competition of one's internal needs. We all have needs for safety, connection, shelter, and meaning, and in some people certain needs get crowded out by others, leading to extremism. In a 2018 paper in Cognition on the cognitive processes of extremism, distinguished University of Maryland professor Arie Kruglanski and colleagues lay out clear processes of how needs compete. They write, "In the case of violent extremism, the dominant need in question is the quest for personal significance and the liberated behavior is aggression employed as means to the attainment of significance." Kruglanski and colleagues theorize that the winning need then leads to extremist action through a straightforward sequence where someone encounters information, their awareness of an issue increases, attention becomes narrowly focused, and other needs and goals are crowded out. 

"Specifically, when the individual's need for significance becomes dominant, it directs or tunes her or his attention to goal-relevant constructs. And it concomitantly draws attention away from other concerns such as one's family, safety, or physical health." In one of their interviews with Sri Lankan suicide squads, a former participant told them that when volunteers are screened, they are invited to a waiting room first and are only accepted to the squad when, during discussions in the adjacent room, they reveal that they are so engrossed that they recall very few details about what the other room had been like. If someone remembers all the details, they are not accepted. Engrossment in the mission is a requirement. 

In a chapter appearing in Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, Kruglanski and colleagues write, 

In a state of moderation, basic needs constrain one another so that people tend to avoid behaviors that serve some needs but frustrate others. For instance, an individual may decline a prestigious job offer that would best fulfill her strivings for personal achievement, if accepting that position required a relocation that harmed her ability to manage important social relationships. Similarly, one's need to be respected and admired might be served by engaging in dangerous physical exploits and daredevil adventures. However, concerns for safety and comfort may constrain the risks one may be willing to tolerate and may curb one's enthusiasm about dangerous undertakings We propose that extremism occurs when a given need acquires such intensity that it dominates and overshadows other basic concerns. 

This idea explains how the temptation of belonging may entice someone to pay such close attention to their gender or mental health or race or disability or other feature that their entire being becomes about that one aspect, to the neglect of the rest of who they are. As Kruglanski et al. write, "Obsessive passion pertains to the case wherein an individual obsessively strives toward the satisfaction of a given concern, leaving little mental resources for other concerns." 

If the algorithms love your constant posting about depression or gender dysphoria, and you are rewarded with likes and shares, you are going to keep doing it, propelling you further and further down those rabbit holes, like an addiction, and you become a product of the algorithms –essentially, you unintentionally display some of the very traits of an extremist, out of touch with other aspects of yourself. I'm not saying that people online don't legitimately experience some components of their affiliated identity groups, but the way it becomes all-consuming is oftentimes a function of loneliness and wanting to belong. This desire to belong doesn't make someone a bad person – it simply makes them human – but our task is to find constructive avenues toward belonging that don't require conformity to a group or an algorithm. 

Entitativity and Uncertainty: What Makes Groups Sticky 

Beyond the desire for belonging, what is it that makes a person drawn to groups and how do they get stuck there? Michael Hogg writes about "entitativity"– that is, what makes groups "groupy," including norms and rules. In any group you will observe the spoken or unspoken dynamics at work that serve to reinforce certain behaviors and discourage others. And in fact, related to entitativity is the concept of "prototype." The "prototypical person" is the person who personifies what the group is all about, against which members measure themselves and their behaviors. Such individuals are usually obvious in a religious or fraternity setting, for example. 

Restrictive norms and rules can reinforce group conformity, further self-silencing, and lead to the loss of individuality. In his PhD dissertation, Hogg advisee Zachary Hohman writes, 

After a group becomes psychologically salient, people no longer view themselves and others in idiosyncratic or interpersonal terms, but rather in terms of their group identities and associated group norms. That is, they become depersonalized and lose their personal identity for their social identity. . . . A consequence of depersonalization is that people are assumed to fit and behave in accordance with their group's prototype. Once a person is depersonalized, we no longer see them as a unique individual; rather, they are viewed through the lens of their group's prototype and evaluated in comparison to that prototype. We not only depersonalize other people but ourselves as well. We no longer think of ourselves in terms of individual characteristics, but in terms of our group's prototype and how well we fit the prototype. 

As members of a group, sometimes people are not fully aware they are self-silencing; they may have an inkling of a feeling, but not outright identify that they are not speaking up, likely because the need to belong is dominant. Hogg and colleagues find that the more uncertain an individual is about themselves, the more they gravitate to groups with firm norms, rules, and customs that don't allow for dissent. 

Perhaps the lesson or takeaway is to be aware of the pull of groups and to simply choose wisely, but, of course, limiting one's involvement only to perfectly aligned groups is not always possible. Everybody needs a certain amount of community and shared identity. It's only when it becomes unknowingly all-encompassing that it poses a risk, as we are now seeing in the era of social media-induced mass group identification. As Hogg and colleagues write, "When feeling uncertain about themselves in a particular context, people prefer to identify with, and identify more strongly with, groups that are more distinctive, more clearly structured, and associated with clearer prototypes. Such high entitativity groups may be more effective at reducing self-conceptual uncertainty, and consequently people would be more likely to identify with them." 

High entitativity groups are often easily identifiable: Cheerleading teams, fraternity brothers, and adventure groups like mountain trekkers and river rafting enthusiasts might exude a certain "groupy" energy with similar clothing styles, body language, gestures, or vocabulary. But this same "groupy" energy finds its way into smaller groups of friends, online forums, school committees, and more. And the extent to which these groups become problematic depends largely on the individuals and their own levels of self-uncertainty. The more uncertain a person is, the more fanatically devoted to the group they become; Hogg calls such a person an "entrepreneur of entitativity." 

Crisis can also play a role; societal crises, just as much as an individual's own life crises, can often catalyze a person to work "diligently to perceptually, rhetorically, and actually increase their group's entitativity." And it is this same diligence that can enmesh people in extreme, violent groups like terrorist groups. War, natural disasters, family abuse, and other circumstances produce widespread existential and individual uncertainty, and Hogg and colleagues argue that "extreme societal uncertainty may tighten the iron grip of ideology and spawn orthodoxy and extremism via social identification [with a group]." 

Unfortunately, most of us are now wading in extreme ideological and political convictions fueled by the internet, and sometimes we don't even know we are drowning. Some people become disillusioned and slowly wake up and realize they live in an ideological bubble, but this can take years. By understanding the forces at play in human nature and group psychology, we can retain a sense of clarity and agency. It can be lonely once the fog clears, but we are all better off for a more honest assessment of reality and where we stand within it, and most important, knowing how to more genuinely relate to other human beings as a result of our newfound insights and understanding. 

And if people do not strive to fully explore and discover how they can make their way through the world in more independent ways, then they "inhabit polarized identity silos, are drawn to populist ideologies and leadership, and find conspiracy theories and narratives of victimhood attractive," Hogg writes in a 2023 book chapter coauthored with social psychologist Amber Gaffney. "Group identification is so effective at reducing self-uncertainty because it provides us with a sense of who we are that prescribes what we should think, feel and do, and it reduces uncertainty about how others, both ingroup and outgroup members, will behave and about how social interactions will unfold. Identification also provides consensual validation of our worldview and sense of self, which further reduces uncertainty." 

But what are the psychological features of someone who is so uncertain about themselves and thus drawn to highly entitative groups? Hogg and Gaffney write that a person can feel uncertain about their own "individual attributes" or who they are in relation to "specific other people," but that it's "much more difficult to resolve uncertainty that pervades the entire self-concept – you effectively have nowhere to turn to feel generally more certain about who you are." They continue, "Self-uncertainty can sometimes be experienced as overwhelming and almost impossible to resolve," and they say that this most often happens under three circumstances, the first being that someone has too simple of a self-concept. That is, "they have few distinct identities and those identities they do have overlap so substantially that they are in effect one identity." In other words, they lack the varied exposures and experiences that might help round out their worldview and help them think more independently.

We might thus conclude that high self-uncertainty leads to low critical thinking. Imagine a person raised somewhat isolated whose limited roles all overlap – for example, someone with few distinct identities might be a person living in the same town where they grew up, working for the same family business they grew up in, and married to someone they've known since grade school. When they leave that nest, they may experience high self-uncertainty because they have not previously been exposed to such different circumstances that would challenge their worldview. 

The second circumstance that contributes to high self-uncertainty is when there is "identity overlap uncertainty," such that uncertainty in one area "rapidly metastasizes to affect one's entire sense of self," which describes the above-imagined scenario of difficulty leaving the nest. 

Finally, people can feel they don't have the adequate emotional, material, cognitive, or social resources to resolve their uncertainty, and so they experience "an irresolvable and anxiety-ridden threat rather than an easily resolved and exciting challenge," which might happen for the above-referenced person who is first venturing out and experiences a kind of existential crisis and uncertainty in the face of all that is challenging their worldview. 

What does this mean for all of us? If uncertainty is inevitable, how do we face it in a way that doesn't make us vulnerable to losing ourselves to the lure of groupthink? Hogg delivers a reframe that I think is helpful: "If one feels one has the resources to resolve the uncertainty, it can be an exhilarating challenge to be confronted – it is exciting and makes us feel edgy and alive and delivers us a sense of satisfaction and mastery when we resolve it. If one feels one does not have the resources to resolve the uncertainty, it can be anxiety provoking and threatening, making us feel helpless and unable to predict or control our world and what will happen to us." To me, this points to the very real need to pivot one's focus during times of uncertainty toward building a firm grounding for your life – from finances to social connections to simple and affordable physical well-being strategies like taking walks. This "taking charge" behavior is especially a necessary pivot for the many sensitive, curious, neurodivergent readers I've interacted with throughout my career for whom creating and implementing logistical frameworks presents a challenge. 

As Hogg and Gaffney write, 

Change and the prospect of change almost inevitably create a sense of uncertainty. Change often makes people question their well-established and often habitual understanding of themselves and the social and physical world in which they live. People feel they are no longer able to make reliable predictions and therefore plan adaptive actions. There is a loss of sense of mastery over one's ability to navigate their world. Change and uncertainty are ubiquitous and intrinsic features of the human condition –they cannot be completely avoided. However, people can and do strive to reduce uncertainty. How they do this, and their success in doing so, depends on how strong and enduring the uncertainty is, what its primary focus and origin is, the extent to which it pervades many aspects of a person's life, and on the resources and abilities that people believe they have to resolve the uncertainty.

• Jenara Nerenberg lectures widely on neuroscience, innovation, sensitivity, leadership, and diversity. Selected as a "brave new idea" presenter by the Aspen Institute for her work on re-framing mental differences, Jenara is also the founder and host of The Neurodiversity Project. She holds degrees from the Harvard School of Public Health and UC Berkeley. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, New York magazine, Susan Cain's Quiet Revolution, Garrison Institute, Elaine Aron's HSP, Healthline, and on KQED, and elsewhere. In addition to her work as a journalist, Jenara is a frequent workshop facilitator, speaker, and event host for institutions, including the Stanford Graduate School of Business and others in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives.
• Trust Your Mind: Embracing Nuance in a World of Self-Silencing is published by HarperOne.