Friction
How radicalization happens to them and us
Clark McCauley Ph.D., Sophia Moskalenko Ph.D.
There are many temptations to organize our life around the experience of earlier trauma. But that may short-change the future—which starts by our envisioning something better.
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Clark McCauley, Ph.D., is the Rachel C. Hale Professor of Sciences and Mathematics and co-director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College.
Sophia Moskalenko teaches psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on radicalization, terrorism, self-sacrifice and martyrdom.
Using case histories from 1800s to the present, from Europe and North America, McCauley and Mosklaneko identify 12 mechanisms of radicalization operating across individual, small group, and mass-public levels. These mechanisms produce the dynamics of intergroup conflict, in which both sides are radicalized in action and reaction over time.