Group Relative Deprivation and Violent Radicalism: Moving Toward a Comprehensive Model

Abstract

Many terrorist attacks, carried out in the name of Islam, have posed significant threats to human lives across the globe. Research aiming to understand the roots of radicalism has identified Group Relative Deprivation (GRD) as a central explanatory concept. The present research (Study 1, N = 209; Study 2, N = 611; Study 3, N = 638) conducted in France, home to Western Europe’s largest Muslim community, failed to confirm the role of GRD in explaining variations in radicalism. Earlier research showed that GRD predicts activism and that activism is positively correlated with radicalism. Consequently, we hypothesized and found that group membership (Muslims vs. non-Muslims) is related to activism (not radicalism), that GRD mediates this relation between group membership and activism, and that GRD is predictive of radicalism only indirectly, via activism. The results also confirm that group-based contempt is uniquely predictive of support for violence, unlike group-based anger. The theoretical, methodological, and policy implications of these findings are discussed.