Dark, Deprived and Meaningless? The Role of Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Factors in Prediction of Support for Political Violence

Although different theoretical approaches to explaining radicalisation have been developed, they are usually tested independently, which does not permit any conclusions about their interactive effects. The goal of this study was to test if the unified approach which combines intrapersonal factors and social context improves the prediction of support for political violence. More precisely, the study tested the role of dark personality traits, stability of life’s meaning, fraternal relative deprivation and their interactions in prediction of support for political violence, controlled for other relevant factors like prospective decremental deprivation and gender of participants. The study was conducted online and the questionnaires were filled by 299 participants (71 men). All of the participants were Croatian university students. The results of the conducted path analysis provided the arguments in favor of joining intrapersonal and interpersonal approaches to explaining radicalisation as non-trivial interactive effects were found. Generally, the study confirmed the role of personality traits and fraternal relative deprivation in prediction of support for political violence, while the role of life’s meaning seemed to be less important in this study and might be more dependent on the structural pressures an individual is experiencing.