Using Organizational Psychology Can Contribute to a Deeper Understanding of the Evolving Domestic Violent Extremist Landscape
So What?
Organizational membership has changed significantly in recent decades. Take employment: 60 years ago, employees would take a job at one company and stay there for decades. This is not the case anymore, and extremist groups have seen similar changes in behavior patterns. To develop more effective counterterrorism responses, we need new models that more accurately reflect the shifting organizational and social dynamics of today’s extremist groups.
Project Summary
This project will apply industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology to the emerging domestic extremism landscape, aiming to understand how people are drawn to and operate within extremist groups in the U.S.
Purpose/Objectives
This project seeks to build a framework for understanding the nature of membership in the domestic violent extremist space. It will outline social and leadership structures in different organizations, explore how these organizations interact with each other, and identify indictors for when an extremist group will transition to violence.
Method
This project will use a range of methods, including systematic reviews of existing academic literature, interviews with subject matter experts, analysis of publicly available manifestos of convicted extremists, and study of court cases, news reports, and other archival material from domestic violent extremist cases.
Outputs and Impact
- Peer-reviewed academic publications
- Conference presentations.
- Briefings to interested members of the HSE
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Samuel Hunter, Ph.D.
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Gina Ligon, Ph.D.
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