A sense of shared Muslim suffering seems to play a key role in uniting Muslims around the world. Therefore, in the current paper we hypothesized that the social psychological underpinnings of Islamist extremism would be similar for Muslims living in the West and Muslims living in countries with prolonged and ongoing exposure to Western-led military interventions. Across 4 studies among Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan (Ns = 425, 402, and 127) and Muslims living in 20 Western countries (N = 366), we examined a path model in which group-based anger mediated the link between Muslim identification, perceived injustice of Western military and foreign policy, and violent behaviour intentions. Our results indicate that regardless of whether Muslims live in places with prolonged and ongoing experience of Western military interventions or not, the social psychological factors predicting violent Islamist extremism appear to be similar. We discuss implications for future theory and research.

Soccer supporter violence remains a persistent global problem. The majority of research examining the psychological underpinnings of soccer supporter violence have focused primarily on the role of team identification. Relatively little research has examined the role of basic personality traits and willingness to engage in violence amongst soccer supporters. In a study amongst Swedish soccer supporters (N = 247), we examined whether honesty-humility and team identification predict violent behavioral intentions; examining if collective narcissism mediates these associations. Honesty-humility negatively predicted violent intentions, and team identification predicted violent intentions. Collective narcissism partially mediated these associations. When both Honesty-humility and team identification are accounted for though, collective narcissism did not predict violent intentions. Such findings have implications for the design of violence prevention interventions amongst soccer supporters.

Collective action is often equated with progressive politics, but are there aspects of group mobilisations that generalise across contexts? We examine general social and personality psychological factors behind endorsement of group-based violence across different types of violent group mobilisation. Specifically, we focus on the endorsement of group-based violence amongst supporters of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement (N = 394), an immigration-critical group (N = 252), and soccer supporters (N = 445). Across three preregistered studies, we tested an integrative model including personality and social psychological factors. Several effects were consistent across all three contexts, with group-based relative deprivation positively, and honesty-humility negatively, predicting support for violence. Further, amongst BLM supporters and the immigration-critical group, emotionality negatively predicted support for violence, violent intentions, and self-reported aggression/violence. Overall, our results suggest that individuals who endorse violence in different contexts have some psychological factors in common.

There is growing recognition that members of structurally advantaged groups experience group-based relative deprivation. We consider the idea that personality may explain these “entitlement-based” feelings of deprivation. Specifically, we predicted that modesty would be negatively associated with group-based relative deprivation among members of advantaged groups, but not amongst disadvantaged groups. Two studies focusing on White and Black Americans (N = 334), and Men and Women (N = 309) showed that modesty interacted with group membership. Modesty was negatively related to group-based relative deprivation amongst White Americans and men, but not amongst Black Americans and women. The findings help explain why some individuals espouse rhetoric that their group is being disfavored, even when group statistics and history suggest otherwise.