A New Stress-Based Model of Political Extremism: Personal Exposure to Terrorism, Psychological Distress, and Exclusionist Political Attitudes

Does exposure to terrorism lead to hostility toward minorities? Drawing on theories from clinical and social psychology, we propose a stress-based model of political extremism in which psychological distress—which is largely overlooked in political scholarship—and threat perceptions mediate the rela...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of conflict resolution 2009-06, Vol.53 (3), p.363-389
Main Authors: Canetti-Nisim, Daphna, Halperin, Eran, Sharvit, Keren, Hobfoll, Stevan E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Apartheid
Arab-Israeli conflict
Arabs
Attitudes
Citizens
Conflict resolution
Cultural Context
Decision making
Emotional Disturbances
Empirical research
Extremism
Foreign Countries
Hostility
Intervals
Israel
Jews
Mental stress
Minority & ethnic groups
Minority Groups
Minority rights
Modeling
Palestinian people
Perceptions
Political Attitudes
Political psychology
Politics
Post traumatic stress disorder
Prediction
Psychological distress
Psychological effects
Psychological research
Psychological trauma
Psychology
Respondents
Scholarship
Social Psychology
Structural equation modeling
Structural Equation Models
Studies
Terrorism
Threat
Threats
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Summary:Does exposure to terrorism lead to hostility toward minorities? Drawing on theories from clinical and social psychology, we propose a stress-based model of political extremism in which psychological distress—which is largely overlooked in political scholarship—and threat perceptions mediate the relationship between exposure to terrorism and attitudes toward minorities. To test the model, a representative sample of 469 Israeli Jewish respondents was interviewed on three occasions at six-month intervals. Structural Equation Modeling indicated that exposure to terrorism predicted psychological distress (t1), which predicted perceived threat from Palestinian citizens of Israel (t2), which, in turn, predicted exclusionist attitudes toward Palestinian citizens of Israel (t3). These findings provide solid evidence and a mechanism for the hypothesis that terrorism introduces nondemocratic attitudes threatening minority rights. It suggests that psychological distress plays an important role in political decision making and should be incorporated in models drawing upon political psychology.
ISSN:0022-0027
1552-8766
DOI:10.1177/0022002709333296