This prediction is based on decades of research that my colleagues and I are conducting at the University of Oxford to determine what makes people willing to fight and die for their group. We use a variety of methods, including interviews, surveys, and psychological experiments, to collect data from a variety of groups, such as tribal warriors, armed insurgents, and terrorists. fathers, regular soldiers, religious fundamentalists and violent football fans.
We find that life-changing and group-defining experiences cause our individual and collective identities to become unified. We call it “identity fusion.” United individuals will constantly strive to advance the interests of their group, and this applies not only to actions we hail as heroic—such as rescuing children from falling buildings. fire or taking bullets for one's comrades—but also applies to acts of suicidal terrorism.
The combination is usually measured by showing everyone a small circle (representing you) and a large circle (representing your group) and placing pairs of such circles in a sequence so that they overlap to varying degrees each other: not at all, then just a little, then a little more, and so on until the small circle is completely inside the large circle. People were then asked which pair of circles best represented their relationship with the group. Those who choose the small circle within the large circle are said to be “integrated”. These are the people who love their group so much that they will do almost anything to protect it.
This is not unique to humans. Some birds will pretend to have broken wings to lure predators away from the chicks. One species—the magnificent fairy wrens of Australasia—lure predators away from their young by making darting movements and shrill sounds to mimic the behavior of a tasty mouse. People will also often go to great lengths to protect their genetic relatives, especially their children (with the exception of identical twins) who have more genes than other family members. But—unusually in the animal kingdom—humans often go further by putting themselves in harm's way to protect unrelated clan members. In ancient prehistoric times, such tribes were small enough that everyone knew each other. These local groups bonded together through common challenges such as starting pain, hunting dangerous animals together, and fighting bravely on the battlefield.
Today, however, fusion is scaling up to much larger groups, thanks to the ability of the world's media – including social media – to fill our heads with images of terrible suffering in remote regional conflicts.
When I met one of the former leaders of the terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia, he told me that he was first radicalized in the 1980s after reading in the press about the treatment of soldiers. Russian soldiers in Afghanistan with Muslims. Yet twenty years later, nearly a third of extremists in America have been radicalized through social media feeds, and By 2016 that proportion had increased to about three-quarters. Smartphones and vivid reporting have shrunk the world to the point where forms of sharing suffering in face-to-face groups can now be largely replicated and spread to millions of people across the world. thousands of miles at the touch of a button.
Unity based on common pain can be powerful but by itself is not enough to promote violent extremism. Our research suggests that three other ingredients are also needed to create the deadly cocktail: the outgroup threat, the demonization of enemies, and the belief that peaceful alternatives are lacking. In areas like Gaza, where the suffering of civilians is regularly captured on video and shared around the world, it is natural that the rate of unity among those watching in horror would increase. If people believe that there can be no peaceful solution, then violent extremism will increase.