‘Factors accountable for radical attitudes, intentions, and behaviors (including terrorism) have been unraveled by a study. This suggests a need to revamp the assessment tools for these behaviors.
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The study identified more than 100 risk and protective factors in democratic countries behind the radical move. These include five-grouped domains:
- Socio-demographic and background factors
- Psychological and personality trait factors
- Attitudinal and subjective belief related factors
- Experiential factors
- Traditional criminogenic factors
Among them, traditional criminogenic and social-psychological factors formed the most significant ones.
Need for Revamp
“Our results suggest that some of the factors most commonly targeted by counter violent extremism interventions, such as social integration, have only small relationships with radicalization. On the other hand, traditional criminogenic factors, such as low self-control, have far more robust relationships,” says lead author Michael Wolfowicz, Ph.D., of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The study thereby suggests that interventions that are commonly used for combatting criminological outcomes may help in fighting radicalization.
“Additionally, our results suggest a need to revamp the way that risk assessment tools are constructed, as not all factors included in such tools should be given the same weight. We hope that our results will contribute to the development of more evidence-based practice in this field,” says Dr. Wolfowicz.
Source: Medindia
