Need for Chaos refers to one’s desire to destroy order and established structures to create new social structures. These chaos-seeking tactics in an activism context are generally considered disruptive. New research, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, shows that support for disruptive activism, or chaos-seeking behavior, is driven by two distinct motivations: destruction for the sake of destruction and destruction in the hopes of rebuilding something better.
“While existing work has identified chaos-seeking as a measurable social strategy and demonstrates how it leads to disruptive political behaviour, we know much less about who chaos-seekers are,” wrote study author Kevin Arcenaux and colleagues.
The researchers surveyed adults for Need for Chaos in the United Kingdom (UK), United States (US), Canada, and Australia and obtained a total final sample of 12,250 participants. They ensured each sample was representative of the nation’s general population in terms of demographics (e.g., age, gender, education). The samples were fielded by YouGov (US and UK) and Dynata (Australia and Canada).
The study authors were interested in three main findings: 1) the prevalence of Need for Chaos across these nations, 2) whether Need for Chaos is dependent on personality or demographic information such as age, gender, and education level, and 3) whether Need for Chaos is associated with different political groups.
Results indicated that people tend to fall into one of four distinct categories on the Need for Chaos spectrum: Low, Medium, High, and Rebuilders. Low, Medium, and High categorizations are respective to their level of need for chaos. For example, people in the High Chaos category would express greater desire to see destruction simply for the sake of destruction. The fourth category, Rebuilders, are those who tend to only want destruction if it is in the hopes of building something better.
“Across all four countries, most people fell in the Low Chaos category and few people fell in the High Chaos category, but combining the Rebuild and High Chaos categories showed that there is support for some degree of chaos-seeking at around 20% in the four Anglo-Saxon countries,” wrote the researchers.
Demographic information was also associated with Need for Chaos. Generally, men and young people are more likely to be in the Rebuilder and High Chaos categories (compared to women and older people). Political affiliation was also related to Need for Chaos. “We also found that individuals who identify as Right wing were also more likely to fall in the High Chaos category, yet when we turned our attention to the political preferences of these individuals, the only consistent pattern that emerged was a dislike of immigration,” wrote the researchers. In other words, people in the Rebuilder and High Chaos categories both agreed that immigration should be stopped.
The study authors were particularly interested in disentangling these motivational differences behind support for chaos-seeking behavior. “The key difference between those in the Rebuild and High Chaos categories is that Rebuilders were less likely to agree with statements supporting destruction for the sake of destruction relative to those who were in the High Chaos category (e.g. ‘I get a kick when natural disasters strike in foreign countries’),” wrote Arcenaux and colleagues. “Our interpretation of these findings is that those who fall in the [Rebuilder] category exhibit enough idealism or principles that are distinct from the full embrace of nihilism apparent in the ‘High Chaos’ profile.”
Some limitations exist with this research. Namely, these data are observational and thus we cannot conclude whether Need for Chaos is the causal force of these ideals or whether it is the result of other ideological influences.
Although the prevalence of High Need for Chaos may seem alarming, the researchers offer some reassurance. “If 20% of a country yearned for a violent overthrow of the current system, it would be worrying, but it seems that a considerable fraction of this 20% does not want destruction for the sake of destruction, but rather they imagine rebuilding society’s institutions in a way that does not involve violence.”
The study, “Some people just want to watch the world burn: the prevalence, psychology and politics of the ‘Need for Chaos’“, was authored by Kevin Arceneaux, Timothy B. Gravelle, Mathias Osmundsen, Michael Bang Petersen, Jason Reifler, and Thomas J. Scotto.
