Psychologists identify the dark traits behind an extremist mindset

A recent study explores how dark personality traits and moral judgments combine to form a militant extremist mindset. The research indicates that individuals who advocate for ideological violence often display sadistic tendencies and prioritize group loyalty over individual fairness. These findings were published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Psychologists usually define a militant extremist mindset as a specific pattern of beliefs and motivations. Rather than viewing extremists simply as deviant personalities separate from normal society, researchers treat this mindset as a combination of attitudes that can activate under the right environmental conditions. This cognitive pattern contains three main components, which can be thought of as the psychological fuel for radicalization.

The first component is a willingness to advocate for ideological violence, which acts as a measure of underlying hostility or nastiness. The second component is the belief that the world is a fundamentally vile place. This pervasive pessimism provides a lasting grudge against an external enemy, human nature, or modern society itself. The third component involves an appeal to a higher or divine power. This belief offers a convenient excuse for violence, allowing individuals to justify extreme and harmful measures by claiming they serve a greater religious or utopian purpose.

Marija V. Čolić, a researcher at the Institute of Criminological and Sociological Research in Belgrade, Serbia, led the investigation alongside her colleague Janko Međedović. They wanted to understand how people who are not current members of extremist groups might still harbor elements of these extreme viewpoints in their daily lives. They specifically looked at how these views relate to intuitive moral judgments and the darker aspects of human personality traits.

To explore this psychological landscape, the research team focused on two well-known theoretical frameworks. The first framework looks at moral foundations, dividing human morality into two broad categories based on evolutionary psychology. One category is focused on protecting individual rights, prioritizing the universal ideals of care and fairness. This individualizing morality is centrally focused on preventing harm to human beings and ensuring reciprocal justice.

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The second moral category focuses on binding social groups together against outsiders. This framework emphasizes unwavering loyalty to the group, respect for traditional authority, and the protection of spiritual or physical purity. While these traits historically govern social order within cohesive communities, they can also shift moral focus. This shift frequently moves concern away from protecting individual human lives and redirects it toward aggressively protecting an abstract collective identity.

The second psychological framework involves four dark personality traits, often grouped by researchers as a dark tetrad. These dispositions include psychopathy, which involves emotional shallowness, a lack of empathy, and highly impulsive behavior. Narcissism is defined by grandiosity, a sense of entitlement, and a constant need for social admiration.

The last two dark traits deal with manipulation and cruelty. Machiavellianism centers on a cynical manipulative nature and a strategic attitude that the ends justify the means. Finally, sadism characterizes a tendency to enjoy observing or directly inflicting pain on others. In a general population setting, this translates to everyday sadism, which might manifest as enjoying violent sports, internet trolling, or finding amusement in the misfortune of peers.

The researchers suspected that these dark personality traits might provide a baseline personal disposition toward interpersonal harm. This aggressive underlying tendency could then be intellectually justified or amplified by specific moral systems. An individual might possess a natural inclination toward cruelty, but they secure a framework of group loyalty and divine purpose to excuse that cruelty as a noble moral duty.

To test these associations, the research team conducted two separate surveys drawing from the general population. In the first part of the project, three hundred and nine adults completed questionnaires assessing their intuitive moral foundations and their endorsement of militant extremist ideas. The survey participants rated how strongly they agreed with statements advocating harsh violence, expressing a pessimistic worldview about modern institutions, and using divine justifications for extreme measures.

In this initial survey phase, Čolić and Međedović observed a distinct connection between moral values and extreme ideological beliefs. People who placed a low personal value on individual fairness and care for others were more likely to support violence and rely on divine justifications. A distinct lack of empathy for individual suffering closely aligned with the acceptance of brutal ideological tactics.

At the same time, the researchers found a strong association with group-focused morality. Participants who placed a high value on group cohesion, absolute authority, and purity tended to excuse violence on higher spiritual grounds. These same individuals were highly likely to view the world as a vile place, suggesting that their strong group loyalty was accompanied by a deep suspicion of the outside world.

To build upon these initial psychological observations, the researchers conducted a second comprehensive survey with five hundred and forty adult volunteers. This phase included the same questionnaires as the first phase but added validated tests to measure the four dark personality traits. This addition allowed the investigation team to directly observe how deep-seated, malicious personality characteristics interact with moral intuitions to shape extremist attitudes.

The results from the second survey revealed that dark personality traits robustly predicted core elements of an extremist mindset. Sadism emerged as the strongest personality predictor for those who directly advocated for ideological violence. People scoring high in sadism also frequently cited a divine or higher power to excuse violent acts. This suggests that a basic psychological enjoyment of others’ suffering plays a major underlying role in endorsing extreme ideologies.

This public approval of violence was tightly linked to the participants’ specific moral profiles. Individuals prone to everyday sadism and supportive of violence consistently rejected moral beliefs focused on protecting individual people. The researchers noted that these dark personality traits were associated with a complete rejection of universal care, which partially explained why these exact individuals were so willing to endorse violent political extremity.

A completely different pattern emerged regarding the worldview that society is a vile and corrupted place. This highly pessimistic intellectual worldview was closely tied to Machiavellianism rather than sadism or psychopathy. Individuals who are highly manipulative, strategic, and deeply cynical in their everyday social interactions were much more likely to see the modern world as a hostile environment.

The researchers observed that manipulative individuals holding a cynical worldview readily endorsed moralities focused on ingroup loyalty. The study authors suggest that people high in Machiavellianism might adopt group-binding moralities as a highly convenient tool to socially exploit others. Viewing the entire world as inherently vile could simply serve as a practical narrative excuse for their own manipulative and self-serving behavior.

While the study offers a detailed psychological look into the structures of extreme beliefs, the authors caution about several limitations. The survey participants were drawn entirely from the general public rather than from radicalized or imprisoned populations. The analytical sample also included a disproportionately high number of young, highly educated, and female participants. This demographic skew limits how broadly the eventual conclusions can be applied to the wider public.

The research team also noted some theoretical inconsistencies in how the militant extremist mindset is currently measured. The mindset component focused on a pessimistic worldview behaved very differently from the core components focused on physical violence and divine justification. This statistical split suggests that perceiving the surrounding world as vile might capture a different mental mechanism entirely, rather than just harboring a social grudge to motivate targeted violence.

Future academic investigations will need to explore these psychological contradictions in greater detail. The study authors recommend using long-term tracking methods to follow the same people over several consecutive years. This specific approach would help behavioral scientists determine whether dark personality traits and group-based moralities actually cause extremist viewpoints to develop over time, or if they simply happen to exist alongside them. Including individuals currently active in extremist political organizations could also help verify if these surveyed psychological patterns hold consistently true in real conflicts.

The study, “(A)moral underpinnings of militant extremist thinking pattern: The role of moral foundations and Dark Tetrad,” was authored by Marija V. Čolić and Janko Međedović.