Clark Mccauley
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1493792 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Clark Mccauley |
| NOMBRES | Clark |
| APELLIDO | Mccauley |
| FIRMA | MCCAULEY C |
| AFILIACIONES | Bryn Mawr College |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8937-302X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 87 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 937 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 87 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1967 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 14 |
Belief and Behavior in Radicalization
The relation between belief and behavior in radicalization to terrorism has been a continuing issue in terrorism research. Peels (2025) has advanced several reasons for thinking that the relation may be stronger than suggested by McCauley and Moskalenko (2017). In this response, we engage with his arguments and, in doing so, come to three questions. First, how does the difference between prediction and explanation account for the small observed c…
Mass political murder
This article explores the meaning and importance of hate in intergroup conflict, especially in conflict that moves to genocide or politicide. Review of controversies in defining hate leads to definition of hate as an extreme form of negative identification that includes perception of bad essence. Negative identification is inverse caring for others, as seen in studies of schadenfreude and gluckschmerz. Studies of dehumanization suggest that two f…
Hero or Zero? Meta-Opinion in Terrorist Motivation
What is the relationship between public opinion and political action? Drawing on cases where shifts in public opinion coincided with changes in the frequency of terrorist attacks, we argue that this connection stems from the normative power of public opinion. This power is evident in the bandwagon effect, where popular opinions tend to gain even more support over time. Governments and corporations signal their belief in this power by attempting t…
Growth opportunities in American and British terrorism research
This paper identifies what we see as opportunities to improve data collection, analysis, and interpretation of findings in American and British terrorism research. We suggest seven directions that we see as promising. These include: 1) interview methods and reporting, 2) source reporting in database studies, prioritizing available court records, 3) more comparison groups, including non-offender activists for the same cause and non-political offen…
Two classes of political activists
We applied Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to responses to items from the Activism and Radicalism Intentions Scales (ARIS). In two studies (undergraduates n = 530) and prisoners (n = 670), item profiles identified four groups – Inert, Moderate Activists, Strong Activists, Radicals, and Mixed – that confirm and extend the levels of the Action Pyramid of the Two Pyramids Model of Radicalization. Radicals were a higher proportion of prisoners than under…
Bifactor analyses provide uncorrelated measures of activism intentions and radicalism intentions
Activism is legal and non-violent political action, whereas Radicalism is illegal and sometimes violent action. Moskalenko and McCauley introduced the Activism Intentions Scale (AIS) and the Radicalism Intentions Scale (RIS) as related but distinguishable dimensions: the scales were significantly correlated but showed different correlates. The same pattern has been seen consistently in subsequent research using the scales. In this paper, two stud…
Introduction to the Special Issue
I introduce the contributions to the Special Issue focused on the Capitol breach of 6 January 2021, and suggest that the breach can only be understood in the context of a long and escalating conflict between Right and Left activists in the U.S. A milestone in this conflict was the interaction between police and protesters at the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2017. Review of this interaction leads to the recognition that Right activists …
Radicalization to Terrorism
Terrorism and radicalization came to the forefront of news and politics in the US after the unforgettable attacks of September 11th, 2001. When George W. Bush famously asked "Why do they hate us?," the President echoed the confusion, anger and fear felt by millions of Americans, while also creating a politicized discourse that has come to characterize and obscure discussions of both phenomenon in the media. Since then the American public has live…
The ABC Model
In this commentary, I compare the ABC model of radicalization with the Two Pyramids model of radicalization. Both models distinguish radicalization of opinion from radicalization of action. Beyond this agreement are questions about the concepts deployed in advancing the ABC model and research issues relating to applications of the two models. I conclude with an optimistic assessment of recent progress in research on terrorism, including the sugge…
The Marvel of Martyrdom
THE MARVEL OF MARTYRDOM is about how martyrs can change the world and how self-sacrifice can change lives. The book starts with famous and influential martyrs, such as Jesus and Gandhi. But the pinnacles of martyrdom can only be reached via the plains of everyday selflessness. Every martyr examined began with smaller forms of self-sacrifice familiar to everyone—every parent, every lover, every friend. Every famous martyr succeeded in challenging …
Marvel of Martyrdom
A sch, S olomon
Solomon Asch opposed the mechanical and behaviorist theories of human behavior that dominated psychology in his day. He invented methods of studying the complexities of social perception and social influence that are still in use today.
Misunderstanding Terrorism
Understanding political radicalization
This article reviews some of the milestones of thinking about political radicalization, as scholars and security officials struggled after 9/11 to discern the precursors of terrorist violence. Recent criticism of the concept of radicalization has been recognized, leading to a 2-pyramids model that responds to the criticism by separating radicalization of opinion from radicalization of action. Security and research implications of the 2-pyramids m…
Toward a psychology of humiliation in asymmetric conflict
Humiliation is often cited in attempts to understand the origins of asymmetric conflicts, especially conflicts involving terrorism. This article reviews common usage, expert opinion, and experiences in interpersonal and intergroup conflicts to suggest a construct definition of humiliation as a combination of anger and shame. Following appraisal theory, this definition distinguishes between the situational appraisals associated with humiliation (i…
Political radicalization on the Internet
The role of the internet in radicalizing individuals to extremist action is much discussed but remains conceptually and empirically unclear. Here we consider right-wing and jihadist use of the Internet – who posts what and where. We focus on extremist content related to radicalization to violent action, and argue that victim videos and jihad videos are particularly powerful in moving individuals to radical action. We interpret these two kinds of …
Which Jews dislike contemporary Germans
We assessed the degree of discomfort reported by U.S. and Czech Holocaust survivors (Study 1) and Jewish American college students (Study 2) to the prospect of physical proximity to a wide range of contemporary Germans with varying linkages to Nazi Germany, and a range of objects or activities associated with Germany (e.g., riding in a Volkswagen). On both measures, there was a very wide range of aversions, from almost absent to almost complete. …
Some Things We Think We've Learned Since 9/11
Toward a Profile of Lone Wolf Terrorists
Research has shown that there is no profile of individual characteristics of group-based terrorists, but profiling the characteristics of lone wolf terrorists may yet be possible. In this article, we bring together suggestions about what a lone wolf profile might look like. We describe a two-pyramids model that distinguishes radicalization of opinion from radicalization of action, then use this model to review three case histories of lone wolf te…
Suicide Bombers in Iraq, 2003-2010
Extending data reported by Mohammed Hafez in 2007, we compiled a database of 1, 779 suicide bombers who attempted or completed attacks in Iraq from 2003 through 2010. From 2003 through 2006, monthly totals of suicide bombers show a pattern different from the pattern of non-suicide insurgent attacks, but from 2007 through 2010 the two patterns were similar. This biphasic pattern indicates that suicide attacks sometimes warrant separate analysis bu…
How do terrorists terrorize
The Emerging Red-Green Alliance
No matter how unlikely it may seem, radical Leftists and Islamists have come closer in recent years. Drawing on substantial ideological interchange, and operating at both state and non-state levels, the two movements are building a Common Front against the United States and its allies. In this article, we use framing theory to examine the contemporary convergence of political Islam and the radical Left. Both radical Leftists and Islamists have ut…
Terrorism Research and Public Policy
What Can Ideas about Genocide Tell Us about Terrorism
This is a big book, the capstone of a career that has made Ervin Staub’s name a hologram for the study of genocide. In this brief essay, I focus on just one aspect of the book – its contributions to understanding terrorism. Although the author has at least two previous papers relating to terrorism,1Overcoming Evil offers the most up-to-date argument for extending to terrorism the psychological insights developed in relation to understanding genoc…
Western intervention in the Balkans
Western intervention in the Balkans: The strategic use of emotion in conflict, by Roger D. Petersen, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011, 333 pages, US$30 (paperback), ISBN 9780521281263. In
Understanding political radicalization
This article reviews some of the milestones of thinking about political radicalization, as scholars and security officials struggled after 9/11 to discern the precursors of terrorist violence. Recent criticism of the concept of radicalization has been recognized, leading to a 2-pyramids model that responds to the criticism by separating radicalization of opinion from radicalization of action. Security and research implications of the 2-pyramids m…
Mechanisms of Political Radicalization
This article conceptualizes political radicalization as a dimension of increasing extremity of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors in support of intergroup conflict and violence. Across individuals, groups, and mass publics, twelve mechanisms of radicalization are distinguished. For ten of these mechanisms, radicalization occurs in a context of group identification and reaction to perceived threat to the ingroup. The variety and strength of reactive…
Jobs, Careers, and Callings
Body, Psyche, and Culture
Core disgust" is a food related emotion that is rooted in evolution but is also a cultural product. Seven categories of disgust elicitors have been observed in an American sample. These include food, animals, body products, sexual de viance, body-envelope violations, poor hygiene, and contact with death. In addition, social concerns such as interpersonal contamination and socio- moral violations are also associated with disgust. Cross-cultural an…
Threat, Dehumanization, and Support for Retaliatory Aggressive Policies in Asymmetric Conflict
Public opinion can permit or encourage retaliatory aggressive state policies against vulnerable but threatening out-groups. The authors present a model in which public support for such policies is determined by perceived threat from and dehumanization of the target group. This two-factor model predicts Israeli Jews' support for two retaliatory aggressive policies: the more hypothetical notion of Palestinian population transfer and concrete, coerc…
Measuring Political Mobilization
In this paper we review and extend measures of political mobilization: the increasing extremity of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors in support of inter-group conflict. Building on previous research, we introduce the Activism and Radicalism Intention Scales (ARIS). The Activism Intention Scale assesses readiness to participate in legal and non-violent political action, whereas the Radicalism Intention Scale assesses readiness to participate in ill…
Psychological Correlates of Support for Compromise
A representative national sampling of Israeli Jewish adults (n = 550) reported attitudes toward solutions of the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict that were salient in Israeli public discourse in 2002. Negative attitudes toward compromise were associated with zero‐sum threat perceptions of the conflict with Palestinians, such that improvement for the Palestinian side can only come at the expense of the Israeli side. Positive attitudes toward compromis…
Stereotyping
Group Identification under Conditions of Threat
Three classes of introductory psychology students at the University of Pennsylvania completed a survey including several measures of group identification on 20 March 2001, 15 September 2001, and 24 March 2003. Importance of country and university were rated higher four days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks than six months before or 18 months after. Scores on a 9-item scale of identification with country were higher immediately after 9/11 than at …
Individual Differences in Disgust Sensitivity
An individual and quantitative measure of stereotypes
Threat Perceptions and Feelings as Predictors of Jewish-Israeli Support for Compromise with Palestinians
A representative sample of Israeli Jews (N = 504) completed a survey assessing attitudes towards compromise in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Support for compromise was well predicted (R = .63) by a combination of four scales: perception of collective threat from Palestinians, perception of zero-sum relations between Palestinians and Israelis, personal fear of Palestinians, and sympathy towards Palestinians. Feelings of hostility towards Pales…
The popularity of conspiracy theories of presidential assassination
Toward a psychology of humiliation in asymmetric conflict
Humiliation is often cited in attempts to understand the origins of asymmetric conflicts, especially conflicts involving terrorism. This article reviews common usage, expert opinion, and experiences in interpersonal and intergroup conflicts to suggest a construct definition of humiliation as a combination of anger and shame. Following appraisal theory, this definition distinguishes between the situational appraisals associated with humiliation (i…
Toward a Profile of Lone Wolf Terrorists
Research has shown that there is no profile of individual characteristics of group-based terrorists, but profiling the characteristics of lone wolf terrorists may yet be possible. In this article, we bring together suggestions about what a lone wolf profile might look like. We describe a two-pyramids model that distinguishes radicalization of opinion from radicalization of action, then use this model to review three case histories of lone wolf te…
Why Not Kill Them All
Genocide, mass murder, massacres. The words themselves are chilling, evoking images of the slaughter of countless innocents. What dark impulses lurk in our minds that even today can justify the eradication of thousands and even millions of unarmed human beings caught in the crossfire of political, cultural, or ethnic hostilities? This question lies at the heart of Why Not Kill Them All? Cowritten by historical sociologist Daniel Chirot and psycho…
The nature of social influence in groupthink
The exposure index
This article introduces the exposure index as a measure of intergroup contact and in-group isolation. The Index is calculated from the proportions of 2 or more groups appearing in enduring social units, such as teams and workgroups, or in more transitory units such as lunch-table and classroom-seating clusters. Observed values of the Index are interpreted in relation to empirical sampling distributions of Index values calculated under the assumpt…
Extremity shifts, risk shifts and attitude shifts after group discussion
Moscovici and Zavalloni (1969) suggest that both risk shifts and attitude shifts after group discussion are examples of a general group tendency to polarize opinions. In the present experiment, using both attitude and risk items, group discussion did not make individual opinions more extreme; only the group average became more extreme. This group extremity increase was not simply a more general way of conceptualizing the directional shifts in att…
What's Special about U.S. Muslims? The War on Terrorism as Seen by Muslims in the United States, Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan, and Indonesia
Since 11 September 2001, Europe has suffered multiple jihadi attacks but the United States has not. This “American exceptionalism” has been attributed to the special qualities of U.S. Muslims, who are seen as politically better integrated and less sympathetic toward radical politics than other Muslims. This article tests the exceptionalism hypothesis by comparing results from a 2007 Pew poll of U.S. Muslims with results from 2006–2007 START polls…
Individual Differences in Sex Stereotyping of Occupations and Personality Traits
Student respondents in Studies 1 and 2, and nonstudent respondents in Study 3, estimated the percentage of females or males in 10 sex-stereotyped occupations. Mean estimates (social stereotypes) were highly stable over a four-week interval and were correlated highly with criterion percentages from the U.S. Census, but, contrary to the kernel of truth hypothesis, tended consistently to underestimate the objective differences between male and femal…
Sudden desistance from terrorism
In this paper we examine the trajectories of two Armenian terrorist groups: the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG). Both groups began in the mid-1970s and by the early 1980s had become extremely active. However, shortly afterwards, attacks and fatalities attributed to ASALA and JCAG plummeted, and by 1988 both groups had effectively disintegrated. The pivotal histor…
Group shift to caution at the race track
Effect of the pretest in the risky-shift paradigm
The ABC Model
In this commentary, I compare the ABC model of radicalization with the Two Pyramids model of radicalization. Both models distinguish radicalization of opinion from radicalization of action. Beyond this agreement are questions about the concepts deployed in advancing the ABC model and research issues relating to applications of the two models. I conclude with an optimistic assessment of recent progress in research on terrorism, including the sugge…
Change in attractiveness of forbidden toys as a function of severity of threat
On observers' reproductions of dissonance effects
Effect of the pretest in the risky-shift paradigm
Order effects in answering risk dilemmas for self and others
Strategy differences between group and individual gambling
Extremity shifts, risk shifts and attitude shifts after group discussion
Moscovici and Zavalloni (1969) suggest that both risk shifts and attitude shifts after group discussion are examples of a general group tendency to polarize opinions. In the present experiment, using both attitude and risk items, group discussion did not make individual opinions more extreme; only the group average became more extreme. This group extremity increase was not simply a more general way of conceptualizing the directional shifts in att…
Reply to Abelson's comment on “group shift to caution at the race track”
Group shift to caution at the race track
Male-female differences in sexual fantasy
An individual and quantitative measure of stereotypes
The popularity of conspiracy theories of presidential assassination
Sex differences in the frequency and functions of fantasies during sexual activity
Stereotyping
On saints and propaganda
Journal Article On saints and propaganda Get access Clark McCauley Clark McCauley 1Bryn Mawr College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 32, Issue 2, June 1982, Pages 239–240, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1982.tb00507.x Published: 07 February 2006
More about thought reform
More about thought reform
More aggressive cartoons are funnier
Independent rankings of humor and aggressiveness were obtained for sets of cartoons drawn randomly from two different magazines. The correlation of median humor and median aggressiveness rankings ranged from .49 to .90 in six studies involving six different sets of cartoons and six different groups of subjects, including children and adults, high and low socioeconomic status (SES) individuals, and native- and foreign-born individuals. This correl…
A Spectator's Guide to Social Policy Research
Individual differences in customer sociability
Two studies examined the quality of clerk‐customer interactions. In the first study, customers in a mall were followed from one purchase to another and retest reliability of customer sociability was found to be 0.73. A second study of the same and another mall found a retest reliability of 0.56 for customer sociability and a correlation of 0.57 between sociability of different salespersons serving the same customer. These results indicate that th…
Depression and the false consensus effect
Patients' perceptions of treatment for kidney failure
Individual differences in prototypicality judgments about trait categories
The nature of social influence in groupthink
Selection of National Science Foundation Graduate Fellows
Selection of National Science Foundation Graduate Fellows
Political science (55 obras) · Psychology (53 obras) · Law (47 obras) · Social Psychology (40 obras) · Sociology (40 obras) · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence (34 obras) · Law (33 obras) · Criminology (32 obras) · Terrorism (32 obras) · Politics (29 obras)