TY - JOUR
AU1 - Hogg, Michael A.
AB - Societal change and personal life events sometimes make one feel uncertain about one’s self and identity. According to uncertainty-identity theory, this self-uncertainty can motivate people to identify with social groups, particularly groups that provide a distinctive and clearly defined identity and associated normative beliefs and behavioral prescriptions. This process can make more extreme groups and behaviors attractive as a source of identification-contingent uncertainty reduction. People may zealously identify with highly distinctive groups that have strong and directive leadership and ideological and ethnocentric belief systems that proscribe dissent and prescribe group-normative behavior. This analysis has been extended to help illuminate how extremism may emerge in the context of religion, politics, gangs, leadership, and adolescent risk taking. This article describes uncertainty-identity theory, overviews empirical support for its main tenets, and outlines some directions for future research.
TI - From Uncertainty to Extremism
JF - Current Directions in Psychological Science
DO - 10.1177/0963721414540168
DA - 2014-10-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/from-uncertainty-to-extremism-zAEALUqTMh
SP - 338
EP - 342
VL - 23
IS - 5
DP - DeepDyve
ER -