The radicalization syndrome: Reciprocal dynamics of obsessive passion and deliberate engagement

Exposure to radical content is a major concern in violent extremism research, yet most people who encounter it never support violence. This study examined which form of exposure—deliberate engagement with radical people and settings versus incidental exposure—is linked to support for political violence, and the role of obsessive passion for an ideology. Four cross-sectional U.S. samples (Democrats, Republicans, environmental supporters, and Muslims; total N = 924) found that deliberate engagement, not incidental exposure, was consistently associated with violence support. Obsessive passion was reliably linked to both deliberate engagement and violence support, while harmonious passion was not. A three-wave longitudinal study of right-wing Americans ( N = 593) located this coupling in time: within persons, obsessive passion and deliberate engagement reciprocally predicted one another across six-week intervals, whereas passion and violence support showed no within-person dynamics in either direction—their strong association was carried entirely by stable, trait-level differences. These variables appear to form a tightly coupled radicalization syndrome rather than a simple linear pathway from passion to engagement to violence. The findings challenge theories and interventions that assume an ordered motivation-to-violence process.