engleski

Report on findings of new survey data (Deliverable D4.4)

This report concerns the findings of new data from a survey experiment on inequality, attitudes to Muslims and radicalisation among youth in three European countries. Research on the relationship between inequality and radicalisation has mainly focused on correlation rather than causation. The current study addresses this gap in the literature, by employing an experimental survey design, which aims to differentiate between young people’s attitudes to outgroups, and intentions for radical action when social inequality between groups is made salient compared to when it is not. It further differentiates between negative attitudes to Muslims and senior citizens. The two main hypotheses for this study were i) that perceived inequality or grievances of the non-Muslim youth population in relation to an outgroup (Muslims or senior citizens) engenders negative intergroup attitudes and activist and radicalised intentions ; and ii) that these effects are larger when Muslims are the salient outgroup. We tested the efficacy of three different iterations our manipulation (version of the news stories) with slightly different design, but neither were consistently confirmed as efficient in evoking perceived inequality in relation to Muslims. This means that we were unable to test the relationship between perceived inequality and radicalisation the way we intended. Despite this we did find some interesting results, and methodological implications, particularly regarding the role of emotions, propensity to violence and economic insecurity in research of radicalisation in general and inequality and radicalisation specifically. The results indicated that the experimental manipulation seemed to have some effect on violent emotions (anger, frustration etc.), whereas it had little effect on the cognitive measures of perceived inequality. The relative role of emotions in radicalisation, and how it affects and is affected by perceived (and objective) inequality needs to be further explored. Propensity for violence emerged as the most important predictor of radicalised intentions. In all three countries participants more prone to violence expressed higher radicalised intention. Additionally, an effect of economic insecurity was found in Germany and Norway ; participants who reported more insecurity regarding their own future economic situation expressed slightly higher radicalised intentions. This report details the initial findings from the pilot surveys as well as the main study and discusses their implications.

radicalization ; experiment ; inequality ; injustice ; political violence

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