IDENTITY FUSION
A THEORY FOR UNRAVELING THE MECHANISMS OF VIOLENT RADICALIZATION
When we talk about extremism,
violent radicalization, or terrorism,
what are we really talking about?
In recent decades, researchers and professionals in different fields
have looked at the phenomenon of terrorism,
especially international terrorism,
which is the most worrisome for Western society,
although it’s not the only one.
Social psychology,
anthropology, political science, or psychiatry,
among other disciplines,
have contributed their own theories,
developing their own approaches and models.
But few of these have proven scientific validity.
Only 3% of research investigations
on terrorism include empirical data.
The difficulty that entails accessing radicalized individuals
in prisons, at recruitment centers,
or on the battlefield,
very few theories
have managed to prove their efficacy on specific research subjects,
or in the field.
This is one of the reasons why UNED’s Research Team,
led by Professor Ángel Gómez Jiménez,
has been applying the Identity Fusion Theory for over thirteen years
to various violent radicalization processes.
The theory explains why an individual’s visceral connection with a group
can lead to extreme behaviors,
including sacrificing one’s own life for the good of the group.
We are all part of groups, right? And of many groups
The thing is that our relationship with each group is very different.
There are groups we belong to
but we are not very emotionally involved
However, there are groups that we feel a very strong connection with
that is long-lasting and highly emotional.
This is precisely what identity fusion describes.
Identity fusion occurs
When the barriers get blurred between our personal identity,
that is composed of those characteristics that define us as unique individuals,
and our social identity , which has to do with our sense of belonging to groups.
One of the characteristics of identity fusion
is that there is a sense of reciprocity.
That sense of unity and reciprocity
makes people who are fused more willing than people who are not
to make sacrifices for the group, even giving up their lives.
The theory has its origins in an initial contact
with Bill Swann, a professor at the University of Texas, in Austin.
He worked on personality psychology, and I did social psychology.
We started thinking: "How is it possible
that people end up engaging in these types of behaviors."
We tried to combine both of these dimensions of psychology.
Our main interest was to try to find out
why some people are willing to fight and die,
or even kill, for a group or a set of values.
Not just after the September 11 attack,
or the March 11 attack here in Madrid,
but also other types of group violence.
It occurred to us that, perhaps some people
think of the group and themselves as a single entity
and feel that anything that happens to the group
is happening to them personally, and vice versa.
So, any threat towards either the group or themselves
could become extremely powerful,
enough to make the person
engage in all sorts of behaviors, even sacrificing themselves, if needed.
On the first phase,
which were the first 7 or 8 years approximately, laboratory studies were conducted
not just in Spain, I’m talking about online studies,
but also studies with universities and high schools and the general public,
mainly to see if the theory could be replicated
internationally in different countries and groups.
Then, in the second phase, we started doing field work
mainly with two groups:
individuals at risk of radicalization
because of where they lived or the neighborhoods they frequented,
because they suffered a series of symptoms
like personal discrimination, exclusion, etc.,
that led us to believe we might
find certain variables that would give us information about this.
The initial fieldwork carried out by the team
was conducted through face-to-face interviews
with individuals at risk of violent radicalization
living in neighborhoods around Tetuan and Casablanca.
These were the places of origin of several jihadists
involved in the March 11 attack in Madrid
and other acts of international terrorism.
The results of the study showed
that individuals who were fused with their closest group of friends,
with whom they usually travel to the West when the time comes,
were very willing to make costly sacrifices
to ensure strict enforcement of Shari’a or Islamic Law,
to the point of accepting the use of violence,
risking a prison sentence,
physical harm to their children and close relatives,
and even their own death.
Then we also worked with individuals
who had once belonged to a terrorist group,
whether the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, or the Tamil Tigers.
These people are important, because they’ve already left the group
and they gave us valuable information about why they joined,
what happened when they were in the group,
and, above all, why they left.
During a collaboration with two international research groups,
the team interviewed several former members of radical Islamic groups
and the Tamil Tigers,
a separatist organization founded in 1976 in Sri Lanka
that applied and perfected mass suicide terrorism.
The reasons they found to explain the radicalization of these individuals
differed depending on the terrorist group.
While nearly half the Tamil Tigers had been forced to join the group
under the threat of attacking their families,
three fourths of radicalized individuals in radical Islamist groups
joined for reasons associated with their personal identity needs
or the needs of the group in question.
The widespread discrimination experienced in European societies
has come up as a recurring topic,
as the final straw that sometimes leads you to take that last step,
whether that discrimination is personal or against the group.
You look around and say: “My people are being discriminated.
Why are they being stomped on?
Why do they treat us this way? Why are they saying that in the media?
That’s my father, my mother, my cousins, or neighbors.
They haven’t done anything.
SPAIN FOR SPANIARDS
And that’s when you have a person who is willing to hear:
“Look, what you’re experiencing is exclusion.
And let me explain why you’re excluded.”
And that’s where the ideology comes in.
“You’re excluded because you’re Muslim, foreign-born, and practice this religion,
because the West hates Islam.
But we’re going to return to our origins and we're going to
re-conquer the world, etc.”
And you believe it.
You believe it because this provides an explanation
and gives meaning to the exclusion you've been experiencing.
That is why you really need to know what the discourse is like from within,
where it comes from,
and what social and historical experiences gave rise to it,
so that you can begin the process of saying:
“OK, let’s take all this apart.
You can discover different ways to be a Muslim,
like the vast majority of Muslims in the world,
that do not involve violence, far from it.”
For some Muslim individuals,
the feeling of exclusion, discrimination, and injustice
can lead them to fuse with the group,
and even become a determining factor
for commiting violent acts.
Individuals who are members of Latin gangs,
experience fusion with the group itself
and with the gang’s shared values,
such as honor and respect.
A study carried out by UNED’s Research Team
in various prisons,
with over 300 face-to-face interviews,
revealed that fusing with the group
or with the relevant value for each individual,
religion for Muslims,
and honor for Latin gangs,
was positively correlated
with a willingness to make extreme sacrifices for the group,
or for the groups' shared values.
These are some of the conclusions of this study
published in the journal “Scientific Reports,”
a pioneering comparative study of individuals in high-security prisons
who were members of different violent radicalized groups.
But we were missing the key.
We were missing people who are members
or have been members and are incarcerated
because they've engaged in
or attempted to engage in these types of behaviors.
One very interesting issue in the literature,
when you read about jihadist terrorism in particular,
but also terrorism in general,
many scientists talk about the theory,
but they’ve never actually spoken
with a person who is being or has been radicalized.
That leads you to discover things you would never imagine working in a lab.
So, we thought that the ideal place to do fieldwork
was in prisons or penitentiaries, for several reasons.
Because if we could understand the dynamics of violent radicalization,
we could figure out or learn how to prevent it,
and also how to reintegrate these people back into society.
The prison study was divided in two phases.
In the first phase, we interviewed about 530 participants
and visited 36 penitentiaries all over Spain.
The groups we chose in the first phase
were, first of all, Muslim inmates
who belonged to one of four groups of interest.
The first was inmates convicted of jihadist terrorism.
Then we also interviewed
inmates who were in prison for common crimes
but were engaged in proselytizing inside the prison.
And we interviewed inmates
who were vulnerable to being recruited by extremist fellow in prison.
The fourth group of Muslim inmates
was not involved in any sort of radicalization process.
We used them as a control group to compare with the other three.
On the other hand, we were also interested in members of Latin gangs
and inmates who were members of organized criminal networks.
When we get to the penitentiary,
after going through the security checks and controls,
they usually give us a room or office to conduct the interview.
The inmate comes in and we are left alone.
There are no handcuffs. There’s no glass or bars between us.
We sit down with them in a normal room
and that's where we do the interview.
That makes our work easier because it’s a lot more private.
After all, the inmate is alone with us, with no officers.
They’re not handcuffed, so it’s a lot more natural.
It’s almost like a conversation rather than an interview or interrogation.
First, we try to connect with the inmate.
We need to build rapport in order to gain their trust
so they can talk with you about these issues
that, after all, are often a bit sensitive for them
because It’s part of their life, after all.
It’s not always easy to talk about your life with some people.
We need to build that trust so they're comfortable talking with us
and don't have any problems.
But sometimes this information...
Although, in our case, we ask are very general questions,
we don’t touch upon anything...
We don’t intrude on their lives or address any controversial matters,
but sometimes it’s difficult.
So, the one thing that characterizes this research is uncertainty
because you’re constantly dealing with uncertainty.
After all, in the prisons, we’re dealing with the human factor.
Until you get there, you don’t know if that person will accept,
or if a problem will come up and keep you from doing the interview.
During the questionnaire or questions,
sometimes you learn personal things about that person
that you weren’t going to ask,
but they’re comfortable enough with you
to express it in that moment.
So, you also get to know the phenomenon in a much broader sense
because that person is there in front of you telling you about it.
It’s not just what they say, but the way they say it,
the look on their face, whether they move...
Also, noticing if they’re at ease and how they relate that information.
Because reading information is not the same as seeing
how a person tells you things at an emotional level.
Emotions convey a lot of information.
One of the things that I insist the people on the team prioritize
is learning from the interviews themselves.
Because most of the questions asked
are based on online studies among the general population,
not people at risk of radicalization, or who are or used to be radicalized.
So we need to learn from them.
Sometimes the question asked is not the appropriate.
We need to ask them:
“Is it OK? What should we be asking you?”
And modify it based on that.
Comparing different groups,
we realized there are no differences between them.
There are some variables in which they are all the same
The key is: what distinguishes them?
What distinguishes them can help us prevent it and then modify it,
always keeping their perspective in mind and talking to them.
Not showing them a questionnaire
with a series of scales most of them will not understand,
but trying to talk directly with them,
not just about the content of each question,
but knowing how they feel
and what they think when we ask something.
In the second phase, we already had the knowledge base gained in the first.
We had already learned how to better tackle
the interviews and questionnaires.
We were aware of the problems we'd had in the first phase...
For instance, the questionnaire was too long for some inmates.
The first thing we did was sit down, see what parts were more essential,
and cut it down, leaving out any questions that were unnecessary
or irrelevant, as seen in the first phase.
We ended up with a much shorter questionnaire
and we also designed a totally new narrative.
The first thing we ask interns to do
is to explain what a typical day in prison is like for them
from the moment they get up until they go to sleep.
That's meant to build a connection
between the researcher and the inmate,
so it’s not as embarrassing as starting with questions...
about their crime or their lives, which might lead to rejection.
Then we ask them to tell us the story of their lives
from birth or infancy to the present moment,
also indicating at what point in their lives they were happiest,
which is what we call the high point,
also the saddest or most negative point,
the low point,
and a point or moment when there was a radical change
in their lives, a point of inflection.
They associated it with the purifying effect of religion...
It’s true that we didn't want to combine them in these two studies.
What about the gangs, where religion has no role?
With this information, at the School of Psychology, in Madrid,
what we do is create databases with all that information.
We anonymize it as much as possible
and start processing that information.
We do SPSS data analysis.
We look at the results.
We have meetings to see how to explain them, the reason behind them,
what we got out of it, how we felt.
We just sort of share all that
and put the researchers’ experiences together
with the empirical data.
Doing empirical research on radicalized individuals
is a complex task,
but doing studies on women is even more difficult.
Nevertheless, UNED’s team
managed to conduct the first comparative study
comparing Muslim women imprisoned for jihadist terrorist crimes
and women incarcerated for common crimes.
The interviews carried out in prison with these women
found that one of the key reasons for embracing jihad
was feeling disenchanted with their personal lives and identity.
Similarly, disillusionment and disappointment
with their experience in these extremist groups
was one of the reasons most often given for deciding to leave.
Another issue that is very important
is that, if you’re working on trying to discover a phenomenon
or find out why some people become radicalized,
in this case, why jihadist terrorists become radicalized and join these groups,
you have to compare them with other groups.
You also need to know why there are people
who are also Muslims but not radical,
or why there are people who join a Latin gang
and will do anything for that gang,
why people join criminal organizations and engage in other types of behavior.
There are key differences.
One thing that is peculiar about our research study
is that it’s the first to apply this methodology worldwide,
comparing different groups.
This helps us understand the nature of each group,
and, depending on what you want to investigate,
and what treatment you want to consider,
in the case of a prison,
there are certain factors that might be valuable for one group,
but not for the rest.
Love of king! Love of law!
We wanted to find out, not just what causes fusion,
but also whether there are different causes or reasons
that apply to different groups.
That was the real objective of our research.
To find out, we asked people
to give us three reasons why they would fuse with a group,
and we collected lots of reasons.
We grouped these reasons into four categories:
reasons associated with relational bonds
and the quality of relationships with other people in the group,
feeling bonded with the people in the group,
a sense that we’re working as a team.
The personal needs that the group meets for me.
the need for belonging and personal recognition.
And then there were reasons associated with values
rules, traditions, or objectives that transcend people.
And, lastly, we had shared experiences.
The effects of shocking experiences have been widely studied
like terrorist attacks, for instance,
or natural disasters such as earthquakes.
There are also many studies on the effect of rituals,
entry rituals, or initiation rituals,
or rituals and rites of passage...
And there are also studies on shared experiences
among revolutionary insurgent groups.
All these studies indicate
that shared experiences heighten fusion with the group.
The reason seems to be that these experiences
generate very vivid memories
that are also very long-lasting
and, in many cases, transform your personal identity.
Our results have shown
that personal needs were mentioned a lot more frequently
among people who thought about groups
where they knew each and every one of the people in the group,
what we call local groups.
Personal needs tended to be met by local groups.
However, values were mentioned a lot more often
by people who thought about larger groups, such as a country.
On the other hand, we also found differences
when people talked about groups that they decided to be part of,
like I decide to be part of my group of friends,
compared to groups they had been born into, so-called natural groups,
what we call natural groups that are very difficult to leave,
like our family, for instance.
People who thought about groups they had chosen to belong to
were much more likely to mention reasons
that had to do with relational bonds
and shared experiences.
Among Hooligans, the reasons most often mentioned
were those directly associated with the quality of relationships
and the values they shared with these people.
So, it’s not just that they meet my needs,
or that I personally need to be part of this group,
but rather, that I share things with them that, for me, are transcendental,
things that we share and are important
for this type of people in these types of groups,
where they also take the use of violence one step further,
or sometimes engage in extreme behaviors. That’s why it’s important.
One of the major differences we found,
which we did not know about until now,
is that, with respect to Latin gangs,
the primary bond is with the group itself.
In other words, with the people with whom Latin gang members interact.
Whereas, for jihadists,
the primary bond is with the value or idea.
Although this difference may seem...
almost mundane and unimportant,
it has many implications for potential interventions.
In other words, if you want someone to leave a Latin gang,
you have to focus on those social relations.
If you want someone who is radicalized as a jihadist to leave that behind,
you have to focus on ideas or values.
People are less relevant in that case.
So, one of the first conclusions we reached
based on this practical approach, is just that.
That there are underlying systemic differences
between different radicalized groups.
They’re not all the same and they don’t work the same way.
Therefore, interventions cannot be the same.
During the conflict with the Islamic State in Syria,
a member of the international team
managed to interview terrorists and combatants
in the border area between the two sides.
Given that they all consider Shari’a a sacred value,
and were also deeply fused with their families,
the researcher had subjects imagine a hypothetical situation
where they had to choose between Shari’a and their family.
An analysis of their responses concluded
that those who put Shari’a before their families
were also likely to engage in more extreme behaviors in combat.
These results were published
in the prestigious journal "Nature Human Behaviour,"
drawing attention from international media outlets
such as "The Guardian," "CNN News", and "The Mirror."
I started contacting colleagues from different places
and realized that I had collaborators in over 50 countries on five continents
and that I could collect data on individuals at risk of radicalization,
incarcerated radicals from different groups,
and people who were former members of radical groups.
I put it all together
and saw how it made sense in the framework of our theory
and which variables or factors could help improve the theory.
Over the years, we made the leap into doing field studies.
We’ve conducted field studies in conflict situations,
in Iraq, for example.
We’ve done field studies in Palestine and Morocco.
What’s interesting about our group’s research
is precisely that combination of a much more rigorous methodology,
an experimental methodology carried out in a psychology laboratory
where we can control conditions, and, on the other hand, field studies
that help ensure what we call ecological validity.
People who participate in these types of attacks,
for the most part, have no known psychopathology.
They’re not crazy, even though that’s the explanation
the general public tends to give; we think these people suddenly went crazy.
But the underlying motives
for those events do not lay in psychopathology.
These are ordinary people who are not mentally ill.
But they have been through a series or processes
that explain their extreme willingness to sacrifice themselves,
as they see it, for the good of the group.
As we see it, to harm our group, obviously.
For people who are fused with the group,
whose identity is intimately are attuned with that of the group.
They are attuned to various aspects of the context,
before making the decision
of sacrificing themselves for the group.
There is a perceived need to make that sacrifice
before they make it.
If that sacrifice is not perceived as necessary,
they will not make it.
So, people who are very connected with the group
discriminate between those situations
in which sacrifice will serve the group and those where it won’t.
That is, the sacrifice may be impulsive and quick,
but there’s a certain rationality about it.
I think it has been proven empirically
that religiosity and religion itself
are not the problem.
In other words, Islam itself is not violent.
We’re talking about a religion, a belief, a moral and ethical code,
and a spiritual path shared by 1.8 billion people worldwide.
Islam isn’t the problem. Nor is the religiosity.
In fact, in radicalization processes, one of the factors
that, especially in the European context,
is often protective against recruitment attempts
by jihadist cells
is an in-depth understanding of one’s own religion,
an understanding of Islam.
Because then you know that it’s a spiritual and ethical path.
You know it’s not a political ideology,
much less a violent one like they’re trying to sell you.
You realize what their social status is.
I’m someone who is class-conscious.
I’ve also done research on class bias and I find it very interesting.
You realize that, in prison,
there is a disproportionate number of lower-class people,
compared to their overall share in general society.
And you realize that many of the problems we attribute to personal causes
are in fact due to structural causes,
and that society does not pay as much attention as it should
to these sorts of structural factors.
It’s almost as if we’ve parked these people away in prison
and attributed their behavior exclusively to personal causes,
when, in fact, they were just unfortunate enough to be born
on the wrong side.
From the outside, society
sees that the main objective of prison is to punish people.
It’s basically just removing the prisoner from society.
So, when you go in there,
you’re a bit shocked to see
their suffering.
Because they are people with families, with a background that is not easy.
So, whereas you once assumed
that that person had committed a crime and inflicted irreparable harm,
now you go in there and see that that person
who is capable of doing harm is also suffering.
So, it’s a bit...
It changes the way you see what's in there.
The most important research carried out by this team
is a project consisting of 31 studies carried out in nine countries
with over 10,000 people representing dozens of different nationalities,
including incarcerated jihadists and members of Latin gangs,
refugees and people in internment centers displaced due to the war in Syria,
individuals at risk of radicalization in Morocco, Palestine, and Lebanon,
United States Air Force cadets,
volunteers from countries allied with Ukraine,
and even Ukrainian citizens
forced to fight in the ongoing conflict with Russia.
The aim of this research
was to answer the questions posed by some of the world's major leaders:
How had Ukraine managed to respond
with such a high fighting capacity
to the world’s second largest military power?
They were resigned to accept
that it was impossible to measure fighting capacity.
However, the UNED research team
has published, in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,"
a study that explains the factors that determine
people’s fighting capacity.
The Identity Fusion Theory
the individual’s visceral connection with a group,
value, or leader,
may explain people’s willingness to fight and make extreme sacrifices
in certain contexts.
This “spiritual force” that also generates
absolute confidence in an ideal,
an objective, or a collective achievement,
can be used to predict human behavior in the face of terrible conflicts.
One question we often get is: "What is the point of this?"
One of the main concerns internationally
is how to treat and work with these groups in penitentiaries.
Not just with jihadist terrorist groups,
but also with other collectives that engage in violence at a group level.
Our idea is to collaborate and help these institutions
develop or improve the various programs they’ve implemented
to prevent and treat radicalization
and violence in general,
the tools used to assess the risk of radicalization,
and, above all, to reintegrate and reinsert these people.
As a result of this impressive project,
whose excellent results
have been replicated by international academic and scientific institutions,
UNED’s research team
has received one of the most prestigious research grants in the world:
the ERC Advanced Grant.
The grant will be used to help unravel the mechanisms
that lead to violent radicalization
and the processes necessary to help prevent it
and mitigate its consequences.
But beyond the undeniable scientific progress
made by UNED’s research team,
their ultimate goal
is to contribute to mitigating global conflicts,
promoting peace and security in the world we live in.