Extremism poses a considerable risk to many modern societies, and its violent expressions have a strong impact on these societies. Through the years, there have been numerous attempts at understanding why individuals turn to extremism. Recently, an integrative framework called the Significance Quest Theory tried to identify the psychological factors that drive extremism, by
integrating psychological insights with contextual theories. However, at the psychological, intrapersonal level, the theory focuses predominantly on motivational aspects. Based on social exclusion literature and insights from related domains, we have identified potential cognitive and affective factors that may further explain the relationship between significance loss and extremism.
By combining different kinds of literature, we built a three-pronged model on how significance loss can result in a higher susceptibility to extremism through an affective, motivational, and cognitive pathway. To test this model, we focus on the most common source of loss of significance: social exclusion. Through the systematic testing of the proposed model, this project aims to achieve a more
comprehensive and fine-grained insight into the intrapersonal processes after a loss of significance and their relations to extremism. The insights of this project may lead to new directions in terms of prevention and intervention of extremist attitudes and behavior.