Intended Audience
The psychology department welcomes Michael H. Becker as the fourth and final speaker in its 2023-2024 lecture series: The Psychology of Conflict and Peace. He will present "Summoning the Mob: Why People Support Political Violence."
Why do people support the use of political violence? Becker argues that politically salient stress is fundamental to understanding these attitudes, but research is unclear as to how, why, and when. As recent polls show a rising threat of political violence, a more comprehensive understanding of the issue is essential. Integrating psychological and criminological theories, this talk will focus on politically salient stress as an interdisciplinary model that can help explain the emergence of support for political violence and suggest actionable solutions. Specifically, this talk will highlight the role of political elites and salient narratives in increasing support for political violence using data scraped from a far-right community web forum in the period leading into the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Michael H. Becker is a doctoral student in the Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology in the School of Public Affairs at American University. He earned a B.A. in psychology and Spanish studies at University of Minnesota and a M.A. criminology and criminal justice at University of Maryland - College Park. His research interests include the individual and group correlates of support for, and participation in violent extremism, process and outcome measures in P/CVE programming, and theoretical testing. His work has been featured in the European Journal of Criminology, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Criminology & Criminal Justice.
Free and open to the public.
This event may be used to satisfy the Lecture Reflection Requirement in PSYC206 and PSYC493/494.