Friction How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us

This accessible book identifies twelve mechanisms of political radicalization that can move individuals, groups, and the massed to increased sympathy and support for political violence. Terrorism is an extreme form of radicalization, and the book describes pathways to terrorism to demonstrate the twelve mechanisms at work. Written by two psychologists who are acknowledged radicalization experts and consultants to the Department of Homeland Security, Friction draws heavily on case histories. The case material is wide-ranging -- drawn from Russia in the late 1800s, the US in the 1970s, and the radical Islam encouraged by the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Taken together, the twelve mechanisms show how unexceptional people are moved to exceptional violence in the conflict between states and non-state challengers. Captivating, and with psychological overtones, this timely book covers one of the most pressing issues of our time.

Clark McCauley is Rachel C. Hale Professor of Sciences and Mathematics and Co-Director of the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970. With Dan Chirot he co-authored Why Not Kill Them All? The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder, published by Princeton University Press in 2006. He is founding editor of the journal Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict: Pathways toward Terrorism and Genocide.

Sophia Moskalenko is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (NC-START) and a consultant with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. Her research and publications have focused on group identification, political activism, radicalization, and terrorism.