Speaking of Psychology · American Psychological Association

What drives people to extremism? With Arie Kruglanski, PhD, and Sophia Moskalenko, PhD

·39 min·3 clips

How extreme hunger drove survivors to eat human flesh, revealing the psychology behind all extremism.

1. Speaking of Psychology, the APA's flagship podcast, hosts Dr. Arie Kruglanski and Dr. Sophia Moskalenko to discuss their book 'The Psychology of the Extreme.' 2. Dr. Arie Kruglanski is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, co-director of NCCI, author of over 400 academic works, and winner of APA's 2025 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions; Dr. Sophia Moskalenko is a research fellow at Georgia State and a program management specialist at the UN Office of Counterterrorism's Behavioral Insights Hub. 3. The episode's core thesis is that extremism is a biologically built-in psychological mechanism — motivational imbalance — rather than a pathology or ideology, and that all humans possess the capacity for it. 4. Extremism is defined as a state where one basic need becomes so dominant it removes the constraints normally imposed by all other needs — Kruglanski illustrates this with the 1972 Andes plane crash survivors who ate human flesh when extreme hunger overrode every other constraint. 5. Moskalenko explains that the extremism mechanism evolved for life-or-death survival situations, but has been co-opted by social media and news organizations that use crisis framing and existential narratives to harvest attention and engagement. 6. The book opens with a comparison of Gandhi and Osama bin Laden — both shy children from prominent families with anti-colonial motivations who first expressed extremism through dietary changes in their late teens. 7. Gandhi's first extremist act was maintaining his vegetarian vow while studying in London — genuinely difficult in that era — while bin Laden began fasting two days a week like the Prophet at approximately 16, then pressuring family members to follow. 8. Both Gandhi and bin Laden progressively changed their dress to signal their commitments, then strained and eventually broke existing social relationships, and both arrived at periods of serious isolation that defined their historic choices. 9. Kruglanski adds that far more people have imitated bin Laden than Gandhi because violent assertion of dominance is a more 'primordial' route to significance than Gandhi's passive resistance — and both were eventually assassinated for their ideologies. 10. On the question of extremism and mental illness, Moskalenko distinguishes them by etiology rather than manifestation: both involve fixation, but in OCD or autism the mechanism is different from the social-significance-seeking that drives extremism. 11. Social media is identified as a driver of increased global extremism via two mechanisms: the mere exposure effect (people run faster when observed, so the audience of billions intensifies performance) and algorithmic prioritization of shocking content. 12. COVID-19 is identified as a major global extremism amplifier, framing the crisis as existential and producing waves of political extremism — Black Lives Matter protests, January 6, and populist movements gaining power internationally. 13. On whether extremism is left or right, Kruglanski notes it has historically taken both forms — left-wing communism and right-wing fascism — and that the ideology is merely a vessel for the need to matter and be significant. 14. Conspiracy theories like QAnon are described as viruses that exist in the cultural air at all times, only taking hold when the social immune system is weakened — every specific claim in QAnon has appeared before in history, including blood libel and flat earth. 15. The practical red flag for someone radicalizing is social withdrawal and circle change — the person has already expressed extremist views that strained existing relationships and is now isolated, with only other extremists willing to meet their demands. 16. The research-backed intervention is not counter-argument but sustained human-level presence — understanding what sense of existential crisis is driving the behavior and being genuinely and constantly present. 17. Kruglanski reports that a 17-nation study by his team found that extremism is robustly negatively correlated with wellbeing — extremists suppress social needs, family connection, and relatedness, and 'at the end of the day, the extremists are not happy campers.' 18. Both researchers note that extremism is not required for great achievement — Einstein, Picasso, and Marie Curie are cited as examples of balance — and that extremism more often harms the practitioner than advances a cause. 19. Their next book, 'To Matter, to Marvel,' will address the balance between the human need for significance and mattering versus the opposite psychology of admiring something greater than oneself. 20. Best suited for listeners interested in political psychology, radicalization prevention, or the psychology of motivation and commitment; less suited to those seeking clinical therapy content or self-help frameworks.

As heard by us

A careful psychology conversation about extremism, significance, and why fixation is not the same thing as mental illness.

Extremism is framed here less as a fringe pathology than as a capacity built into ordinary psychology. Kim Mills talks with Arie Kruglanski and Sophia Moskalenko about the drive for significance, the need to matter, and how that need can tip into militancy, dominance, or rigid…

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What it means to be an extremist, and how extreme behavior can be both constructive and destructive.

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