Citation

Pauwels LJR, Svensson R. Crime Delinq. 2017; 63(8): 1000-1016.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0011128716687757

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The present research note studies the interaction between the ability to exercise self-control and extremist moral beliefs with regard to the explanation of violent extremism. Although some evidence exists for the interaction between moral beliefs and self-control in the explanation of adolescent offending, no previous study has studied this interaction effect in a survey of young adults and with regard to politically or religiously motivated violence. This study therefore extends the existing literature by testing a key proposition of Situational Action Theory. We use a large-scale web survey of young adults in Belgium. The results support the hypothesis that the effect of the ability to exercise self-control is conditional upon one's extremist beliefs. The results are stable across extremism-specific measures of extremist beliefs.

Language: en