Measuring extremist archetypes: Scale development and validation

The paper, in plain language

From case files to questionnaire

Norwegian terrorism research — Tore Bjørgo's and Petter Nesser's typologies, built from actual extremists — long insisted that people join violent groups for very different reasons: thrill, belonging, ideology, drift, frustrated recognition. With Milan Obaidi, Simon Skaar and Simon Ozer, I translated that insight into the Extremist Archetypes Scale and validated it across three studies: two American majority samples and a British Muslim minority sample, where the five-factor structure replicated.

Five routes, unequally violent

The archetypes earn their separation. Adventurers — fearless, excitement-seeking — showed the most consistent link to violent intentions, alongside drifters and misfits, whose profiles lean on low honesty-humility and the Dark Triad. Leaders are the interesting exception: ideologically committed, extraverted, dominance-oriented and narcissistic, yet not the profile most drawn to personal violence. Fellow travelers — those who join for belonging — showed no positive link to violent intentions at all, and in one study a negative one.

Why it matters

If extremists differ this much, one-size-fits-all prevention will misfire: what reaches a thrill-seeker will not reach someone seeking community. The scale gives research and practice a way to measure that heterogeneity rather than assume it away. The honest print: associations with violent intentions were modest, the samples came from the general population rather than actual extremists, and whether scores mean exactly the same across majority and minority groups remained inconclusive at the strictest test.