Significance loss as the rhetoric of extreme ideologies: Evidence from the political and the terroristic context
Drawing on the Significance Quest Theory (Kruglanski et al., 2022), we used the Honor Dictionary (Gelfand et al., 2015) in a word frequency textual analysis (Pennebaker et al., 2007) to investigate extreme rhetoric. We thus conducted two studies. The first, investigating the political context, compa...
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2025-01-01
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| Series: | Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology |
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| author | Gabriele Di Cicco Federico Contu Laura Prislei Michele J. Gelfand Arie W. Kruglanski Erica Molinario |
| author_facet | Gabriele Di Cicco Federico Contu Laura Prislei Michele J. Gelfand Arie W. Kruglanski Erica Molinario |
| author_sort | Gabriele Di Cicco |
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| description | Drawing on the Significance Quest Theory (Kruglanski et al., 2022), we used the Honor Dictionary (Gelfand et al., 2015) in a word frequency textual analysis (Pennebaker et al., 2007) to investigate extreme rhetoric. We thus conducted two studies. The first, investigating the political context, compared speeches of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1918–1945, N = 284) with those of democratic Presidents of the Italian Republic (1949–2006, N = 901). The second, focused on lone-actors terrorists, examined texts from the Extremist Manifesto Database (EMD, Grigoryan et al., 2023) and compared writings by terrorists driven by political ideologies (left & right-wing, ethno-nationalists, and anti-government, N = 65) with those of terrorists motivated by religious ideologies (N = 23). Notably, we hypothesized and found that, compared to democratic rhetoric, fascist rhetoric contained (a) more words expressing feelings of lost honor and (b) fewer words reflecting gaining honor. Moreover, as expected, we found that lone-actor religious terrorists' rhetoric, compared to lone-actor political terrorists, contained more words expressing feelings of lost honor and fewer words expressing honor gain. Notably, this is the first research to use the Honor Dictionary to linguistically measure the activation of the need for significance, demonstrating a strong correlation with the endorsement of extreme ideologies. Further, our research supports the hypothesis that extreme rhetoric reflects–and aims to induce–significance loss feelings. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-577cfaf6ef624a89a088fa6b9035c952 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2666-6227 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
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| series | Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology |
| spelling | doaj-art-577cfaf6ef624a89a088fa6b9035c9522025-08-20T02:37:09ZengElsevierCurrent Research in Ecological and Social Psychology2666-62272025-01-01810022510.1016/j.cresp.2025.100225Significance loss as the rhetoric of extreme ideologies: Evidence from the political and the terroristic contextGabriele Di Cicco0Federico Contu1Laura Prislei2Michele J. Gelfand3Arie W. Kruglanski4Erica Molinario5Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, ul. Ingardena 6, 30-06, Kraków, Poland; Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202, USA; Corresponding authors at: Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Ingardena 6, Kraków 30-060, Poland.Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, ul. Ingardena 6, 30-06, Kraków, Poland; UniSR-Social.Lab, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Centro Direzionale Milano 2, Palazzo Cellini, 20054, Milan, ItalyDepartment of Social and Developmental Psychology, “La Sapienza” University of Rome, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, ItalyStanford Graduate School of Business and Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USADepartment of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USAInstitute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, ul. Ingardena 6, 30-06, Kraków, Poland; Department of Psychology, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL 33965, USA; Corresponding authors at: Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Ingardena 6, Kraków 30-060, Poland.Drawing on the Significance Quest Theory (Kruglanski et al., 2022), we used the Honor Dictionary (Gelfand et al., 2015) in a word frequency textual analysis (Pennebaker et al., 2007) to investigate extreme rhetoric. We thus conducted two studies. The first, investigating the political context, compared speeches of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1918–1945, N = 284) with those of democratic Presidents of the Italian Republic (1949–2006, N = 901). The second, focused on lone-actors terrorists, examined texts from the Extremist Manifesto Database (EMD, Grigoryan et al., 2023) and compared writings by terrorists driven by political ideologies (left & right-wing, ethno-nationalists, and anti-government, N = 65) with those of terrorists motivated by religious ideologies (N = 23). Notably, we hypothesized and found that, compared to democratic rhetoric, fascist rhetoric contained (a) more words expressing feelings of lost honor and (b) fewer words reflecting gaining honor. Moreover, as expected, we found that lone-actor religious terrorists' rhetoric, compared to lone-actor political terrorists, contained more words expressing feelings of lost honor and fewer words expressing honor gain. Notably, this is the first research to use the Honor Dictionary to linguistically measure the activation of the need for significance, demonstrating a strong correlation with the endorsement of extreme ideologies. Further, our research supports the hypothesis that extreme rhetoric reflects–and aims to induce–significance loss feelings.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666622725000127HonorSignificance lossExtremismText analysis |
| spellingShingle | Gabriele Di Cicco Federico Contu Laura Prislei Michele J. Gelfand Arie W. Kruglanski Erica Molinario Significance loss as the rhetoric of extreme ideologies: Evidence from the political and the terroristic context Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology Honor Significance loss Extremism Text analysis |
| title | Significance loss as the rhetoric of extreme ideologies: Evidence from the political and the terroristic context |
| title_full | Significance loss as the rhetoric of extreme ideologies: Evidence from the political and the terroristic context |
| title_fullStr | Significance loss as the rhetoric of extreme ideologies: Evidence from the political and the terroristic context |
| title_full_unstemmed | Significance loss as the rhetoric of extreme ideologies: Evidence from the political and the terroristic context |
| title_short | Significance loss as the rhetoric of extreme ideologies: Evidence from the political and the terroristic context |
| title_sort | significance loss as the rhetoric of extreme ideologies evidence from the political and the terroristic context |
| topic | Honor Significance loss Extremism Text analysis |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666622725000127 |
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