Effective exit relationships shift former extremists toward inclusive we-frameworks

Evidence

Alternatively, the most effective transitional relationships were those that helped the participant move away from this pattern of psychological insularity and polarizing boundaries, working more toward tolerance of difference and a “we” framework, rather than a more sharply oppositional stance that cast others as out-groupers (i.e., us against them). — Amy Fisher-Smith, Charles R. Sullivan, John D. Macready, and Geoffrey Manzi, Identity Reconfiguration and the Core…, 630

Categorization

• XREF: Directly speaks to the reader’s question: what actually dissolves the negative-antihero ‘us against them’ identity. — connects to: Accepting relationships with out-group members model new identity structures for exiting extremists. — Amy Fisher-Smith, Charles R. Sullivan, John D. Macready, and Geoffrey Manzi, Identity Reconfiguration and the Core…, 475; Interventions by individual people helped most sampled extremists exit or deradicalize. — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 398; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: Ours, True, and the Identity That Defends Both”

Related

• Accepting relationships with out-group members model new identity structures for exiting extremists. (similarity 0.87)
• Interventions by individual people helped most sampled extremists exit or deradicalize. (similarity 0.82)
• Disengagement from extremism is a recursive process, not a linear one. (similarity 0.81)
• Leaving extremism requires bridging relationships that scaffold a new identity (similarity 0.80)
• A single core need drives both entry into and exit from extremism. (similarity 0.80)
• Attempting to quit extremism can itself escalate a person into a worse group (similarity 0.78)
• A former extremist relapsed identity growth to distancing himself from exit-program support (similarity 0.78)