Neue globale Studie kommt zu dem Schluss, dass die menschliche Bereitschaft zu Gewalt zwischen Gruppen von zwei unterschiedlichen Beweggründen bestimmt wird: defensivem Extremismus, um eine Gruppe vor Bedrohungen zu schützen, und offensivem Extremismus, um Gruppendominanz und -einfluss auszubauen

>Led by Norwegian researcher Professor Jonas R Kunst and an international team of more than 100 researchers including Flinders University Professor Emma Thomas and Emily Haines, the preregistered study analysed data from 18,128 participants globally.
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>The findings indicate that defensive extremist intentions are consistently more prevalent, showing higher levels of endorsement than offensive intentions in 56 out of the 58 surveyed nations. This suggests a widespread tendency to find protective violence more morally acceptable than violence aimed at conquest.
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>Professor Thomas says: “There is a lot of public speculation about the motives for engagement in violent extremism and it is often spoken about as though it were a single, uniform issue. Yet our findings indicate that the motivation to use violence to defend one’s group is psychologically distinct from the use of violence to exert power over others.
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>“This distinction matters, because these discrete forms of extremism have distinct psychological signatures and therefore call for different forms of prevention and intervention.”
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>The study uncovered that these two forms of extremism appeal to different types of people. Individuals exhibiting high levels of narcissism and a strong tendency to manipulate others demonstrated particularly strong inclinations toward defensive extremism.
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>The researchers suggest that calculating individuals might strategically exploit the perceived legitimacy of violence portrayed as protective. Conversely, people with a strong desire for group dominance and high levels of religious fundamentalism were more strongly linked to offensive extremism.

[The psychology of offensive and defensive intergroup violence: Preregistered insights from 58 countries | PNAS](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2535665123)