ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to articulate what radicalization is, and crucially, what it is not; to outline how psychologists have begun, and continued to, theorize about the radicalization process. Radicalization is the psychological process of becoming willing to engage in harmful and illegal acts in support of a person’s wider ideological belief, and in various guises, and psychologists have identified this process as the solution to why somebody becomes involved in terrorism. The study of radicalization is immense, expanding, and ever increasing in complexity. The cases presented show that there is a lot of support for both the existence of radicalization and that the narratives that individuals use to justify their acts often reflect the core components of radical thinking that have been proposed by psychologists. In the field of terrorism studies there was recently an argument, started by Marc Sageman, about the degree to which the field has “stagnated”.
