ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the role incentive salience plays in irrational wanting, which might contribute to motivational imbalance. It demonstrates how attitudes can contribute to the understanding of extreme behavior. The book analyzes the role that passion, a particularly intense form of motivation, plays in extreme behaviors. It argues that obsessive passion presents motivational imbalance and leads to extreme behaviors whereas harmonious passion does not. The book analyzes how extremism operates at the level of groups and the psychological and social processes that underlie group extremism, understood as willful collective behavior that substantially violates the norms of expected conduct in a given context. It provides an analysis of extremism at the level of cultures. The book also provides a broad perspective on how extremism evolves and what functions it serves.
