The Call of the Wild: How Extremism Happens

Balance and moderation

Humans possess a set of basic needs, some biological in nature (nutrition, rest, hydration) and others psychogenic (autonomy, meaning, control; Fiske, 2010; Maslow, 1943). The very concept of basic needs suggests that most people try to satisfy them. The balanced attempt to satisfy all one’s basic needs defines the state of moderation. The several needs exercise constraints on each other such that behaviors that gratify one need while neglecting or undermining other needs tend to be avoided. For instance, although hunger could be satisfied by consuming any number of foods, some unhealthy and others tasteless, individuals typically avoid eating tasteless or unhealthy substances. Instead, they try to eat foods that are both healthy and tasty (Köpetz et al., 2011). Balance, or moderation, among needs does not imply moderation in the magnitude of needs. Indeed, some people experience their needs more intensively than others do. Yet a motivational balance may exist among several high-level passions, a type of balance described as “harmonious passion” (Vallerand, 2015).

Imbalance and extremism

On occasion, however, the balance gets upset, and one need becomes so dominant that it overrides the others and crowds them out. In such a case, the organism is wholly dominated by that need and “all other needs may become simply non-existent or be pushed into the background” (Maslow, 1943, p. 373). This happens through a goal-shielding process (Shah et al., 2002), whereby a highly salient and important goal cognitively inhibits other goals, decreasing their accessibility and importance. When that happens, the constraints that basic needs exercise on behavior are relaxed. Consequently, actions that have been normally avoided are permitted. For instance, whereas under moderate hunger, one may choose foods that are tasty, yet nutritious and low in calories, under extreme hunger, one may eat whatever becomes available, even if it is unhealthy, tasteless, and disgusting (Köpetz et al., 2011). Or when “insanely” in love, one may sacrifice one’s work, health, and finances to please the object of one’s affection, thus acting in extreme ways most people would avoid (Kruglanski et al., 2020).

Momentary spikes in magnitudes of given needs may occur often, resulting in temporary imbalances wherein important concerns are temporarily put aside in favor of other salient needs. For instance, one may “drop everything” in order to attend to an emergency, suppress or minimize more important overall dietary concerns, and succumb to tempting, yet highly caloric foods. However, people are typically quick to restore their motivational balance. After an emergency is over, one is likely to resume previously disrupted activities; after succumbing to temptation, one returns to the original regimen.

People typically speak of extremism when the motivational imbalance is enduring. As Maslow (1943) noted, an unsatisfied need dominates the whole organism, but it stands out only “if it is extreme enough and chronic [emphasis added] enough” (p. 376). Shorter and weaker states of imbalance are not threatening; to the contrary, they are often essential for making progress toward a goal (one often needs to prioritize one task over others in order to bring it to completion). It is long-lasting addiction to alcohol or drugs (rather than occasional use), long-lasting commitment to violent pursuits (e.g., terrorism), and enduring obsessions with particular activities (e.g., a dangerous sport) that are typically viewed as examples of extremism. Because people generally strive to have all their basic needs gratified, such prolonged obsession is rather rare. Thus, although extremism is the result of regular processes underlying goal prioritization and goal pursuit, it refers to infrequent phenomena whose rarity results from a pronounced intensity or magnitude of their underlying motivation.

Empirical evidence

The mechanisms that enable imbalance manifest themselves in organisms at nearly all levels of the phylogenetic spectrum. For instance, fruit flies tolerate a higher concentration of bitter (and potentially toxic) contaminants in food as they get hungrier. Their “concern” for taste seems to decline the greater their concern for nutrition as such. At the brain level, the mechanism for this change is that taste neurons become more sensitive to sweet-tasting substances and less sensitive to bitter tastes (Inagaki et al., 2014).

In mice, neurons activated during male-male aggressive encounters are suppressed in the presence of females and during copulation (Lin et al., 2011), which suggests that when mating or courtship becomes a predominant concern, the importance of other needs, such as self-defense (against possible aggressors), declines.

Drug addicts experience pathological “wanting” coupled with reduced pleasure from activities that were pleasurable earlier on (Robinson & Berridge, 2004). In the realm of close relations, Maner and colleagues (2009) showed that when participants had a salient goal to maintain a long-term relationship, their attention to other highly attractive individuals was reduced.

Need arousal

Arousal of a given need results in the channeling of one’s resources toward its satisfaction. As a consequence, resources are withdrawn from alternative needs, and a systemic disequilibrium is created. The dominant need is, by definition, the most motivationally relevant. Thus, it has the highest accessibility and inhibits other needs (Eitam & Higgins, 2010; Shah et al., 2002). In turn, behaviors that would not be acceptable otherwise may be permitted.

Needs may be aroused through deprivation or incentivization (see Hull, 1943; Spence, 1956). Deprivation lowers the need state to below the satisfactory range, whereas incentivization offers an opportunity to increase satisfaction within that range. Humiliation may create a state of esteem deprivation and evoke the motivation to restore esteem to a satisfactory level. By contrast, an opportunity to do something of supreme social value (e.g., save a child’s life) presents an incentive that may motivate action intended to boost one’s self-esteem above its current level (Kruglanski et al., 2013, 2018).

Need abatement

A need’s magnitude may abate for biological reasons (e.g., the sex drive is known to subside with age; Araujo et al., 2004) or situational ones, when the expectancy of its satisfaction falls below a threshold (see Kruglanski et al., 2014). When a need wanes, the constraints it exercises over behavior are reduced, and resources may be disproportionately channeled into satisfaction of a different need. This should increase the likelihood of behaviors that would be prohibited otherwise. For instance, Lalande et al. (2017) demonstrated that low levels of need satisfaction in other life domains predicted obsessive engagement in an activity participants were passionate about. When the salience of one’s need for relatedness is reduced (e.g., because of seclusion and unavailability of interaction partners), one might “throw oneself” into work with abandon, thus exhibiting workaholism (e.g., Scott et al., 1997). And if (as a consequence of ideological “brainwashing”) one no longer cared about one’s physical survival, one might be more inclined to volunteer for a suicidal mission (Kruglanski et al., 2013).

Cognitive consequences

Enduring motivational imbalance promotes a pronounced rumination about the object (or objects) of one’s desire. For instance, in cases of obsessive love, people may muse about their love object up to 85% or 100% of their waking hours (Tennov, 1979). High degrees of motivational imbalance are also associated with ruminative thoughts across other content domains of passion, such as soccer fanship, work, or gambling (e.g., Vallerand, 2015).

Affective consequences

In a state of motivational imbalance, individuals put all their resources into a single motivational concern. This “all eggs in one basket” state makes them highly emotionally dependent on gratification of their dominant motivation. Its satisfaction engenders, therefore, a highly positive affect, and its frustration, a highly negative one. The self-complexity model (Linville, 1985) suggests that people lower in self-complexity, whose self-worth depends on the satisfaction of fewer, less distinct goals, are susceptible to greater swings in affect in response to success and failure. Extreme swings of affect in extreme dieters is one of the diagnostic criteria for anorexia and bulimia nervosa (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

Obsessively (hence, motivationally imbalanced) passionate recreational golfers have been found to exhibit particularly high levels of positive affect after success in their golf game and high levels of negative affect after failure (Verner-Filion et al., 2018). The life happiness of workaholics depends primarily on how satisfied they are with their work (Ng et al., 2007).

Individuals in intense romantic love report a “rush” of exhilaration (akin to a drug “high”) when they see or merely think of their beloved (Fisher et al., 2006). When their love is unfulfilled or unrequited, however, they may experience great suffering and despair.

Behavioral consequences

Perhaps the most important consequence of motivational imbalance is the legitimation of behaviors that greatly undermine other basic needs. For instance, extreme dieting often involves unhealthy and potentially dangerous methods, such as skipping meals, throwing away food to avoid gaining weight, or taking up smoking to avoid eating (Daee et al., 2002).

Practitioners of the extreme sport known as BASE (buildings, antennae, span, earth) jumping do not utilize safety devices, such as warning technology and a second parachute. They leap from cliffs, bridges, or buildings that often stand only a few hundred feet above the ground, which gives them little or no chance of surviving should anything go wrong.

Self-sacrifice for a religious cause is recommended by some devout orders as a path to the virtuous life that lends one worth and significance. The Missionaries of Charity organization followed Mother Teresa’s rule of “giving until it hurts” (Chawla, 1992, p. 171).

When experiencing obsessive love, people are ready to sacrifice all for the idolized other; they may reorder their daily priorities and change their clothing, mannerisms, habits, or values to become appealing and available to the target of their affection (Carbonneau & Vallerand, 2013).

Whether the extreme behavior takes a prosocial or an antisocial form (e.g., a virtuous life of surrender and giving vs. volunteering for a suicidal mission as a means to self-worth) depends on “evidence” of the instrumentality of the specific behavior to the dominant need. Such evidence is often articulated in narratives to which one is exposed (e.g., the propaganda of a terrorist organization) and that are supported by shared reality (Higgins, 2019) of one’s reference group, a network of significant others whose opinion one reveres (Kruglanski, Bélanger, & Gunaratna, 2019; Kruglanski, Webber, & Koehler, 2019).