The Cognitive Science of Extremist Ideologies Online
Chloe Perry, Simon DeDeo

TL;DR
This study analyzes how newcomers learn and engage with online extremist ideologies, specifically the Red Pill community on Reddit, revealing the roles of behavioral and explanatory components in sustaining long-term engagement.
Contribution
It introduces a model distinguishing behavioral and explanatory components of ideology, showing how explanations significantly increase user engagement and retention.
Findings
Explanations more than double median engagement duration.
Most sticky explanations relate to status hierarchies.
Large population of tourists leaves quickly, while residents stay longer.
Abstract
Extremist ideologies are finding new homes in online forums. These serve as both places for true believers, and recruiting-grounds for curious newcomers. To understand how newcomers learn ideology online, we study the Reddit archives of a novel sexist ideology known as the "the Red Pill''. Matching a longstanding hypothesis in the social sciences, our methods resolve the ideology into two components: a "behavioral'' dimension, concerned with correcting behavior towards the self and others, and an "explanatory'' dimension, of unifying explanations for the worldview. We then build a model of how newcomers to the group navigate the underlying conceptual structure. This reveals a large population of "tourists'', who leave quickly, and a smaller group of "residents'' who join the group and remain for orders of magnitude longer. Newcomers are attracted by the behavioral component, in the form…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSocial and Intergroup Psychology · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
