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1Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain
2ARTIS International, St. Michaels, MD, United States
3Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States
4Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad de Almería, Almería, Spain
5Department of Theory and Analisys of Comunication, Faculty of Sciences of Information, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
6InReach Global, Centre for Psycho-Social Research & Training, Colombo, Sri Lanka
We distinguish two pathways people may follow when they join violent groups: compliance and internalization. Compliance occurs when individuals are coerced to join by powerful influence agents. Internalization occurs when individuals join due to a perceived convergence between the self and the group. We searched for evidence of each of these pathways in field investigations of former members of two renowned terrorist organizations: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) (Study 1) and Islamist radical groups (Study 2). Results indicated that ex-fighters joined LTTE for reasons associated with both compliance and internalization but that ex-fighters joined Islamist radical groups primarily for reasons associated with internalization. When compliance occurred, it often took the form of coercion within LTTE but involved charismatic persuasion agents within Islamist groups. This evidence of systematic differences in the reasons why fighters enter violent groups suggests that strategies for preventing radicalization and fostering de-radicalization should be tailored to particular groups.