How to calm political violence, according to psychologists

With an increasing number of politically motivated violent acts directed toward local and national officials, uniformed officers, activists, and citizens, the United States is once again confronting a wave of troubling unrest. Political violence exacts a heavy toll on the collective health of societies, instilling fear and undermining trust in democratic institutions (Sousa, C. A., Medicine, Conflict, and Survival, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2013opens in new window). Psychologists caution, however, that the threat, while serious, is often misunderstood. Despite intense political polarization, most Americans reject political violence, regardless of what party they belong to.

Research indicates that when surveys ask if specific acts of political violence are acceptable, support is minuscule, ranging between 2.9% and 6.9% (Westwood, S. J., et al., PNAS, Vol. 119, No. 12, 2022opens in new window). Recent polling supports this. A September 2025 report from the Polarization Research Labopens in new window found that only 1% of Americans support partisan murder, while 93% to 97% view political violence as a major problem across party lines. Similarly, an October 2025 Marquette Law School pollopens in new window revealed that 89% of respondents agreed political violence is “always unjustified.”

Researchers have also found that Americans significantly overestimate how much political violence their partisan opponents support by as much as 245% to 442% (Mernyk, J. S., et al., PNAS, Vol. 119, No. 16, 2022opens in new window). However, when Americans were shown accurate data about how little their opponents condoned violence, their support and willingness to engage in political violence dropped by up to 44%, with effects lasting for about a month. Social media and sensational coverage may fuel the perception that support for political violence is widespread.

“Algorithms prioritize comments showing negative and outgroup animosity. Those things tend to go viral and can shape people’s perceptions about what’s common or not,” said Diego Reinero, PhD, a social psychologist and MindCORE postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I think a lot of people get the sense that people are just so polarized that they are willing to go to extreme ends. The data suggests that it’s still pretty uncommon for people to support political violence,” said Reinero.

In 2026, researchers will continue investigating what drives some individuals past the tipping point and how to prevent such senseless acts of violence.

For starters, it’s helpful to put today’s violence in historical context. Political violence—including domestic terrorism and targeted violence—has long shaped U.S. history, according to Thomas Zeitzoff, PhD, an associate professor at American University in Washington, D.C., whose research focuses on political violence and political psychology. From the bloody post-Reconstruction period to anarchist bombings in the 1920s and ’30s, the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War, and the growth of right-wing extremist violence during the ’80s and ’90s to the present day.

While today’s level of political violence may not be unprecedented, Zeitzoff notes a troubling shift—the alarming messaging from elected officials at the highest levels that demonizes opponents and undermines democratic norms.

“I’ve done research in places like Turkey, Israel, and Ukraine, where similar rhetoric slipped into political violence, coup attempts, and other things,” said Zeitzoff. “Maybe we are seeing an uptick in political violence here. We don’t yet have enough data to really describe it, but I would say the rhetoric from party leaders is very concerning. That it’s not just that ‘we disagree with our opponents,’ it’s that ‘they can never hold power again.’ That is dangerous.”

When talking about violence committed by private citizens acting alone or as part of a mob, motivating factors include personality traits such as victimhood, feeling angry at a perceived injustice, feeling a lack of self-efficacy, a lack of faith in democratic institutions, a lack of social belonging, as well as having mental health vulnerabilities that make them easily manipulated by misinformation, according to Reinero. However, it is difficult to identify a single, predictive profile for individuals who have or may commit political violence, he added.

While there is no single profile, there are some commonalities among those who cross the threshold from radicalization into violence, according to John Horgan, PhD, an applied psychologist who directs the Violent Extremism Research Group at Georgia State University. He describes them as “action oriented,” motivated to “make a change in their world,” and “driven by a sense of moral outrage at some injustice that has happened to them, to the community to which they belong, or a community that’s several thousand miles away to which they express some allegiance or feel some kinship with.”

Beyond the individuals themselves, the widespread availability of firearms in the United States—which has the highest per capita gun ownership rate in the worldopens in new window—is also a significant contributor, said Reinero. This includes access to high-powered assault weapons, which only escalate the potential severity of violent acts. “Weapons to carry out violence are all too readily available.” Reinero said.

Often, the motivations of violent actors defy simplistic ideological explanations. “It maybe says more about our politics that people are jumping to explain, without all the evidence or the facts in, what drove somebody [to violence],” said Zeitzoff. “There is an apt metaphor for some of these lone wolf extremists. They don’t have a clear, necessarily ideological bent. Some people call them ‘salad bar extremists,’ because they take a little from here and a little from there.”

B. Heidi Ellis, PhD, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, researches the risk and resilience factors that influence pathways toward violent extremism. Discussing unpublished data from a recent study, Ellis said, “The data came back all over the map. We had people who were endorsing items from both sides or saying they would support left-wing violence, but then endorsing a right-wing issue. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense.” Instead, they found that when they looked at different general justifications of violence, distinct subgroups were identifiable, with each justifying violence for different reasons, such as defense of oneself or one’s family in response to injustices or oppression (Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism & Political Aggression, 2025opens in new window).

Sophia Moskalenko, PhD, a research fellow at Georgia State University, highlighted multiple pathways to extremism, including personal grievances, a quest for status or infamy, and a desire to feel more closely identified with a group that they feel needs protection.

“There is definitely a vulnerability among individuals who are marginalized, alienated, rejected, left behind, or misunderstood by society,” Moskalenko said. “Often that goes hand in hand with some sort of mental health issue, whether it’s substance abuse, some schizotypal disconnect from reality, or PTSD in somebody who’s lived through trauma. That’s not to say that mental health is a cause. It just makes a person especially vulnerable to getting over that threshold from just contemplating ideas to actually acting violently on them.”

Deep social alienation, combined with the amplification of online narratives about perceived enemies or impending societal collapse, also plays a factor. As social beings, humans long for connection at a fundamental level. When individuals feel their social identity is threatened or destabilized, it may trigger a drive to restore that connection, sometimes through extreme means. “When we’re denied that connection, it feels like an existential threat,” Moskalenko added. “Extremism is going to blossom to the degree that we feel threatened and alone.”

Recent research indicates that “trait victimhood”—a tendency to perceive oneself as a victim—is a significant predictor of support for and engagement in political violence. An analysis of the results of three studies found that individuals with high levels of trait victimhood were more likely to endorse violence, particularly if they were seeking meaning in life or perceived their group as victimized (Hameiri, B., et al., Psychology of Violence, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2024opens in new window).

Group behavior is a powerful driver in mob-based political violence. Research shows that when new group norms emerge within a crowd, they can override long-standing social norms that discourage violence and aggression. For example, during the Jan. 6 insurrection, many rioters viewed violence against Capitol Hill police as justified in defense of a newly adopted norm—stopping what they believed to be a stolen election (Samuelson, C. D., Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2022). Researchers are examining psychological theories related to group polarization and emotional contagion to better understand how group behavior can escalate to political violence (Hinsz, V. B., & Jackson, J. W., Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2022).

The involvement of law enforcement officers at protests has at times led to political violence toward protesters. Officers are influenced by both psychological and institutional factors. For example, research indicates that some officers may dehumanize protesters, especially when protesters directly challenge officers’ authority (Zlobina, A., & Andujar, R., Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2021). This makes it easier to feel less empathy toward protesters and to justify violent actions. In some cases, officers may also dehumanize themselves, viewing their roles as emotionless enforcers, which further distances them from protesters. In addition, institutional norms that focus on control and compliance may lead law enforcement to view protests as threats to public safety instead of part of the democratic process (Maguire, E. R., The Role of the U.S. Government in the Law Enforcement Response to Protests, Niskanen Center, 2022opens in new window).

Researchers are exploring a range of strategies to prevent and reduce support for political violence. Some target personal traits. For example, Hameiri and colleagues’ research on trait victimhood suggests deradicalization programs may be effective when they work to specifically address this mindset. Other approaches target sensation seeking, which links people’s search for meaning to supporting extreme behaviors like political violence. One study successfully tested two interventions to interrupt this dynamic (Schumpe, B. M., et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 118, No. 4, 2020opens in new window). The first reduced people’s search for meaning by encouraging them to reflect on their personal, significance-providing legacy, and the other provided an exciting alternative group to satisfy their needs for sensations without violence.

Researchers have also developed threat-assessment tools that look at behavioral warning signals of attack preparation. These behaviors include seeking training, acquiring weapons, and overtly expressing extremist ideology. A recent study of two threat assessment tools indicated that they may be capable of identifying individuals who are planning violent terrorist acts with high accuracy (Bastiaens, A., et al., Terrorism and Political Violence, 2025opens in new window).

Horgan’s prevention work has pivoted from the idea of profiling or targeting a specific type of perpetrator of political violence to focus on “behavioral leakage.” Horgan and colleagues found that approximately two-thirds of lone wolf terrorists would often freely leak their intent to friends, family, and coworkers (Across the Universe? A Comparative Analysis of Violent Behavior and Radicalization Across Three Offender Types with Implications for Criminal Justice Training and Education, U.S. Department of Justice, 2016opens in new window). Horgan and his team shifted their focus from trying to pinpoint terrorists themselves to getting those in their social circle to report them.

Horgan had been working with the nonprofit Parents for Peace to develop a text-based hotline that would allow anonymous and safe reporting until federal funding cuts to the Department of Homeland Security eliminated the program last year.

Horgan is now working on a similar project, funded by the Atlanta Regional Commission, to prevent school shootings where such behavioral leakage occurs to an even greater degree. He and his team are helping teachers, administrators, and school resource officers in Georgia to create student awareness of the signs someone might be mobilizing to commit violence. “We’re using the power of storytelling, and recent cases where all these patterns have emerged, to make schools realize it is within their capacity to see this problem coming,” Horgan said. They are also helping to facilitate safe pathways for students to report suspicious behavior.

Ellis and her team are using a community-wide public health approach to prevent hate-motivated violence. Drawing on findings from a 3-year project funded by the National Institute of Justice, they examined how grievances and adversities such as trauma and discrimination may drive support for violence, particularly in the context of psychological factors such as problematic internet use.

They identified five primary community tasks that work to alleviate risk as part of the Strong Communities program: improving emotional wellness, fostering cognitive flexibility, building fairness and justice, reducing problematic internet use, and increasing belonging without othering (Toward a National Framework for Primary Prevention of Hate-Motivated Violence, unpublished report, 2025).

As mass political protests continue nationwide, government responses play a pivotal role in calming or intensifying political strife. When authorities rely on heavy-handed, militarized, or violent policing, they may only fuel dissent and escalate violent protests. A 2025 report by the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST) pointed out that “tyrannical peace”—when the government manages dissent through force—may actually backfire and reinforce long-term grievances and continued protest (Peterscheck, A., et al., Individual-Level Perspectives on Mobilisation, Protest, and Radicalisation: A Rapid Evidence Assessment, CREST, 2025opens in new window).

In contrast, deescalation strategies like procedural justice, fair treatment, and avoiding violent policing can help mitigate tensions and reduce violent resistance. Experts advise that law enforcement focus only on individuals whose illegal behavior endangers public safety while allowing peaceful protest by other crowd members to continue (Maguire, E. R., Saint Louis University Public Law Review, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2015opens in new window).

While political polarization is not going anywhere for the time being, experts emphasize the value of societal rejection of political violence in favor of a recommitment to democratic values. “Democracy is a system where parties can lose elections, where we settle disputes at the ballot box and not at the end of a barrel of a gun,” said Zeitzoff.