People engage in protest activity because of either collective incentives or selective incentives, or a combination of them. Research indicates that people with extreme opinions are more likely to participate in protest activity than are those with more moderate opinions (see e.g., Bäck, Teorell and Westholm 2011) – the question is why? We focus on the potential mechanisms underlying a relationship between “extremism” and protest activity and suggest that if an individual lacks social support for their opinion, perceiving themselves as “extreme”, they should be more likely to be driven to protest by collective incentives to change the status quo. Hence, individuals with little social support should be more inclined to engage in protest activity. However, as participation comes at a social cost, especially when support is low (there is a risk of being criticized and rejected), we believe that social support should interact with a “personality trait”, the individuals’ sensitivity to rejection. That is, if an individual is not afraid to be chastised by others, if they are low in “rejection sensitivity”, and they have extreme opinions, they will engage in protest activity because they want to influence collective outcomes. However, individuals who are afraid of rejection will rather choose not to engage and pay the potential costs, even if they are “extreme”. In addition, we believe that individuals who are rejection sensitive will participate to a higher extent if they have high social support (when they are not “extreme”), as participation may be one way to build social relationships. These hypotheses were confirmed in an online survey experiment on the potential implementation of tuition fees in Sweden. Thus, we suggest that the earlier notion that extremists participate more in protest activities may have to be re-evaluated as position seems to be qualified by an interaction with rejection sensitivity.
