Resentment, (mis)perceptions of ingroup and outgroup beliefs, prejudice and support for radical behavior

According to many experts, intra-European radical beliefs have their roots in group-based feelings of insecurity, discrimination, deprivation, unfairness, injustice, and perceived threat. We propose to look at the question of radicalization from a perspective of group membership. If radicalization is a product of group membership, investigating the (mis)perceptions that groups have about each other’s values, worldviews and intergroup intentions becomes crucial. Indeed, people interpret their social context (i.e., relationships between groups, or intergroup relations) in terms of 'us' versus 'them': what is the current social norm in my group, and what does the other group think about my group? These (meta-)perceptions are often negative and inaccurate, causing fundamental and seemingly unbridgeable misunderstandings within and between groups. In this paper, we first study the concordance and divergence between three perspectives: own attitudes about the outgroup, ingroup attributed beliefs (what I think my ingroup thinks about my outgroup), and outgroup attributed beliefs or meta-perceptions (what I think my outgroup thinks about my ingroup). We empirically investigate how grievances and feelings of resentment translate in (biased) attributed beliefs and (mis)perceptions between group, and how perceptions of ingroup-outgroup polarization manifest. Second, we scrutinize how these three perspectives may crystalize in negative intergroup attitudes, prejudice and support for radical behavior. We have recent data from a large random probability sample in Belgium (Belgian National Election Study 2021, N = 1500) to study these questions, while taking into account potential geospatial variation in attributed beliefs. Preliminary results point out that the tendency to follow one’s own beliefs, regardless of the position of the outgroup, defines negative intergroup attitudes and support for violence in protest activities against the building of a mosque. At the same time, it is the ingroup that plays a role, not the outgroup if one wants to show the influence of attributed norms.