Preventing Violent Extremism in Kenya through Value Complexity: Assessment of Being Kenyan Being Muslim

Abstract

Savage is a social psychologist based in the Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge. For the previous 15 years Sara worked as Senior Research Associate in the Psychology and Religion Research Group at Cambridge, during which she and her colleagues developed a unique intervention to address extremism. Sara continues to develop empirically based interventions to prevent extremism and inter-group violence through programmes that operationalise and measure the construct of Integrative Complexity (Suedfeld 2010), such as Being Muslim Being British, IC in Scotland (I SEE) and Conflict Transformation, published in a number of empirical articles and chapters. The IC model is now being extended to a range of countries, extremisms and inter-group conflicts, supported by continual empirical assessment and training (www.ICTcambridge.org). AbstractBeing Kenyan Being Muslim (BKBM) is an intervention that counters violent extremism and other forms of intergroup conflict through promoting value complexity. BKBM was trialled in Eastleigh, Nairobi, Kenya with a group of twenty-four participants of Kenyan and Somali ethnicities; eight participants were identified as vulnerable to extremism, six of these were former al Shabaab members. This article provides an empirical assessment of the effectiveness of the BKBM course. The new BKBM course follows the structure of the Being Muslim Being British course that exposes participants to the multiplicity of value priorities that influential Muslims embody, and structures group activities that allow participants to explore all value positions on issues central to extremist discourse and relevant to events in Kenya, free from criticism or social pressure. The intervention, a sixteen-contact-hour course using films and group activities that enable participants to problem solve on extremismrelated topics according to a broad array of their own values, was pre and post tested with twenty-four participants (twenty-two of whom completed the full assessments), (mean age 29.6, SD = 6.27). As hypothesized, Integrative Complexity (IC) increased significantly by the end of the course in written verbal data, and there was clear evidence of ability to perceive some validity in different viewpoints (achieving differentiation) in all oral participant presentations at the end of the course.

In Search of the Cognitively Complex Person: Is There a Meaningful Trait Component of Cognitive Complexity?

“…This approach operates on the assumption that these interventions might produce more stable complex thinkers—and our work validates that goal. Other work has similarly shown success in reducing radicalism by specific interventions targeted at increasing cognitive complexity (e.g., Boyd-MacMillan, 2016; Liht & Savage, 2013; Savage et al, 2014), again suggesting the possibility for a more general change in complexity that could be stable over time. Furthermore, given the increasing disparities and polarization during COVID-19, it is increasingly important to focus the influence of cognitive complexity on partisanship in more diverse populations.…”

Psychosocial Prevention Programs against Radicalization and Extremism: A Meta-Analysis of Outcome Evaluations

“…Programs that used a mixed type of prevention and did not exclusively focus on primary, secondary, or tertiary approaches as well as programs with participants from different ethnic backgrounds showed positive effects on attitudes and psychological outcomes. In these mixed programs practitioners from the local communities, at-risk Muslims, and even members of terrorist organizations participated (Boyd-MacMillan, 2016;Liht & Savage, 2013;Savage, 2014). Already Allport (1954) emphasized that intergroup contact leads to a less negative view of the out-group by transforming cognitive representations from a perspective of 'us versus them' towards an understanding of 'we'.…”

“…We also subsumed value complexity and integrative complexity in this category (examined in three studies). The former is the ability to accept and integrate different and even opposing values at once in contrast to value monism (Liht & Savage, 2013), while the latter describes the connection of different viewpoints, with low integrative complexity enhancing potential for conflict (Savage, 2014). Some studies used various outcome measures, which we condensed in one overarching outcome for meta-analytic integration.…”

Practical Guide of Assessment of Disengagement from Jihadist Violent Extremism: Indicators of deradicalization

“…We sense how fundamental it will be to reintroduce an integrative complexity thinking [52,78,79,80], then to work with the radicalized individual on what we call his "perpetrator-victim" position [67]. Helping him to select what falls under his part of responsibility and his part of "victimhood" in his process of radicalization will be essential so that he could be positioned as an actor, rectify his self and others' redefinition, and thus find another type of engagement, compatible to the social contract.…”