The recent rise of the political extremism in Western countries has spurred renewed interest in the psychological and moral appeal of political extremism. Empirical support for the psychological explanation using surveys has been limited by lack of access to extremist groups, while field studies have missed psychological measures and failed to compare extremists with contrast groups. We revisit the debate over the psychological and moral appeal of extremism in the U.S. context by analyzing Twitter data of 10,000 political extremists and comparing their text-based psychological constructs with those of 5000 liberal and 5000 conservative users. The results reveal that extremists show a lower positive emotion and a higher negative emotion than partisan users, but their differences in certainty is not significant. In addition, while left-wing extremists express more language indicative of anxiety than liberals, right-wing extremists express lower anxiety than conservatives. Moreover, our results mostly lend support to Moral Foundations Theory for partisan users and extend it to the political extremists. With the exception of ingroup loyalty, we found evidences supporting the Moral Foundations Theory among left- and right-wing extremists. However, we found no evidence for elevated moral foundations among political extremists.

中文翻译：

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政治极端主义者的心理与道德：来自推特语言和反法主义的Twitter语言分析的证据

西方国家政治极端主义的最近兴起激发了人们对政治极端主义的心理和道德吸引力的重新兴趣。由于缺乏进入极端主义团体的机会，对使用调查进行心理解释的经验支持受到了限制，而实地研究却错过了心理措施并且未能将极端主义者与对比人群进行比较。通过分析10,000名政治极端主义者的Twitter数据，并将他们基于文本的心理构造与5000名自由主义和5000名保守用户的心理构造进行比较，我们回顾了在美国背景下关于极端主义的心理和道德吸引力的辩论。结果表明，极端主义者比游击党使用者表现出更低的积极情绪和更高的消极情绪，但是他们在确定性上的差异并不显着。此外，左翼极端主义者比自由主义者表达更多的表示焦虑的语言，而右翼极端主义者比保守主义者表达的焦虑更低。此外，我们的研究结果主要为游击党使用者提供了道德基础理论的支持，并将其扩展到了政治极端主义者。除了团体内的忠诚度外，我们发现了支持左翼和右翼极端主义者的道德基础理论的证据。但是，我们没有发现政治极端主义者道德基础提高的证据。我们在左翼和右翼极端主义者中发现了支持道德基础理论的证据。但是，我们没有发现政治极端主义者道德基础提高的证据。我们在左翼和右翼极端主义者中发现了支持道德基础理论的证据。但是，我们没有发现政治极端主义者道德基础提高的证据。