ABOUT

Ángel Gómez

“I am a full professor of Social Psychology at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED, in Madrid, Spain, and Senior Fellow at ARTIS International.

My main research goal is to understand the underlying mechanisms leading to violent radicalization, de-radicalization, and disengagement. More specifically, I am interested in the processes that motivate extreme self-sacrifices for a group and/or for a cause, and the procedures to avoid their emergence and to eliminate or reduce their negative consequences.

I have co-originated psychosocial theories to comprehend these phenomena, such as Identity Fusion Theory, the Model of the Devoted Actor, or the Model of Envisioned Spiritual Formidability (inner strength, and convictions).

I trust in the relevance of developing theoretical models and the importance of combining theories, designs, and methods. I fight for the application of this way of working by combining online controlled cross-sectional and experimental studies with participants from scenarios that represent a natural laboratory, as terrorists and fighters in real-world settings, militaries, individuals under risk of radicalization, terrorists (and others who consider themselves as members of an armed conflict) and members of Latino-gangs and delinquent groups in prisons, or former terrorists, among others.”