Today, the world is experiencing a wave of violent protests, and in-particular right-wing and Islamist extremism have proved to be challenging for many societies. In the article Developmental Predictors of Violent Extremist Attitudes – A test of General Strain , Nivette et al. (2017) discusses two criminological theories, namely neutralization theories, and the strain theories. The strain theories assert that specific stressors are responsible for increasing the likelihood of an individual committing a crime (Nivette et al., 2017) . Such stressors lead to the development of negative emotions such as anger and crime becomes a possible response for corrective action. Neutralization theories argue that when criminals commit acts of violence that go against their belief systems, they must find ways in which they can neutralize their guilt and thus protect their image and self-worth when they participate in deviant behavior. According to the article, Nivette et al. (2017) was studying the effects of these criminological theories on how juveniles find a way for justifying their acts of violence when exposed to stressors in the society such as conflict, anger, and frustration (Nivette et al., 2017) . The acts of extreme violence act as a response for them to either reduce the strain or alleviate negative emotions.
Violent extremist attitudes is the type of behavior that was being investigated by the author (Nivette et al., 2017). These types of behaviors are responsible for condoning acts of violence by individuals as a way of achieving their collective goals on behalf of ethnic, religious, and political groups and in return oppose the need for a more lenient and inclusive society (Kunst & Obaidi, 2020) . This has created two different but interrelated challenges in contemporary societies – the upsurge of violent extremism and how it has propagated across borders, making its management increasingly diverse and in multi-cultural societies (Kunst & Obaidi, 2020) . Over the past decade, the international community has been working endlessly to develop effective measures and policies that can be used to prevent acts of terrorism as well as counter violent extremism. Donor countries, together with multi-cultural organizations, are jointly working with developing countries that have been thought to be vulnerable to terrorist sympathies and radicalization, recruitment of support.
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Stratified random sampling technique is the quantitative research method that was used by Nivette to study the data from fifty-six primary schools in Zurich city. The stratified random technique was used by the researchers dividing the students into subgroups based on their ages and conducting interviews in seven waves. After conducting the interviews, based on the participants' age, the researchers were able to draw a sample for each subgroup that represented a small proportion of the overall sample size that was being studied. In this case, waves 5, 6 and 7 were used by the researchers as their strata and based on how well the trait of violent extremism was divided based on the sample (Kiriakidis, 2016) . For stratified sampling to be used, participating youths under the age of 12 were not legally old enough to give consent, and maybe their parents did not consent to their participation in the study. Therefore, the researchers had to use waves 5, 6, and 7 to make sure that their sample size had the same proportions of the required age from each school as the overall population of the children from the 56 primary schools in Zurich city. Another method for quantitative research that was used by the researchers was through interviews. A structured interview with a fixed set of questions was used by the researchers to measure the extent of violent extremist attitudes from each participant.
The study found that stressors played a vital role in the researchers understanding the causes of terrorism and violent extremism in adolescents (Nivette et al., 2017) . From the study, stressors were found to inflict negative emotions of anger, resentment and disappointment in young adults which led them to indulge in acts of violent extremism and terrorism (DeLisi et al., 2013) . The development of negative emotions in adolescents encouraged them to seek corrective actions against the source of the strain. The study also found that children whose parents were from countries that were exposed to social, economic, and political stressors had higher chances of supporting violent extremism. The results from the study also revealed that individuals who associated themselves with violent extremism and terrorist acts had low moral and legal constraints (Nivette et al., 2017) . Hence, this gave them the go-ahead to indulge violence to achieve ideological, social, and political gains. Through self-talk and self-justification, the offender disregards the principles of law, creates a series of conflicting thoughts in his or her mind that eventually become beliefs or justifications for them commit and repeat the offence (DeLisi et al., 2013) . Therefore, this can be translated or be equated to the concept of MD mechanisms where extremist behaviors and attitudes are transformed psychologically that they are no longer viewed as negative qualities by the perpetrators that previously deterred them from committing acts of violence
The first criteria that were used in analyzing the credibility of the sources used in this assignment were how relevant they were to this project. For example, Kunst and Obaidi (2020) reiterated the concept of strain theories through the role played by relative deprivation in promoting violent extremism in world societies. The three sources provide pertinent information based on the author's ideas and research question that when individuals are exposed to social and economic stressors, they become vulnerable to extremist and violent ways. The second criteria were on article metrics from the databases, and each article had an average usage of about 200 views and downloads since their publication dates, and they have been cited more than 28 times based on the information on available citations.
The results from the study provided a general measure in support for extremist violence and terrorism acts in support for social, economical and religious goals.
References
DeLisi, M., Peters, D., Dansby, T., Vaughn, M., Shook, J., & Hochstetler, A. (2013). Dynamics of Psychopathy and Moral Disengagement in the Etiology of Crime. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice , 12 (4), 295-314. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541204013506919
Kiriakidis, S. (2016). Moral Disengagement and Antisocial Behavior. Encyclopedia of Adolescence , 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32132-5_390-2
Kunst, J., & Obaidi, M. (2020). Understanding violent extremism in the 21st century: the (re)emerging role of relative deprivation. Current Opinion in Psychology , 35 , 55-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.03.010
Nivette, A., Eisner, M., & Ribeaud, D. (2017). Developmental Predictors of Violent Extremist Attitudes. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 54 (6), 755-790. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022427817699035
